Holding back the gears

It's just another Tragic Tuesday. Not what I would Chooseday. 'Cause that gives me the Bluesday. Mr. T pities the Foosday. It's just another Tragic Tuesday. Let that be a lesson to all of you: it's incredibly difficult to match the lyrical genius of the Bangles. I'm not even going to attempt "Walk Like a Jordanian" for fear of falling flat of my face in front of my friendly followers. F.

Good morning, gentle readers. I don't know how many of you came to this space yesterday since it was a holiday, but the sun never sets on UOPTA. I published a post about the circumstances around me obtaining my driving permit, and that naturally leads to today's post about going for my actual license to drive. Y'all ready for this? (Cue the music.)

Let me begin with a little background about my car. I was very fortunate to have a car of my own, and I loved it. It was a metallic blue 1988 Ford Bronco 2 in good condition with a bunch of miles on it. (Please note, our favorite former-running-back-turned-movie-actor-turned-exonerated-killer drove a Bronco and not a Bronco 2.) I got it a month before my 16th birthday, and it treated me very well during that time as I completed my training and readied myself for the exam.

The day came, and I went with my mom back to the DMV. After checking in and doing whatever pre-test paperwork I needed, I was instructed to drive the car into the line of waiting test-takers and keep it running. After the cars in front of me left one by one, a big scary woman motioned for me to pull forward a little. "More," she said sternly, so I pulled up a little more. "Shut it off," she grunted, and I quickly obliged. She asked me to show her my hand signals, where the button for the hazard lights was, etc., and then got into my car next to me.

"Start the car," she commanded. I turned the key, and nothing happened. "Start the car," she repeated. Starting to freak out a little now, I turned the key again. Absolutely nothing. "Uh, I..." I started to say, unsure of how I was going to finish the sentence. Luckily she jumped in: "You're in the wrong gear," she said, and then she started making notations on her scoring sheet. She was right, of course. When she said, "Shut it off" before, it was so abrupt that I forgot to put the car in park. Still in drive (and being an automatic), it wasn't going to start for me. Speaking of starting, that was not at all how I wanted to begin my test.

I'm a bit of a perfectionist with many things, so knowing that I already prevented myself from getting 100% wasn't a good feeling. I was a little rattled after that first bonehead maneuver, and despite how many times I told myself just to shake it off, it was still in the back on my mind for the remainder of the test. The lady had me take her around some residential streets, and I was doing everything by the book. I stayed below the speed limit, and felt like I was literally crawling through some intersections. I checked my mirrors often, and I even intentionally exaggerated my head movements to ensure that she was aware of every single time. With my hands firmly at 10 and 2, I was finally beginning to feel at ease during the latter end of the test.

"Do a three-point turn here," she barked. I signaled, checked my mirrors, and then turned into the driveway she had pointed out. I put the car in reverse and looked all around to make sure no one was coming. There was one problem though: my car temporarily stopped listening to me. It wouldn't kick into reverse and was instead just acting like neutral. "Uh, this hasn't happened before," I said. I then quickly added, "We're taking it in tomorrow though." She nodded and wrote something else down. I put it back into drive, waited, and then tried reverse again. After a hesitation, we could feel it jump into the gear. I rechecked everything around me and completed my turn.

To say I was on edge for the rest of the test is a slight understatement. Try as I might, I couldn't help but notice how often she was writing things on my scoring sheet. She guided me back to the DMV (which is good, because I wouldn't have been able to get us back there on my own) and then told me where to park. I actually put it in park this time before turning the car off, I'll have you know. I waited as she wrote a few more things down, and then with a tone that I can only describe as "Geez-you're-a-lucky-bastard," she shook her head and said, "Well...you passed." By her tone, it sounded like I got a 70 (which I think was the minimum needed to pass) or some technicality allowed me to pass even though I had royally screwed up.

I knew that passing was passing, but I had been hoping to do very well and it was clear that I hadn't. She told me to go to the counter to get my picture taken and sign something, so I did. I don't know why it took me so long, but it wasn't until I was almost at the counter that I looked down at the test and saw my score. 91 out of 100. I was marked off 3 points for "Wrong gear" in a section usually reserved for people with manual transmissions, and 6 points for having a right turn end in the wrong lane. I thought (and still think) that the far right lane was a parking lane only, but I'll let her slide. Everything else she wrote was either just a check mark or "Good" in the margins. Under remarks, she wrote, "Good drive!!" Yeah, two exclamations from a woman that made it sound like I only passed because my dad was the governor and she'd be fired if she failed me.

Much like the aftermath of my permit test, I felt more relief than excitement when it was all done. I kept trying to tell myself that I now had my license and my life was about to get exponentially cooler, but the joy didn't kick in for a while. I kept hearing, "Well...you passed," and ignoring the "Good drive!!" Oh well, I guess that's human nature. Disirregardless, it was because I passed that test that I had the distict privilege of sitting in traffic this morning. Thank you, Big Scary Woman!!

Have a great Tuesday everyone, and enjoy this shortened workweek. If you missed yesterday's post because reading it counts as laboring, you can find it below. Got anything you want to share? Please email ptklein@gmail.com, and the odds are extremely high that I'll respond.

Instant Car-ma

Good morning one and all. I hope this day finds you well. After posting Sacky Christi's blog address yesterday, I went there are realized I was a few posts behind. One of them talked about problems that she's had with her car. There have been enough of these occurrences that she now believes her car is cursed. I immediately thought of my friend Rockabye and a car he had while we were in college. Let's call this the May Day Special.

First though, I'm not immune to car problems. I had a Bronco 2 for the first four years or so that I was driving. Correct me if I'm wrong, but normally you're not supposed to average one transmission per year, right? I loved the car when it was running well, but that happened less and less frequently, so it eventually was time to part.

Despite the several transmissions (or 'quite a few' if you prefer), belts breaking, and a passenger window that needed human plus electrical help to go back up, my Bronco 2's problems were nowhere near as memorable as Rockabye's run-ins. He named his car "Qwaku," after a gentleman he met playing pick-up basketball at a park. He was so enamored by that name that he bestowed it upon his sedan. He'd greet the car as we'd approach it with "Hey, what's up, Quak?" Then he'd push the button on his alarm remote, and it would reply back with its own salutation.

(Random side note here: I once asked Dusty, "If there were no birds, would be still have the word 'chirp?'" "Yes," he said, "because my alarm clock chirps. It says so in the manual." "Come on," I argued, "you're telling me the manual writer would've made that word up specifically to address the sound the clock makes? You don't think he's saying it sounds like a bird?" "My alarm clock chirps," he replied, satisfied that he'd successfully made his point. Man I hate that guy sometimes.)

So back to Rockabye and Qwaku. During our sophomore year, he and I lived together with our friends Greg and Jon on the bottom half of a duplex. There was a little parking lot for our two units behind the place, which was visible from a window in the room I shared with Greg. One afternoon, Greg and I were just chilling in our room, listening to music and most likely talking about stupid shit. Out of nowhere, we heard a loud crash coming from the direction of the little parking lot. Greg ran over to the window and pulled the blinds up. There was Qwaku. More precisely, a little more than half of Qwaku. The front of the car had busted through the wooden fence that divided our place from our neighbor's place. Big planks laid across the windshield and a cloud of dust hovered above. Through the window, we could see Rockabye's face, looking at us, stunned in surprise, with a half smile and a look that said, "I have no idea what happened but I have a feeling it was kinda funny."

We ran out to the lot and asked the most obvious question in that situation: "What the hell did you do?" He told us that he was pulling in just like he always did, but when he hit the brakes, nothing happened. Well, more appropriately, hitting the fence happened. I asked how he stopped the car then, and he said that the brakes were working again. Qwaku fell asleep on the job, and now we had a car, a fence, and neighbor relations to repair. Neither Greg nor I will ever forget that look on Rockabye's face, and it makes me laugh almost every time I think of it. (I just laughed. Do you believe me now?)

The following year, Rock and Qwak were on the freeway, and a big truck in front of them made a decision. "I'm tired of hauling all of this crap," it thought to itself. "I would be much better off tossing some of it and lightening my load. I'm not a kid anymore, and I need to set limits for myself. Take this big block of concrete, for example. I don't need this anymore, yet I've had the hardest time parting with it. Starting today, I'm going to treat myself better. Farwell, big block of concrete, and good luck finding your way in this world." Unfortunately the concrete didn't find his way, but rather Qwaku's hood. A little while later, Rockabye walked in to our apartment and told us what happened. We came out and looked at the big dent and scrapes from the liberated slab. It could've been very bad if it had been a couple of feet higher and hit the windshield, but it didn't and my friend was fine. That made it easier to laugh at. We were starting to wonder if Qwaku was a magnet for trouble.

That same school year, we got our answer. Even in sunny, beachy, and beautiful Santa Barbara, we were prone to occasional storms. One particular day, we had a doozy of one. My buddies and I all stayed dry inside (a different place than the year before, by the way), playing video games and arguing over who did the better impression of Mario. Later on, after everything cleared up, we went to the lot behind the complex. I'm not sure if I have this quote exactly correct or not, but Rockabye said something very close to, "Dude, where's my car?" He pointed to the farthest spot from where we were standing, and he was right, there wasn't a car there. Instead, there was about half of a tree that had fallen in the storm. "Are you serious?" I asked. He couldn't help but smile a little as he nodded, knowing that this was another chapter in Qwaku's lore. We couldn't see even an inch of the car, so we expected the worst as we walked over. Sure enough, there was a car under there. Somehow, though, it was totally fine. A tree fell on his car and it was fine.

We will always remember Qwaku, even though he hasn't been Rockabye's chariot for a while now. The car that broke through fences, was a concrete magnet, and survived an act of God with nary a scratch. Maybe it wasn't cursed at all, come to think of it. Maybe it took the brunt of these things to prevent others from having to. Or maybe I've just been watching too much Lost.

Have a great day, gentle readers. Drive carefully out there, and look out for stationary fences. (Not stationery fences, because there's no reason to be afraid of paper. Oh homophones, you get me every time.) Please remember to write to ptklein@gmail.com with your thoughts and observations. There's plenty of room in the next Follow Up Friday, so keep a look out for Car Watch items and anything I might find interesting.