Vehicular Musings

I drive a 1993 Chevy S-10 pickup. I'm a pickup kinda person anyway....I frequently have large and unexpected things to tote around, and very few humans. Plus, I have a pickup person personality. You know...you can sort of tell what kind of person a person is by what kind of car they buy, unless they're so poor they buy any $500 vehicle that runs. That tells you something too, but more about their checkbook than their psyche.

Camry people are sensible and secretly a little self-indulgent, but embarrassed by it.  SUV people?  It depends. Dodge Caravan? Lots of kids, no money. Lexus SUV? One kid, $1000 stroller, lots of money. Honda Passport? 2 kids, one at Montessori preschool, the other plays T-ball. Badly.

Cameros/Corvettes/two-seaters of any kind? Assholes. Although the exception is possibly the Honda Del Sol, owned by middle-aged people who "never got anything fun, dammit, and now I want something fun for the first time in my whole life!"

Lori drives a Sebring convertible that used to be showy-offy, but now looks a little bedraggled, like a 50 year old stripper clinging to her job at the dive bar across the street from the explosives factory. It's become an ongoing source of frustration for her. It's main computer has gone rogue and has taken over the car ("I can't do that, Dave."), the peeling chrome plating on the wheels tends to let the air out of the times at inopportune moments, and recently it has begun to spontaneously jettison it's bodily fluids. Sometimes. And then not for a few months. And then again for a while.

It's next on our list of things to get rid of, right after the two-gallon water heater.

My truck is a lot like me, I think. It used to look a lot better when it was younger, but it still gets up and goes to work every damn day but it bitches about it the entire time. It's one of those vehicles nobody ever borrows because of the list of tricks required to make it go, and then keep it going, which currently looks like this:

1. The starter is dead. Like, since last July. So I park it on an incline and when I want to start it, I let it roll, put it in second gear, and pop the clutch. I'm so good at this I can start it on a two degree pitch. My criteria for deciding where to go is whether it has I hill I can park on. Wal-Mart? Hill...okay to shut it off.. Kroger? No hill, so unless I'm just running in for one thing and can leave it running...no.

2. The power steering leaks fluid like crazy, so sometimes it works,and sometimes it works but it moans like the aforementioned 50 year old stripper rolling out of bed in the morning after a double-shift of pole dancing, and sometimes it's an excellent arm-and-pec workout.

3. There's a large-ish rust hole in the corner of the floorboard that gets a little nippy on those 20 degree nights, because:

4. The heater works, but the blower doesn't. Which is fine at 60 miles per hour, as it makes it's own air movement with the vortexing from the hole.

But it always starts and it always goes, I've never hit a deer with it nor put it in a ditch, and it cost me $1500 three years ago and it's still running 100,000 miles later. Sure, it's showing some age and rough living, but hey...I own a mirror. Time hasn't exactly been my best friend either. And if it needs a little extra lube? Well...when you get to be a certain age...