Lost Highway

I am really good at driving my truck. I've had my share of accidents, but on the whole, I've escaped from more situations than into which I have gotten. Back and forth from work rarely has any occurrences of interest, but life will, of course, occasionally throw you a curveball.

Here's an exmple. I'm cruising down the the left lane, with 2 cars adjacent to me in the right lane. I can't just signal and move over, there isn't enough room between the two cars to do so safely. So I calmly gun the engine, pull very quickly (after an illegally brief signal) in front of the lead car and finish the maneuver with just enough time to calm down as the oncoming car in my lane passes by at at estimated 30 miles an hour. This road can best be described a a 4 lane highway, a big wide road with a 15 foot grass median. It's really kind of hard to get into the wrong lane, let alone the wrong direction. There was a bar nearby, but I really hope that guy wasn't that drunk.

Tonight, I nearly could have died. I've played video games where I've driven on the wrong side of the road, and caused massive damage to multiple virtual parties. But never once have I been so confused as to actually drive on the wrong side of the media. If I ever do that, I have a plan. It involves J-turns, 4 wheel drive, and a a string of expletives.

I love my truck too much to do that, though. Better to just drive sensibly.

-The0

The "Roll" part of Rock

As previously mentioned, I have obsessions which come to the forefront of my skull, become all I can talk or think about for about 2 months, and then, though still a part of my repertoire of interests, fade away. Usually, it's because such projects or obsessions are very very costly, require loads of free time (in very short supply, as readers have no doubt inferred,) or a vast sum of technical knowledge in order to get them to even come close to fruition. The results however, can astound anyone. That disclaimed, I give you the current honey of my th0ught process, The 1957 Chevrolet.

My god, I know I bend to obsession at times, but I hope this one remains part of my person for as long as I am coherent. I'm losing hope on it officially, in a depressed bout where I've decided I will never have the available cash to get my latest dream car, which in all rights, is my original dream car. I've loved this vehicle off and on since I was 8, I think. The 1957 Chevrolet 150, 210 or Bel Air. A beautiful mix of subdued styling; classy, and aggressive, like a spy with a sassy haircut, an ironworker in a tuxedo, a rock star in high society, or a nerd in a hawaiian shirt (not sure about that last simile). This thing is such a mishmash of personality and actual sass that most people, even not knowing the year, have to bend to its class, history, styling, and interestingly enough, progressiveness.

The avant-garde shape of the headlights, the generous helping of chrome on the bumper, the futuristic bombsight hood ornaments give the car a character straight from the front view. Moving over the lovingly angled windshield, we come to the beginning of the fins, curving down slightly to let you know they're beginning. Echoing the wheel wells, they play small hint at what's to come. The forerunner to muscle car styling gives straight back to a pair of elegant fins. Sort of a raised eyebrow at the massive airfoils that were beginning to adorn cars at that time. The interior, simplistic of the now, was modern at it's era. Smooth, sleek, yet busy. Not really deco, but I have no idea how else to describe it. Beautiful. The whitewall tires do no small favor in the fast-paced look that go straight from the blacktop to the ballroom.

However, design is not the only property this vehicle has to show for itself. Available options for it included air conditioning (a rare amenity back then), a razor for some reason (maybe to shave on the way to work?), a dashboard prism that allowed you to see traffic lights changing (so that you don't have to lean forward to watch them), and a couple of other things. It even had something called an "Autotronic Eye", which automatically dimmed your headlights when it sensed oncoming light sources. Internally, we had the options for power steering, power brakes, an automatic transmission, and the first-ever production fuel-injected engine. It made for the second engine to ever produce one horsepower per cubic inch of displacement off the line. Technology and engineering all coming together for a grand, beautiful triumph of form and function.

This car calls back to a whitewashed past. In a din of civil rights disputes, scandal, and the awesome birth of rock and roll, we can still look back at the faded posters and rust spots on our post-war glory, and remember how it used to be. If it becomes the death of me, I will own one of these.

-The0

Black and Red

Just before I went to college, I needed a way to transport myself. As I did not yet have a driver's license, and never really had access to a car anyway, it came down to a simple choice: Walk, or Bike. I had a high-quality Schwinn that my parents had actually bought for my little brother. He was already driving himself to and from school, so I claimed it as my own. This was my first foray into cycling, which was one of the costliest and most beneficial decisions I have made in my life.

During my sophomore year I began to ride with my best friend, who was a pretty aggressive extreme sports enthusiast. Through riding with him, I learn how to launch myself off of tall objects and then, while remaining mounted on the bike, land with the rubber side down. Everything was was progressing swimmingly, from skill to stunt complexity, until we started breaking our rides. We needed to find a machine that would keep up with our riding ability.

Since I already had a Schwinn, I had the old catalogue, in whihc I circled a couple of wish bikes. During a random trip to a bike shop about a half hour away, my friend pointed out a dual suspension bike just sitting in the store. About a week later, I was owner of one of my wish bikes, a 2001 Schwinn Rocket 88 Stage 4. Due to a compulsion which I will explain in a later post, it wound out being phenomenally upgraded, tweaked, decorated, broken, repaired and customized over the course of our riding careers.

We both had our bikes of choice, and this one was mine. When you ass spends that much time in a certain saddle, hunched over in a guaranteed position, you start to form a bond. I freaking love the Rocket. One evening, after a strenuous free day of simple stunt practice, my friend and I leaned our respective bikes outside of our fraternity house. I came back out to a horrible truth: My lovely Rocket had been stolen. A quick review of the surrounding area, plus a driving-mad-through-town excursion (I had gotten my license by this point) turned up neither hide nor hair of it. I was crushed. After hundreds spent and hours burned making it my masterpiece, it was simply gone. I couldn't quit sobbing. That was September of 2005. I still have a copy of the police report.

Let's fast forward to July, 2007. I was awoken one morning to a call from my old bike mechanic in my college town. Through his own efforts, he had distributed a description of the bike to all the bike shops within an hour of the town. Because of the insane amount of modification I had made to the Rocket, it was a total bastardization and amalgamation of cycling genres. A light trailbike with downhill racing brakes, XC drivetrain components, and stunt tires. It had shown up at a store a half hour away, having been brought in for service, presumably by a relation or friend of the fucker who stole it. The shop owner recognized it, called my mechanic, who then called me. I was speechless, and flustered out a thank you after collecting the number to the other store. I paid them to bring the bike just out of limbo, and then took it home a week later.

Later on in the following year, I dropped a massive amount of money to get it past its former glory, right into semi-pro condition again. I of course did all this through my man in my college town. Doing all my business through him for the rest of my life seems like a fair way to express gratitude. After all, I might never had seen my black and red abomination again if not for his effort and work on it in the first place. Some significant food for thought. What if I had done every bit of the modding myself? What if my friend and I never chanced upon his local shop? What if...

The moral of the story is multi-faceted. Keep loyal to your merchants. Write down your serial numbers. Lock your shit up. And after all of that, don't lose hope. Things that are taken from you are only things, and if they are truly meant to be yours, they'll come back.

Materialistically Yours,

-The0

Edit: 06/12/2010

I think it proper to add a picture, in order to really express the feel and love in this bipedal locomotion device.

I sometimes call her Cindy, too.

After a long and harrowing journey through a forest of self-doubt, fiscal insolubility, dirty work and frustrating emotions, I finally get to give some love to the one who has mostly been there for me almost every day. The one who is always waiting there for me after a grueling day of horrid work.

Aschenputtel. My 1999 GMC Yukon. Pewter. SLT trim package. 5.7 liter Vortec V8. At 186,000 miles, she's old, but she holds.

I got her back in the winter of 2006. She was a replacement for my first truck, RosenRot (Rose Red in German) which through poor driving and inclement weather wound up wrapped around a tree. The details of that story will come forth some day. I missed that truck, and my relationship with this new one was rocky at the start. But we came to terms quite well. She cools me down after a hot day, and heats me up on a cold night. She handles well, and accelerates quickly enough. I've gotten into trouble with her, and gotten out of almost as much.

The name was actually the hardest part about this coming to terms. Following in the tradition of RosenRot, I had to come up with several agreeing factors. Itemized with examples from RosenRot:

• German fairy tale character. RosenRot was Rose Red.
• Name matches with color. RosenRot was red.
• Must have a Rammstein track that matches attitude AND has the word or name. Rosenrot, from the album Rosenrot.
• Name shortens nicely into a nickname. Rosey.

Aschenputtel was the German Cinderella, from the far more brutal Brothers Grimm version. Her pewter tones are grayish and ashy. Her track, Asche zu Asche, comes from the fourth track of the first Rammstein album, Herzeleid. And her nickname, Ashley, has a bit of sultry appeal to it.

I've had a couple of accidents with her, and through a malicious claims adjuster (not lying, he wanted to buy my poor girl as scrap and keep it for himself) she is totaled. A rebuilt wreck, a Phoenix from her own ashes. I will never be able to sell her, and I don't want to. She is my baby.

On Tuesday I gave her a beyond-well-deserved detailing. She gleamed, and when you look at it just right, her chrome bumper smiles back at you. Stay strong, Ashley.

Dr. Girlfriend approved this post.

-The0