Wheels
Remember your first car? My daughter was talking about hers yesterday. The one she didn't want at first because it was, well, old. A 1986 Cutlass Supreme, it was white with decorative flecks of rust and a bumper sticker that said, SOMEONE IN TEXAS LOVES ME. She called it The Boat, and moaned about dirving it the first and last six months we owned it. But in between she fell in love. And now she wishes she still had it to drive around campus. Yeah, the same car her great-grandma used to navigate Evansville, Indiana before she stopped driving altogether.
My first heap, erm, ride was a pea green Duster that consumed oil like ants eat sugar. I wouldn't take that sucker back if you plated it with gold. But then, according to my hubby, it didn't have soul.
How about your original wheels? Brimming with so much character it became part of your identity? Or a forgettable piece o' trash? Can't wait to hear the road trip stories!
My first heap, erm, ride was a pea green Duster that consumed oil like ants eat sugar. I wouldn't take that sucker back if you plated it with gold. But then, according to my hubby, it didn't have soul.
How about your original wheels? Brimming with so much character it became part of your identity? Or a forgettable piece o' trash? Can't wait to hear the road trip stories!
Comments
I think my favourite thing to do was to get a bottle of fizzy pop, take myself out to the Lake District and go hiking for the day. A real pleasure.
Then there was the first car I bought with my own dough.
Chevy S10 crew cab pickup truck with a truck bed shell on the back.
It was not sleek or sexy or cool - but I could fit a ton of friends in it - we all head down to the beach and have a bonfire...it was awesome.
first new car - was a ford probe SVT - first sports car and first stick - I loved that car.
So a friend and I to to visit my sister at her college. Said college is in a very hilly town. Friend is driving me and Sister back to campus in my Taurus. Sister is in front seat, I'm in rear. We crest a hill and start going down. Halfway down, we realize a car is stopped at the bottom. No turn signal, just stopped.
Friend hits the breaks, but we still hit a Mercedes Benz at thirty-five mph. Sister spiderwebs windshield with forehead. My Taurus's front end is slightly crunched. The Benz has a loose...something, but it's hard to see until asshat driver starts pulling at it. Insisting he had his turn signal on to make a left turn, even through all three of us said he didn't (um, ever hear of a burnt light bulb?).
Sister says she's okay, but goes off in an ambulance anyway. Insurance info is exchanged. I ask the cop about driving my car, since I'm pretty freaked out--first major accident. He takes a peek, says it should be okay.
Friend and I drive a few miles to hospital. Make calls. Get Sister, who is fine. Our parents are on their way (even though they are 2.5 hours away). We start heading back to the college.
Car starts steaming. Heat gauge hits H. Guess what cracked? It takes us thirty minutes to get a few miles back, because we have to stop and let the engine cool between bursts of driving. Parents eventually arrive. Dad announces one of the coolant lines is cracked, but he can patch it well enough to get the car home.
Silly me, I say okay. He patches the car. We fill 'er up with coolant. Head home, Dad in the Taurus and the rest of us in my mom's car. An hour into the trip, just on the southern side of the St. George's Bridge, Dad pulls off. The engine is smoking. We submit to it being towed.
My Dad's brilliant patch job burnt out the engine. It would have cost more to fix than it was worth. *sigh* My pretty blue Taurus went to the Big Scrap Yard in the Sky that day....
Fond memories.
Yup, Brooke, I'm thinking you could totally relate to my daughter then. Sometimes you get what you pay for, and her first car cost us a buck!
Sounds like your car definitely had soul, Falcata Times!
I think the one you don't have to share is the one that counts, Davida. Sounds like you have tons of fun memories tied up in it!
Woohoo, nightdweller20! Be good to your sweetie, and she'll leave you with stories for a lifetime!
Kewl, Vickie!
Mmm, time to dream, then, Natalie E. Hope you have great experiences in your first set o' wheels!
Ah, sadness, Kelly. I totaled the only car I ever truly loved. A silver Nissan Sentra. Which was probably my object lesson in why I should never become attached to objects that can be replaced. (But I still miss it!)
Then I moved away from where I needed to drive for many years.
When I moved to Louisiana nine months ago, my parents gave me my dad's old Toyota Corolla. Again, it was a shell of a car. Anyway, it just died last weekend, and I got a fancy new Toyota Prius. It's like a corporate hippy spaceship. I can't work ANYTHING yet. It involves bluetooth and cameras and all this other shit. I need help.
Anyway, it's weird having a "good" car. My cars have always been vehicles/bumper cars. This one I feel I should take care of. Weird.
I drove the Cutlass until the head gasket went and it was too much money to put into a 16 year old car. Then I got a 1993 Buick LeSabre in purple, which is so luxurious and comfy with leather seats, power everything. I'd take the seats out and use them in my house, seriously. It's totally a grandpa car, and it's currently balding. The paint is just randomly flecking away over about 1/3 of the car. The entire roof is bare and rusting. Now that it's 16 years old, it's about to die on me. Right now it's so damn loud from a hole in the exhaust, I can hardly stand to drive it. It'll be another month or two until I can replace it, so I'm hesitant to put in more money!
On the amusing side, I was doing some photo blogs (plogs :) last fall, and one of my ideas was "places where my car has broken down" but I didn't want to take my current car a couple hours away to one of the sites my first car broke down, because I was afraid I wouldn't make it back! I did take a pic, however, of the factory in front of which the Buick broke down when the serpentine belt let fly and took out the water pump. I hate to amaze my mechanic. A guy who has been in the business for twenty years shouldn't say "wow."
You are one forward thinker, Sally!