As much as I love having a nice car, I hate having a nice car: Some jackass backed into it. Or at least I think thats what happened. Theres this really strange series of dents a quarter of the way up the hood. It looks like a body dropped out of the sky and landed on the front of my Honda.
I miss the time when I drove a junker Chevrolet Cavalier, because I didnt care!
In Massachusetts there are rotaries (see also: roundabouts and traffic circles) and no one knows how to drive in them. They also dont know how to drive when they leave them, but thats not the point. When approaching the rotary, you yield to vehicles already going around it. Its not a difficult concept. But too often someone fails to yield and comes sailing through the intersection, and its the person already in the rotary who has to slam to a stop except when it was me in my Chevrolet.
Go ahead and fail to yield! The combined value of your headlights is worth more than the Bluebook of my whole Cavalier! I was 1.5 tons of American-made scrap metal with bad brakes. Id sail around rotaries with my hand on the horn, which only marginally drowned out the sound of my maniacal laughter. Do your worst!
But they got the last laugh. My Chevy broke down with a regularity only matched by Timex and heavy drinkers of Metamucil. Be it the time I got stranded with a broken vacuum line and had to fix it with a drinking straw and a paper-clip while singing the theme-song to MacGyver, or the time my cooling fan committed suicide in heavy traffic:
I had the pedal to the floor to keep up with the surrounding motorists in their fancy crash-tested vehicles when I happen to look down at the temperature gauge and see it pegged in the red zone. I wheel over to the side of the highway and pop the hood. The fans out! Its an electric fan, so I rip open the fuse-box, and yank out the blown fuse. Theres only one other fuse I can use to replace it, so I steal that one out of the windshield wipers and pop it in.
I start the car.
The fan starts, too.
I do a happy little jig by the side of I-95 like a jackass.
Problem solved.
Right up until the new fuse blows and the fan dies again. I'm all out of fuses, but I only have to drive another mile to my exit; as long as I go fast enough to air-cool the engine, Ill make it. I hop back in traffic, but the needle on the temperature gauge is moving faster than my damn car! Im wheeling back and forth all over the highway like a giant metal Hacky-Sack, but I only get about 200 feet before I'm back at the boiling point and have to pull over. I was so close to the exit I could practically smell it.
So, I wait.
And wait.
It starts getting dark.
I start lighting flares.
And I wait.
Four hours later. The traffic is almost gone. I turn the key, the car starts, and so does the rain. I hit the wipers. They do an even better imitation of Nothing than the cooling fan. Maybe if I just reach a sleeve out the window, I can wipe the rain away...
Now I have to try and see through the rain and the smears of dirt and grease I made with my sleeve. Thank god I have that one working headlight.
Ill never admit that things deteriorated to the point where I was driving with my head out the window, with the rain streaming into my face, squinting wildly, trying desperately to tell the difference between mail boxes and pedestrians, unable to even slow down because the car would overheat! ...I'll never admit that.
I managed to make it home without involuntarily committing any felonies, the only unimportant loss being my every shred of personal dignity; I wasnt using it anyway. Besides, wrapped as I was in my comfy cocoon of delusion, I didnt think it would ever get worse than that.
...Until that 15 degree winter day when the water-pump ruptured.
Or the time I got the genius idea to repair the dying transmission.
Or when the power-steering pump detonated while going down the interstate....
...While I may hate having a nice car, what, with it's freshly crumpled hood, I also absolutely, positively love having a nice car.
I miss the time when I drove a junker Chevrolet Cavalier, because I didnt care!
In Massachusetts there are rotaries (see also: roundabouts and traffic circles) and no one knows how to drive in them. They also dont know how to drive when they leave them, but thats not the point. When approaching the rotary, you yield to vehicles already going around it. Its not a difficult concept. But too often someone fails to yield and comes sailing through the intersection, and its the person already in the rotary who has to slam to a stop except when it was me in my Chevrolet.
Go ahead and fail to yield! The combined value of your headlights is worth more than the Bluebook of my whole Cavalier! I was 1.5 tons of American-made scrap metal with bad brakes. Id sail around rotaries with my hand on the horn, which only marginally drowned out the sound of my maniacal laughter. Do your worst!
But they got the last laugh. My Chevy broke down with a regularity only matched by Timex and heavy drinkers of Metamucil. Be it the time I got stranded with a broken vacuum line and had to fix it with a drinking straw and a paper-clip while singing the theme-song to MacGyver, or the time my cooling fan committed suicide in heavy traffic:
I had the pedal to the floor to keep up with the surrounding motorists in their fancy crash-tested vehicles when I happen to look down at the temperature gauge and see it pegged in the red zone. I wheel over to the side of the highway and pop the hood. The fans out! Its an electric fan, so I rip open the fuse-box, and yank out the blown fuse. Theres only one other fuse I can use to replace it, so I steal that one out of the windshield wipers and pop it in.
I start the car.
The fan starts, too.
I do a happy little jig by the side of I-95 like a jackass.
Problem solved.
Right up until the new fuse blows and the fan dies again. I'm all out of fuses, but I only have to drive another mile to my exit; as long as I go fast enough to air-cool the engine, Ill make it. I hop back in traffic, but the needle on the temperature gauge is moving faster than my damn car! Im wheeling back and forth all over the highway like a giant metal Hacky-Sack, but I only get about 200 feet before I'm back at the boiling point and have to pull over. I was so close to the exit I could practically smell it.
So, I wait.
And wait.
It starts getting dark.
I start lighting flares.
And I wait.
Four hours later. The traffic is almost gone. I turn the key, the car starts, and so does the rain. I hit the wipers. They do an even better imitation of Nothing than the cooling fan. Maybe if I just reach a sleeve out the window, I can wipe the rain away...
Now I have to try and see through the rain and the smears of dirt and grease I made with my sleeve. Thank god I have that one working headlight.
Ill never admit that things deteriorated to the point where I was driving with my head out the window, with the rain streaming into my face, squinting wildly, trying desperately to tell the difference between mail boxes and pedestrians, unable to even slow down because the car would overheat! ...I'll never admit that.
I managed to make it home without involuntarily committing any felonies, the only unimportant loss being my every shred of personal dignity; I wasnt using it anyway. Besides, wrapped as I was in my comfy cocoon of delusion, I didnt think it would ever get worse than that.
...Until that 15 degree winter day when the water-pump ruptured.
Or the time I got the genius idea to repair the dying transmission.
Or when the power-steering pump detonated while going down the interstate....
...While I may hate having a nice car, what, with it's freshly crumpled hood, I also absolutely, positively love having a nice car.