No, I haven't won a trip to the Price Is Right (damn it!).
But if Rod Roddy were alive, he could tell you all about...
I still don't really know what rack & pinion steering is, but I did eventually come to figure out why they were always yelling about "California emission" on that program. I was six, give me a break.
Anyway...
Most of us have been through the new car buying process at least once. As a matter of fact, until now, I had only been through it once. My first two cars were... wow. One of them technically wasn't even mine, as in it was not in my name, but (long story short) I paid for the damn thing, so ... MINE! Many of you know about that one... The [sarcasm] WONDERFUL [/sarcasm] 1988 Lincoln Continental. That car was such a great car to drive, honestly... when it was running, at least. It was roomy and comfortable and looked great... but it was hit or miss whether its insidey parts were going to cooperate or not.
That was the car with the transmission that randomly decided, all of its own accord, on a cold December evening while it was parked at the (old) Brickyard (with it's steep, SLANTED upper level parking lot), that the "park" feature was optional. You see where this is going? Came out of the mall and... "wait, I KNOW the car was parked right here..."
Yep. Car done went and toddled off all by itself. Slipped out of park all by itself (bypassed 'reverse', somehow - I still can't figure that one out) and went forward.... down the hill. Found it in a tree.
(ok, I found it wedged up against a tree, a very tiny tree... uh, make that a very tiny tree which was also the ONLY thing that prevented it from smashing down onto the roadway below... but "found it in a tree" is a lot funnier...)
Then came my official first car (as in MY name on title)... my 1988 Oldsmobile Cutlass Calais. We've all had at least one "beater"... well this was mine. So was the Lincoln, but this one was visibly a beater. Honestly, I wish I had pictures of this one. The backstory here is that my grandpa bought it used sometime in the mid-90s. When he passed, my sister got it. When she no longer needed it, I got it. I believe I became the owner of this vehicular nightmare right around October of 2000. It ran for me without issue (except for heat that worked only if it felt like it) until exactly October of 2001, when it died a swift death, luckily right in front of my parents' house, and not somewhere highly inconvenient... like on 294 or ... on the way to Arizona. Yes, it's true. I was about to dosomething as stupid as trying to drive that bad boy 1800 miles across the country.
It wouldn't have made it 10.
The universe intervened and killed the car for me less than a week before I was going to traverse about 7 states with it. The universe likes to teach me lessons in stupidity, I find.
Anyway, a blog like this wouldn't be complete if I didn't give a brief rundown of this car. It was a piece of crap, yes, but it was MY FIRST piece of crap, so I do hold a weirdly special place in my heart for it. It was gray and it had Bart Simpson hair. By that I mean all of the paint on the roof, ALL OF IT, was peeling up in large spikey-looking points at a pretty rapid pace.
And the glove box...
By the by... has anyone EVER used that compartment to store gloves? I haven't. I throw them on the back seat. So why don't they call it what it actually is... the "5 year-old insurance cards--Broken Tire Gauge--Random Air Freshener--Owners' Manual I've Never Looked At Except When I Couldn't Set the #!*#@ing Clock--Collection of Extra Starbucks Straws For When Those Shipdits Forget To Give Me One (and I Forget To Ask)--Working Tire Gauge--Pile Of Chipotle Napkins--Visor Mirror That Fell Off And I Never Fixed--Random Black Sharpie--Expired City Sticker From Last Year (Because I Might Need It!!)--Unmarked CD That Isn't Even Mine--Errant Happy Meal Toy--What the Hell Is This Plastic Thing?--And Pen That Doesn't Write-Box"?
Anyway, the "glove" box wouldn't stay closed, but there was a light in there, so I had to find a way to keep the hatch closed so the light didn't kill my battery.
(p.s. 10 years after the fact might be a bad time to think of this, but why didn't I just take the damn light bulb out?)
So, the glove box was held shut with a slide bolt.
Then there was the back of the front (drivers') seat... the little lever to adjust the recline was broken, (or missing... I'm not sure) so the back of the front seat was MacGyvered in place by a strategically bent wire coat hanger. I don't quite recall if it came to my sister that way, or if the jerry-rigging took place while in her possession, but it definitely arrived to me that way. And it worked too!
That is, until the day I took it to the Emission Testing station.
Now... I have a question for people who work at places like Emissions Testing, Jiffy Lube, Discount Tire, or anywhere else where you're not driving my car more than 5-10 feet... WHY IN HELL ARE YOU TOUCHING OR MOVING ANYTHING?!?!?! You're not driving across the STATE, you're pulling my car out of the bay and giving it back to me! It's not your hooptie, ok? You don't need to be reclining the seat in a car you're driving for 6 seconds! (he changed the radio station too... THE HELL?) I'll tell you, I've moved a lot of cars that weren't mine, and I've never had to move on in and make it comfortable for me when I was only going to be driving it 40 feet.
So Emissions Testing Dope screws with my MacGyvered seat, and would you care to go ahead and guess what happens JUST as I pull out into traffic... back of the front seat falls down, will NOT stay up no matter what I do, and I have to drive all the way home with no back of the front seat.
Now, you might not know this, but as it turns out, the back of the front seat is a pretty essential piece of equipment for an automobile.
So, the gentle passing of my Bart Simpson MacGyvermobile brought about the necessary purchase of a new car... this would be my first off-the-lot brand new car.
Also spinkled into this timeline was my 1997 Isuzu Rodeo, the only SUV I've ever had (and the only sunroof I ever had!). I didn't have it long, but still worth mentioning for comedic purposes... and the comedy involved here was that I had this one in Arizona and it had leather seats. *That* was amusing on the first "warm enough for shorts" day... because in Arizona, there is no "warm". You go from "it's chilly outside" one day straight to "it's hotter than hell" the next day. And if you're wearing shorts and you forget the car has leather seats, you're in for a treat when you head out to the store. Ever try to hover over the seat while you drive? I've always wanted a car with heated seats, but that was a little more than I bargained for.
But coming back to my poor little '02 Nissan... in 9 years, I can name just two things wrong with it... the color of the exterior and the color of the interior. Apart from regretting both, my little 2002 Nissan was a very great car. Ran well, no major issues, etc. But I'll tell ya, if you ever look at buying a car that isn't black or gray, or something dark and/or common and blendable... think long and hard. It didn't take more than a week or two before I looked at it and thought "Why in god's name did I buy a bright-ass green car?" And later on, after a very greasy, barbecue flavored doggie bag leak in the back seat, part two of that regret came into play, "... with a beige interior?!" Never again, said I.
Still, I miss my little car! I even had an official travel mascot who sat in the passenger door handle... a tiny stuffed giraffe named Allison Janney.
Well, now I have a new car and a new mascot... a small green (in memory of my '02) rubber duckie named Irwin.
For safety purposes, this is not the actual Irwin, but a reasonable facsimile.
I've not yet decided whether to post a photo of the car... it can't be all that safe, posting photos of what you drive on the big scary interwebz... but it hardly makes sense to write about it and not show it either. Well, let's carry on see what plays out...
Ahhhh, the joy of a shiny new car. This time I said NO oddball colors and NO freakin' beige interior. I purposely went online and searched the dealership's inventory, and found that though they had a decent number of the same model on the lot, only one had the interior I wanted. So when I got there and they (upon seeing a woman arrive) wanted to show me a bunch of flashy shiny things, I said "I want to see stock number 11399." Then guy tried to talk me in to the shiny red one with the sport features, which kind of offended me.
End story, when I left that lot, I left it driving stock number 11399. Not my first rodeo, Yosemite. Let's not try that trick again.
But oh the fun and joy... and fear!... of having a new car.
"Don't touch it!"
"Hmm... better park way down there where there are no other cars or people... that's ok, I'll walk the extra 14 blocks, I don't mind."
"Ok, I don't mind you looking at it, but please don't look too much.... you're getting eye-prints on it!"
"HEY! Watch the floormats, asshole!"
(The papers that they put on the floor at the dealer are still in it. Yes, I'm serious. And I'm about to install $20.00 Target floormats on top of the $125.00 factory ones. No, I'm not kidding. Don't worry, they match.)
I can't wait until anyone asks me, "Mind if I smoke?" I'm gonna say, "Mind making the rest of the payments?"
Investigating the interior has been fun. I'm still finding things I didn't know about! Granted, I could just read the manual, but the "manual" turned out to be an entire encyclopedia set. I took off the plastic and about eight books fell out (and even a DVD!!). With my '02, it was 5 whole years before I even touched the owners' manual, and that was only because I had to find out how to set the clock (after pushing every button on the whole car and still not being able to do it).
"I know it says 'trunk release', but you don't know, it might work. Maybe it's hidden, like the 'easter eggs' on dvds...?".
In my defense, at the time I lived where they don't have Daylight Savings so I never had to touch the clock.
Now I have the same problem. The clock is four minutes fast and it's driving me bugfuck. I'm not going to start pressing buttons, though. I've chosen to simply accept defeat and look it up. This one has a lot more buttons, so it will take twice as long not to be able to figure it out.
(epilogue: I started writing this last week and since then I had to change the clock for Daylight Savings anyway... looked it up in the manual... and the manual LIED. The button that the manual told me to press - "menu" - did not do a damn thing. The button *I* pressed - "clock" - ended up being the winner - go figure)
Speaking of buttons!
In-steering radio, CD and iPod control! (I did NOT base my purchase choice on said features, but since they were already in there... woo hoo!)
And what's this business where you stop the car and it turns your volume down? I assume this to be a safety feature of some type... I don't know what that's called but the car needs to learn that it only needs to turn the volume down for me when I'm looking for an address.
Another challenge... The speedometer and tachometer on my '02 were in the opposite position, but I was used to it. Now that I have a vehicle where these items are back where they should be, I keep looking at the wrong one. "Holy hell, I'm going 2200 miles an hour!"
I think most cars now have an iPod/MP3 port, so that's not much of a boasting point... but when I plugged the iPod in, my iPod screen showed the Nissan logo and that's when I realized that the car and the iPod werecommunicating on their own. I'm not sure I approve of my devices being in cahoots with my car of their own accord. That makes me a little nervous. What if the car confuses the iPod with something else, like a GPS device and takes me to Clarksville, or thinks I want to go walkin' in Memphis? (Thank god I didn't download "Goodnight Saigon"!)
Uh oh. Remind me to delete "I Can't Drive 55"... I don't need the iPod screwing with my cruise control!
You know what? That wasn't funny. Seriously. Ignore that.
It also has one of those outside temperature indicators that I don't ever plan to bother looking at. It's a black car, so it's always going to think it's 126 degrees in the summer anyway.
And in the winter... does it even matter? It should just say "Witch's Tit" with an up or down indicator.
Oh, excuse me, it's not a black car... it is "Super Black", according to the manufacturer. And "Obsidian" (which isn't even usually black... durr) according to one of the 14,000 papers I got at the dealer. Either way, I guess it's better than "Mystic Green".
Ok, so ya want to see it?
Sure why not... in the last week, I've noticed that I am one of about 14.8 million people just in my own neighborhood with this particular year, make and model, and one of roughly 8.2 million with this year, make and model in this color. Y'all ain't gonna find me all that easily.
Here she is:
Yes, she's a 'she' and no, she doesn't have a name. It's bad enough I named the duck. This is the obligatory "new car the minute you get it home" photo. I recently found the "minute I got it home" photo of my '02. And I said the same thing I said a week after I got it - "why the f#@k did I buy a green car?"
And that thought is the main reason you don't see the "Blue Onyx" version in that there photo.
And finally... the last and best thing about her...
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