Ladies and gentlemen…

I have a car.

Again.

Those of you following along closely will remember that my last car met an untimely demise last month, shortly before our three month anniversary (“our” referring to myself and the car… I told you I was a bit attached to it). For the record, it wasn’t my fault.

Fortunately, the death of my car coincided with my little brother’s loss of license, so I was able to use that to get back and forth to work, and to all the super-fun and trendy places I go during my day to day life. Like the grocery store. Unfortunately, Brother’s car, which I’ve nicknamed The Beast, is butt ugly. It’s a Pontiac 6000. Never heard of it? Yeah, I think that’s because they stopped making them circa 1975. You have to start the damn thing five or six times before it will actually stay running, and then a fan belt squeals like a stuck pig driving a car with a squealy fan belt. It burns through gas so inefficiently that I’m beginning to suspect the gas tank has rusted clean through and I’m leaving a Hansel and Gretel style trail wherever I go. That is, if Hansel and Gretel were into pyrotechnics.

Whenever I mention these mechanical defects to someone (in a strictly non-complaining way), they invariably reply, “Oh well, it gets you from point A to point B!” At which point I karate chop them in the knee caps, because they wouldn’t be so optimistic about it if they had to drive it. I have to open at work a lot, which means being there at 6, which means squealing through residential neighborhoods at 5:45 in the morning. People have started waiting for me with eggs.

So praise the Lord, I’ve got a car. And it’s adorable. It’s a seafoam green 1995 Toyota Tercel, and it’s lovely. A little duct tape in the backseat, a little (okay, a lot) of leftover cigarette smell, a few dents and dings, but really she’s a sweet little thing. No rust. However, I’m scared to death of her because she’s a standard. I’ve got about 35 minutes worth of experience with standards, and most of those came from the drive home. I’ve been reading up a little bit on shifting basics, but I’m gonna level with you; I don’t even know what they mean by ‘rev matching,’ or the ‘friction point.’ Pretty much, I just let out the clutch, step on the gas, and hope the transmission doesn’t blow up, and so far I’ve been fairly successful. I’ll spend some time tomorrow fine-tuning my technique.

It’s like with a horse; you’ve just got to pretend you’re not scared and pray you don’t stall. Yep. Exactly like a horse.

Daily Photo:

This is the type of person who likes driving a Pontiac 6000.