And now! I will tell you the story of Chico.
I confess that sometimes I drive past that little cardboard sign on 35th Street right by the freeway exit and consider calling the ‘Junk Cars Towed Free’ people. Sometime back in the long-forgotten wintry months, I was probably taking a corner too fast and bumped something onto the center console in my car, managing to manipulate the sunroof button so that the vent opened up. It popped up an inch or so, and then refused to close. I could hear the motor clicking when I pushed the button, but it wouldn’t work. When I got home, I tried to use the manual crank in the roof, and that didn’t work, either. It was particularly cold, so I figured it was frozen. After a couple days of the sunroof-vent-stuck-open-in-below-freezing-weather comedy, I drove out to my parents’ and parked Chico in the garage where he could warm up and then hopefully cooperate. We couldn’t get the motor to work at all, but it was at least unfrozen enough to crank it shut with a giant screwdriver. The crank is meant to accommodate the car key itself, but I’m a little wary of that, personally. Once it got warm outside, I started to feel the pain of having a car with a useless sunroof, or at least one that would allow me to open and not close the vent, or to close the sunroof itself, should I actually be able to get it open in the first place. As much as it irritated me, it seemed really stupid to pay to have that fixed on a car with 105,000 miles on it. It’s like getting a boob job when you’re 90. I ignored it. Then a few weeks ago, I was at the geek store buying devices designed to both piss me off, and not actually work. At the exact same time! When I went out to my car, I hit the button to roll my window down from its open (but not open enough for people to actually reach in and steal valuable shit like my road atlas or maneki neko charm or crumpled gum wrappers) position. It made a funny noise. I looked, and the window was somehow turned on its side, a sharp triangular corner pointing up at the sky. It was so bizarre, I had to examine it for a while to even figure out which direction it went. I managed to push it back into place, sorta, with about a 1/4″ crack open at the top. The rubber moulding seemed to hold it well enough so that it wasn’t likely to fall out and shatter on the road and pop my tires, all four at once, resulting in an epic fireball-producing crash. After that, I sat there and laughed. Because I could not fucking believe it. My car runs pretty well! He’s taken me to almost every state in the country. He’s had some issues, but nothing out of the ordinary, considering how much abuse he’s taken. Even now, he drives 40 miles a day for work. I give him the good gas and nice car washes and change his oil and replaceable parts right on schedule. But sometimes maybe I forget to thank him, so now he’s getting his revenge in the stupidest ways he can think of. I’ve blown tires in several states. I hold the land speed record for angry roadside tire changes. I ripped a huge chunk of plastic off the bottom of the car by yanking and stomping on it in Tennessee. His foglamps have dropped out and dragged all over the ground in a sparking, fuse-blowing mess. I’ve had the windshield washer tubes freeze and render me completely blind in a winter storm. He’s been backed-into by a forklift, for fuck’s sake. I’ve repaired him with duct-tape, twist ties, and a toothpick. I think we’ve done OK, me and Chico. We have a very long history together. Last week when it started getting really nice out, I gave in and opened the sunroof vent, knowing I’d have to crank it shut. I didn’t care. I left it open for a couple nights. Then one morning it started to rain while I was at the coffeeshop, so I grumbled and got out my key, having forgotten the giant screwdriver I kept meaning to grab from my apartment. The key made a terrible noise and emerged missing a few shreds of metal. I decided to go no further with that enterprise, and closed the shade so at least I didn’t get rained on. Then in one last fit of irrational hope, I hit the button. And it closed. My sunroof works now. I’m thinking I’ll give the window a couple weeks to heal and we should be good to go. Until next time. OK, muchachos, I suspect I may not have time to post again until after vacation, so please to let this entertain you until I return with calming photos of the ocean and a very full heart. Good night!Jenni