CAR KARMA

Looking back on the past year, I am noticing a strange trend… That is, if two data points can constitute a trend…

Last year, to the day though not the date, I had nearly the exact same news which I am about to impart to you now. On Friday November 29th of last year, I wrote about the strange event of buying a truck, something I never thought that I would do. Now, on Friday November 28th of this year, I’m going to write about a similar, and in my opinion even less likely, event.

Frankly, we’ve had weird car karma for the past year and a half or so. It has been a strange though good year all around, comprised of many statistically unlikely and surprising events, but for now I’ll stick to the automotive aspects of my metaphysical life.

It all started with the sudden demise of my partner’s hot pink convertible by the side of the road last autumn. The Purple Goose (as my father has since dubbed her) came to a shuddering smoking halt on the interstate one afternoon, and that was that.

Luckily, we had a Jeep Cherokee which was plenty big and strong enough to tow the much smaller vehicle out to my father’s shop where she sat throughout the winter. But never fear… We can rebuild her – we have the technology. We can make her bigger, stronger, faster… well, maybe not bigger, but she can be resurrected.

So then we had the Jeep. This was all fine and good, and I got used to staying at home 99% of the time. It was the first time since I was of legal driving age that I had not had a car at my disposal for more than three days in a row, and I was afraid at first that it would drive me mad.

It didn’t. In fact, I rather got used to the strange sense of freedom that came with having to be at home all of the time. My partner worked and was in school at the time, so he and the one working vehicle were seldom at home. I worked too (we work for the same company), but it was easy enough to rearrange our combined work schedules so that he was doing the field work for both of us and I was doing the work at home stuff for both of us. This worked out tremendously well, especially since my ideal work environment is one completely devoid of customers, co-workers or any human beings in general.

I had been moving more and more toward a solitary lifestyle anyway, and not having a car made that not only possible but easy and somewhat necessary. On rare occasion, I would go out to dinner with a friend and it would be an absolutely joyous event. Sometimes weeks or a month would go by without me seeing any human being other than my partner (and that was only occasionally – he had a very busy schedule), so actually being around people I liked became a rare treat.

The Jeep, however, had had a little “problem” in cold weather which no one could, and still can’t, diagnose. On occasion, for no apparent reason, it just stops running. I don’t mean that it won’t start – I mean that it will be speeding down the road just fine, then all of a sudden the engine will suddenly quit. Poof – no more power.

The first time this happened, I was driving in rush hour traffic, in the center lane, in the snow, in the dark. One minute I was coasting along just fine, the next my vehicle decided to turn itself off and coast to a very dangerous halt in the midst of heavy traffic. It wouldn’t start again, and rather than getting upset or frustrated, I simply shrugged my shoulders, relaxed and waited to see what would happen next. I mean, I couldn’t DO anything about it – it wouldn’t start and in that much traffic there was no way I could push it to the side of the road.

This became a periodic problem, seeming to happen primarily when weather conditions are both cold and wet. Eight months out of the year, the Jeep runs great, but from mid-November until mid-March it’s a bit iffy.

Which is why we ended up owning a pick-up truck last year. My partner came walking home from where the Jeep had done it’s little death dance up the street knowing that it was time to get a reliable vehicle. With all of the driving required for his / our job, there was no way that we could be without one, even for a few days.

So, we got the pick-up, which has been quite handy. We installed a hitch on the back, and now there is virtually nothing (within reason) that we can’t haul around. It was the one vehicle which we would periodically borrow from family or friends to move large objects from place to place, and the one type of vehicle we didn’t have. Or so we thought at the time…

With time constraints, flaky car temperaments, busy schedules and the like, it was many months before we had a reliable vehicle other than the truck. For the better part of a year, this was the case, and I got used to not being able to go anywhere, any time for any reason. Mostly, this was Ok, though it became a hassle sometimes when I would need something, say, from the grocery store when I was half way through a recipe or if I needed to take a cat to the vet. It was difficult for me not to be able to do these things, and I’m sure it was difficult on my partner to have to be the one who always did those things. But, everything worked out, and neither one of us got stressed over it.

During this time, we had one rather strange day with the vehicles. We were driving in the pick-up on the interstate when a rock flew up and cracked our windshield. It was startling, but it’s not like the whole thing shattered or anything and both of us were safe. Pulling up in front of our house, we parked behind the stationary Jeep and noticed that the entire back window had been broken out of it. Two windows, one day – thank heavens for insurance.

Eventually, my partner and my father coordinated their schedules and installed a new engine in the pink convertible. (Or "Old School Purple" as we've heard it referred to by a twelve year old boy.) It was a great learning opportunity for my partner, who can now pretty much replace and / or fix just about anything under the hood of a car. The Purple Goose, finally, eventually, flew again.

The Jeep needed some other exhaust work and such done to it, and eventually it was up and running again as well. Suddenly, by this fall, we had three working vehicles for two people – an abundance I could barely fathom. We rearranged our work schedules and coordinated our time, and suddenly we had three times as much time together at home, which was and is very nice.

But there was still a problem…

The Jeep’s cold weather issue has never been reliably diagnosed, though every mechanic we talk to has a theory, all of them different. So, that left us with a pick-up (with no back seat) and a two-seat convertible. This is all fine and good if there are only two people to drive around at any given time…

But, in our house, that’s not the way that it will be for much longer, so we had to find something else. And, as much as it was hard for me to admit it, a mini-van made the most sense for our circumstances.

This was very difficult for me to swallow. I mean, buying a pick-up truck was almost more than my self-image could stand, and a mini-van was over the top. Universally, my friends laughed at me when I confessed what we were up to, and I couldn’t blame them – I couldn’t talk about it without laughing myself. It helped to have a couple of friends who already owned (or had owned) mini-vans; they talked me down and reassured me that owning one wouldn’t change the essence of who I was, as well as pointing out how convenient and handy they are to have around.

Have you seen how much room is in the back of one of those things with the seats taken out? It looks like a gymnasium – you could play basketball in the back of one. We could, literally, park my partner's convertible inside of one if we had any reason to do so. Many of them are longer than the bed of our truck. If you add a luggage rack on top, you can pack a billion things in them and drive across the country, something we like to do on occasion. It is also possible to stretch out and sleep in one when travelling – something which I can’t say about any other vehicle I’ve ever owned. Aren't my rationalizations well thought out and logical sounding? You can tell I've been practicing...

Since we didn’t need one immediately, we took our time and looked at several over a period of a few months. They were all either too expensive or had too many miles already racked up on their odometers, and we were not remotely interested in having to make a car payment on a new one. So, we had a budget to stay within, but luckily we had time to shop around.

In the process, my mother ended up buying one which we had decided against for ourselves. (Too many miles for people who are road-trip happy.) She had driven mini-vans for years, since with the business she owns, they are the only vehicle which make sense. She had a Grand Caravan which she had really liked, but which she had recently totaled by hitting not one, but two deer. (A whole herd was stretched across the road as she came over a hill in the dark.) Other than being completely crushed in the front and undrivable, it was in relatively good shape.

As luck would have it, just a few days ago we found a very inexpensive Grand Caravan for sale which was in really great shape. It was older, but had recently had a new engine, transmission and air conditioning unit installed. It had about a third of the miles on it as any other van we had considered, everything in it and on it was in working order and it cost half of what we had expected to pay. Not to mention that if anything went wrong with it, we had a whole van full of free parts sitting out at my parents’ house…

This is the part where I really start to laugh at myself. It truly was a fantastic deal and it really is in great shape, but there is one thing about it which cracks me up. How should I say it? It’s not, well, what I would pick out if given a sea of mini-vans from which to choose. In an esthetically perfect world, perhaps such things wouldn’t even exist.

Not only am I the proud owner of mini-van, a strange thing to say in and of itself, I am the proud owner of a powder blue with faux wood-grain trim mini-van. Yes, that’s right – I own a Powder Blue Woody. (When the tags need to be renewed next summer, I’m considering getting a vanity plate which reads “SUPRWUDY.”) Go ahead – laugh all you want – I giggle every time I get in the thing.

Déjà vu.

So, there we were again at the family Thanksgiving dinner with Dad looking under the hood and congratulating us on what a great a deal we found. Though I agree and am very happy and grateful for our situation, I hope that this does not become a yearly tradition, a part of Thanksgiving which is repeated year after year like the deep-fried turkey and experimental stuffing. (This year the stuffing had raisins and fennel in it – it was actually quite good.) What is it about this particular holiday which precipitates buying vehicles? Is it some sort of vehicular symbolism of the arrival of the white people in this country, coming with their machines and technology to change this continent forever? Or is it just coincidence?

The one nice thing about owning a not-so-attractive vehicle is that it gives one the freedom to decorate. My partner is thinking about painting some strange design over the wood-grain part when the weather warms up, or perhaps we’ll just get some gigantic magnetic psychedelic daisies and strategically place them all over it. Either way, the engine and interior are in great shape, and when you’re inside of it driving down the road, you can’t see what the outside looks like anyway.

That is, until you see the other motorists laughing at you.