i think tomorrow i'm going to buy a 1993 cabriolet. blue. Tiffany, the very perky Youth Director at Crestview United Methodist Church - which is about 5 blocks from my house - is selling it because she bought a truck to haul kids around in. she's asking $3200. it's been on the market for a month now. i'll offer $2900.

nice. I'm getting a new-to-me car. Actually it's not that new-to-me since it's my parent's old car that they are giving to me when I go home this summer. I can't wait. I haven't had my own car for about 10 years.

I love my car. It's a clunky POS that has major body damage from an accident it was in before I got it. I need to fix the AC in it. I blew out one of the speakers in the front. I love my clunky rusty payment free minivan!

heh. sarah's buying a bitch basket.

bitch basket! hah! that's almost as funny as meat curtains. i'll have to remember to ask Tiffany the church Youth Director if she ever heard bitch basket before.

it is convertible?

yep

How fun.

yeah! and get this... i just got a CELL PHONE whoa! it arrives tomorrow in the mail! i'm going to be a cell phone carrying, bitch basket driving ho. no threat of me losing track of society, no siree. those days are long gone. i'm now 100% mainstream. next up: house in the suburbs!

:)

and then a golden dog named Boomer. And the Ronco pasta maker. is it new car season? my 1992 Honda Accord (saved from a wrecker just for me) will be mine by next week. The mechanic guy who's doing the deal for me called last month with a great price on an almost new car. "It's a REALLY GREAT price!" "what's the catch?" "I mean, a really REALLY great price! And not a scratch on it!" The previous owner was found in the trunk. He'd been there for a while. It needed more air-fresheners and upholstry cleanings then i could afford. These are the fun stories you get when you're looking for cars at police auctions. and get this, my dad's finally ditching his SUV. Got rid of it today. We're all proud of him, although he swears it's not because of the anti-hype. He's just sick of driving a truck, paying $70 in gas a week, and the 4 wheel drive only saved his ass 5 days a year. Hell, it saved my ass a couple times too, but nothing that my already stellar winter driving couldn't do. ...i still asked if i could have it. *shame* i loved that thing. fuck. cars cars cars.

ooooo i'm jealous. how much are you paying for it? what are you driving right now? my favorite car i ever owned was an '87 Accord LXi. drove that thing about 200k miles and cross the contiguous US several times before it died in hawaii in 1999. i've noticed the newer accords are so much bigger. americanized, i guess. the old accords - 93 and earlier - are pretty sporty. there's a new ad in the paper today for a younger cabriolet. also, there's miata for sale. maybe i'll go take a look at those too, just for fun. i hope my cell phone comes today.

"ooooo i'm jealous. how much are you paying for it? what are you driving right now? " 1) you are? 2) it was going to be $5000, but when they got it back to the shop they noticed that it needs more body work than they thought, so it may be much lower. It was dropped off at the junkyard because the owner got side-swiped and the insurance company wouldn't pay for it. Other than that, it's in top condition, with a whole new exhaust system that was put in within the last 6 months. It's white with red seats. It's fugly. I don't care about these things. I said "anything with 4 doors that's not red" 3) for the past 4+ years i've had a 1988 Cutlass Sport. That's just a Cutlass Supreme with 2 doors. It is a BOAT. I'll miss it's comfy velveteen seats (they don't make them like that anymore!), but not much else. Sure, we had our good times, and I'll probably cut out a chunk of the upholstry fabric, but it's time is up. I will never put up with the 2 door bullshit again! It's got so many km on it, it's scary. It has no shocks, and the passenger-side door handle fell off. The solid metal handle fucking fell right off last year. Wtf. It has no air (not just no AC, but even when you set it to cool air in the vents, it pumps out heat) and the locks ice up so easily i go 5 months a year without locking it. Not that anyone would steal it, mind you. But i'm sad to see it go. It has a bad-ass digital dash. Good times. Funny stories about it refusing to start at the most inopportune of times. We had fun.

i got an MRI tues night at this clinic that's open late. my appointment was at 8:40 p.m. i got there a bit early, so i sat in my car in the parking lot finishing up talking on the phone w/ my friend kristi, when this guy starts walking up slowly to me in my car with a sheet of paper. it was a little scary at first. it was starting to get dark and i was one of three cars in this enormous parking lot. when he got closer i could sense a very non-threatening gait, so then i thought, oh jeeez, he's going to try to sell me something or ask for a donation. instead he was this random guy working at the liquor store next to the MRI clinic. he handed me a piece of paper and invited me to join the "Air Coolers Club". which is a VW owners club. www.aircoolers.org - and there's an austin chapter that meets at a deep eddy park, deep eddy being a fresh water spring swimming hole. VW owners meet there to hang out, meet and greet, and geek out over VWs, and then everyone caravans to Austin's Pizza for food, beer and music. this happens on the first thursday of every month (coincidentally first thursdays were my and dave's official monthly anniversary). and today is the first thursday of june, so i'm headed down there at 7:30 to check it out and meet some folks. i saw some photos on the web and there are quite a variety of folks. i was kinda thinking it would be a bunch of high-on hippies or something, but it didn't appear that way from the photos. so that should be fun and silly. since i've had the VW i've noticed that there's this cult-like VW subculture. sometimes people offer to fix my car for me for free, just because it's an older, out of production VW. anyways, now i gotta go get the Double B washed up and shiny for her the debut.

We're still driving my mother's 93 Accord wagon. It got a new exhaust system installed a couple of months ago and the damn thing is running like a champ. I'm pretty certain this is the car that will never ever ever die. Now that it's finally summertime, I'm whipping the scooter out in full effect. I bought a 2002 Aprillia Scarabeo a few months ago, and it is absolutely PERFECT for getting around the city on. Two dollars a week for gas. And you get to breathe fresh air.

.

fresh air? don't you live in LA??

Doesn't Kalli live in Richmond?

I'm going to Richmond sometime this summer.

I live in Richmond silly. You couldn't pay me to live in LA. (visit maybe, but never live.) Kazu, it's actually a pretty neat mini-city. Lemme know if you want a tour when ya get here.

neat-o! Send me your e-mail and I'll let you know when I'm coming.

did.

wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! I just made a six degrees to kalli!!!

that's craziness. Although I'm finding the older I get, the more the world sorta shrinks and one of the things I really love about Richmond is that stuff like that seems to happen all the time. It's what I mean by calling it a mini-city...Reminds me of a small town without being a small town..

sarah. though ive never owned a VW, in highschool i did a lot of traveling with my bloke who had a 69 pop top bus. and yes. when you buy a VW, especially an older one, you buy a family. all the times we broke down, within a half hour or so, there was always an experienced VW person who had pulled over to help.

yeah, i think because the model i have is out of production, it somehow has that VW geeks sex appeal or something. kalli, don't know why i thought you lived in LA. btw, senor drives an 85 accord LX. it has a lot of little things wrong with it (one of the power windows doesn't work for example) but the engine just purrs. they don't make 'em like that anymore.

oh and wisper - i did get the golden dog too. i just didn't name him Boomer. kinda weird.

New York: Feb 5, 1898.While running in the U. S. F. T. C. trials Pin Money injured her tail severely on a barbed wire, a wound several inches in length being made near the end. It was so serious that it was thought for a while that amputation of the injured part would be necessary. Her owners, on account of this injury, decided not to run her in the Continental Club's all-age stake and the stake of the Champion Association

holy crap, that IS weird sarah..... my Honda Accord whups ass! In over a year it hasn't had a single problem. Not one. With the Cutlass i had to have something serious fixed on it almost every 3 months. These Accords are scary good cars. Everyone told me they were good, but i had no idea it would be this way. I got the oil changed last week, and it wasn't down a single drop. Is this car made of Kriptonite? I also love my aquatread tires. WalMart (where i sadly got the oil changed) was pulling this big act when i picked it up, telling me the tires are shot and i really have to change all 4 of them, RIGHT NOW, or i'll crash and die on the highway, so please go RIGHT NOW and look at our wide selection of tires..... I practically laughed in the woman's face. Aquatreads? Less than 2 years old? I think not. jackasses.

senor is trying to talk me into getting a scion tc. new. brand new. i don't think i can do it. it's so. you know. and plus a car payment. i've come to hate the bitch basket. it's loud, hollow, slow, rickety, and worst of all, no a/c. tried to get the a/c fixed, but it was more than the car is worth. i regret having sold my paseo. that car kicked major booty. i covet all the paseos i see, which are not many. you can buy them all preserved and souped up on ebay, but they're really expensive. i kinda wanted to get an old used eclipse, but i've test driven 4 of them, and they're all about ready for some major repair of some sort. then i was thinking a civic for gas mileage. then i was thinking, fuckitall, just get a '02 or '03 safe, reliable, cheap 4-door sedan like a corrolla or a sentra, because who cares? as long as it gets me from A to B. but i'm not really an from A to B car driver. never have been. it's not like i think my identity is in any way reflected in my transportation, because that's dumb. i just like my car to be at least a little bit fun. those scion tc's are so fun. and so sexy. and so safe. and so goddamm expensive.

"Possession of anything new or expensive only reflected a person's lack of theology and geometry; it could even cast doubts upon one's soul."

we only have understanding of living this life once enjoy it

i can't believe how bad my car fucked me over. Look at that post up there, so happy, so full of expectation. Ass-rammed by my Honda.

i feel your pain, i do. part of me wants to just pony up and get the tc, just to end the car buttfuckery that the bitch basket has put me through. it's almost worse with a honda, because of its reputation and all.

test drive the new corollas. They look like they are fun. Also, try out the Yaris. Let us know how that is. Scions look cool, but I just get the feeling that they're going to become annoying in a few years. That being said, if someone gave me the keys to an Xb, i would happily drive away in it.

My next car is probably going to be either a Honda Fit or the SmartCar from DaimlerChrysler. Won't be for a couple of years at least, though.

annoying how? i test drove a Fit. i did not like it. it's a lot like the scion Xa, except you sit up higher in the xa. kinda hollow. very uncomfortable seats and ergonomics. also, i'm not into hybrids. they're way overrated. if i'm going to buy an envrionmentally friendly car (hah), i'd get a diesel and use biodiesel instead. i don't have a use for an Xb. Xbs remind me of XTerras in this way: remember when you saw an XTerra for the first time (especially the yellow ones) and thought to yourself, wow, now that is one ugly SUV. and now you don't even notice them anymore, they have simply become a part of the highwayscape. that's going to be the Xb in a year or two. i've seriously considered a corrolla. but i don't want to buy a new car, i'd rather get newer used w/ low-ish miles.

in an effort to recycle, i bought a 79 camaro recently and thoroughly love it.

that's sexy. is it in good repair? what kind of condition?

total penis car. my gf talked me into. though she didnt have to try hard. i've driven sensible hondas all my life. and yes, its in great shape. http://myspace-871.vo.llnwd.net/00860/17/84/860224871_l.jpg rebuilt engine, including the paperwork details of said rebuild and it appears to have been done properly. got it from a dutch student going home. he only had it for 6 months and he bought it from the original owner. built in california, lived all its life in california so rust is very minimal. 305 v8. she hums man....she totally cooks. yeah, gas sucks, but i dont drive much.

and the kid posed all her own. shes a total ham half the time.

aw.

bitchincamaro and the kid is too adorable.

awww. in car news, i got hit today. wham.

It's not the reputation of the Honda that got me down when the ass-ramming began, but just how thoroughly and completely it broke. It was as though it was perfect, and then once it hit 13 years old it imploded all at once. EVERYTHING went wrong. At once. Now there are noises which i just don't think about. My sister's SmartCar still kicks ass in many ways, and really blows in other equal (and **exceptionally expensive**) ways. I'm torn on them, though i still covet. Perhaps a diesel or hybrid civic is in my future. I'm not impressed with hybrids either. They have engineered them to still be too reliant on gas. There is a push to make plug-in charging hybrids, with gas being the last resort for the engine. That would be good. You can read more about that on the electric car movie page which i linked in the "An Inconvenient Truth" thread.

i really like my kia so far. i've put 18000 miles on it since february 11th. the automatic tranny seems to be getting a little less responsive. it's not a big deal, just noticeable -- mostly when i'm driving like a jerk. i need to take it in and have that looked at. probably at 20k. or mid july. http://www.kia.com/spectra5/spectra5-photos.php http://www.kia.com/spectra5/spectra5-views.php

YOU GOT HIT BY WHAT PEZ? are you ok?

I second that. You can't just say that. What happened?

I'm glad you're well enough to post, pez. Were you wearing a helmet? I love my diesel Jetta. Now that it's fixed from the big accident, it's great.

and, btw, it is cleaner to generate electricity with gasoline where you need it than with coal and transmit it miles to the plugged in car. not to mention hybrids generate electricity when decelerating. generating electricity causes greenhouse gas. if anyone is to blame, people like al gore who fearmongered and blocked the creation of nuclear power plants thirty and forty years ago are more to blame for global warming than republicans who won't sign the ridiculous kyoto agreement. so fuck him and his too late movie.

at the time, when Gore and his people opposed was there responsible solutions to deal with the waste? i don't know but it smells trading one problem for another.

that's the fearmongering. they fucked up the culture of america so that nuclear energy seems to be some huge evil thing. i talk to so many people who have purely emotional reasons to be against nuclear energy. it isn't even open to discussion. nuclear waste is solid and easily containable. much better than dumping tons of (radioactive, in fact) shit into the atmosphere by burning coal. blaming gore's people is not totally fair. three mile island had a lot to do with the shift in public opinion about nuclear energy. but the issues that led to tmi (and chernobyl, same issues) are no longer possible in modern reactors. did gore recommend nuclear power in the movie?

nuclear power wasnt mentioned once. i understand the perpetuation of emotion-based ideas surrounding nuclear power...but 30-40 years ago waste disposal was a very legitimate issue.

Did they mention wind power and Ted Nimby Kennedy?

you jus thave to go see it, then we'll talk.

you put solid nuclear waste in a lead lined box and it is contained. it has never been a significant issue.

so many of the world's problems can be solved by putting them in a lead box.

a "lockbox"

it's not a movie that offers solutions or options, it's plenty long without those things. it's the documentation of a problem. This is what's happening, this is why. It is a PSA.

oh, and the electric car stuff is a totally different movie. I think it comes out today.

a car. i got hit by a car yesterday. turdwoman wouldn't give me the information i needed, i left two messages on her answering machine today. she ran the stop sign after looking me in the eye. i only had enough time to scream. fucked my rear wheel and rack. need to replace my helmet (which i was wearing). gotta hematoma (sp?), a gnarly bruise on my right thigh and a minor sprain on my right ankle. doctor put me on disability for the next two days. the latest incident in my current six-week series of bicycle trauma which includes being assaulted by a cup of ice and the word bitch at two am dressed in full pirate regalia. just the usual. y'know. and in the next month i'm leaving fred meyer for good and getting interviewed on npr for dancing with a bike.

Congratulations on your Sprockettes fame. I'm glad you made it through mostly alright. Take it easy, okay? Is the world out to get you?

why not run her up with the police? or is that against the code.

you know the right people. put a hit out on her.

she called me this morning. it was her in-laws car, and wanted to figure out that part first. getting her info later today. she wasn't trying to be malicious or anything. just trying to protect her own. some people i know try to get bank when they're hit. and they do. but i've still got to replace my rear wheel, my rack and helmet. missing two days of work and went to the hospital. it doesn't seem like much but it adds up.

if bikers would just follow the same god damn rules that cars do, they might not suffer the annoyance of some drivers. i got a shitty look from some silly girl last week after she ran a fucking stop sign as if i was supposed to yield to her. then she and her crew proceeded to run a red light. im sure youre a nice biker pez who, if you take up space on the road with cars, follows all the rules and smile at drivers.

i try to follow the rules. the last time i ran a stop sign i got hit. it wasn't bad, so we exchanged no information. she gave me a ride to work and i paid to repair my bike out of pocket. what people don't seem to understand is that traffic laws exists primarily for safety. many streets do not have bike lanes because they were built before bike lanes were an issue. disobeying stop signs and lights is a safety issue, no matter who's at fault. there's a lot of pressure, when riding with friends, to breeze through everything but i prefer to err on the side of caution even if i'm slowing the crew down.

when i biked around, i had no problems biking on the sidewalk on certain streets. admittedly I didnt obey the rules but i also wasn't a shit to drivers. a bike has huge advantages over a car in terms of braking and visibility. i dont assume anyone sees me. i trusted my own vision and awareness more than i trusted the traffic laws and the idea that everyone will abide by them. im glad you arent dead or with broken bones. and yes, you the aforementioned girl was with a pack. and in a pack, bikers totalyl suck. after her total eat shit glare, a small small part of me wanted her to get cozy with camaro bumper.

it's illegal to ride a bicycle on the sidewalks in portland as a general rule. there are two bridges where cyclists are required to ride on the sidewalk with the pedestrians; these two bridges are extremely dangerous to everyone with both cyclists and pedestrians moving in both directions on an eight-foot sidewalk that gets heavy use. i'm trying to compile a guide to aid cyclists in avoiding and smooth interactions involving collisions.

i got a new bicycle in march. i ride it a few times a week, for fun. not for commute, i have a 14 mile commute and it would be very difficult logistically to get there and not be on a highway at some point. but the late afternoon weather has been unnaturally pleasant and i live in an area where the bike lanes are ubiquitous, wide, and well respected. i live in an area with huge oak, cypress, pecan, and magnolia trees that droop over windy, well paved residential streets. great nothern boulevard runs parallel with the missouri pacific rail for about 3 miles and the train runs every day several times a day. the rail and boulevard are separated only by about 8 feet of land that slopes upward toward the rail and low shrubs and an occassional wax myrtle try in vain to buffer the enginge noise from the middle-upper-middle class houses on the other side of the boulevard. the train chugs almost comically slowly in the opposite direction i always ride my bike and i often see the dude in the front, a different dude every time. some of the cars are unartistically tagged in a language i don't understand. i know the dreadlocked, dirty children with puppies in tow that in the summer months pop up on the street corners holding signs ride the rails from town to town. i never see them on the cars but imagine how easily it would be to jump up on one unnoticed and jump off again somewhere else. my new bike is a hybrid. it's got mountain bike handle bars, road bike wheels, and tires that are somewhere in between. it's a base model bike, since i'm a base model bicyclist, in a town that is lousy with lance armstrong wannabes. they fly by me at nearly twice my speed in their bright green spandex tops and padded black spandex shorts and aerodynamic helmets and pedal clips. in a way, i've already outgrown my new bicycle. i've decided that i'm over mountain biking. i much prefer the road. and my bike is not much good on the road for anything more than 15-20 miles. in fact, i can't imagine it being much good on a trail either. so i kinda want to trade up for a more road efficient bicycle. not because i want to wear spandex and take the 100 mile hill country challenge. i think i like the idea of leaning far forward, the impossibly skinny frame, my bubble butt struggling to find stability on those itty bitty seats. but those tires scare me. they're so fucking narrow and no treads. i'd surf a rocky break, but i'm afraid of wiping out on a bicycle. it's that center of gravity thing. in a way, it's very beautiful here. being on a bicycle you see more of the beauty than you do when you walk, jog, or drive around with the top down. there's something about the feel of the wind, the light of the sun, the hum of the tires on the street, the rhythm of pedaling. it's meditative and quiet and seemingly still even though there's so much movement.

we picked up the tc yesterday. it's a total fuckmobile and i love it. and i hate it because i love it. i feel materialistic for wanting it and having it and loving it. it makes me want to move back to hawaii where i could keep driving the bitch basket and it wouldn't matter. on the other hand, it smells so gooooooood. it's the 180 horsepower 2007 model. a five speed, flint mica color. the fucker is fast too. only 4 cylinders, so it's quiet, like when you're stopped at a light and you've turned the pioneer sound system all the way off, you wouldn't even know the car is running. the entire roof of the car is glass. there a front seat sun roof and a moon roof for the back seat. at the dealership, hope showed us thing thing where you can put the front seats down and the back seats down and it's a lift-back, so basically the interior of the car becomes totally flat from the dashboard to the rear bumper. they call it the "social seating" option. like i said, it's a fuckmobile.

It's the new fuckbubble!!

sadly, it would be nearly impossible to get more than a good blow in the camaro. however....on the warm hood on a cool night...seriously, its like 12 feet from windshield to bumper. and hot dogs to the new car. have fun.