Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Midlife Message

            It has to be 15, maybe 20 years ago that my wife told me something I’ve never forgotten:  “You know, it’ll be hard for people to tell when you’re having a midlife crisis because you’ve always had a sports car.”

            I took assurance from that for years, but as I sit here actually at midlife (assuming I make it to 100), that statement makes me chuckle.  Not because my wife was wrong—she wasn’t.  In our years together I’ve gone through a Firebird, a Camaro, two Corvettes and a late-model GTO, so my recent yearning for the upcoming supercharged Camaro ZL1 strikes no one as particularly mid-lifey.  It just turns out that a succession of fast cars, by itself, doesn’t preclude other observably dumb mid-life behavior.

            In other words, I’m pretty sure people noticed anyway.  Oh well.

            Okay, so that long string of fun cars put me in fine shape to pine for a post-50th birthday Camaro without raising eyebrows.  But thinking about all those cool cars has revealed a truth about my life that I’m only just now beginning to appreciate: With the exception of those cars, I’ve really been quite a wallflower.

It’s true.  Ironic that I could be so expressive and “out there” with my rides, yet so complacent in other areas.  Too often, I’ve been more of a blender-inner; more Clark Kent than Superman.  Curious.

I had plenty of time to ponder this as I drove my family home from our Disneyland vacation last week.  Driving eastward on I-10, the traffic surrounding me suddenly took on a curious aspect.  Looking around, I discovered the cause:  We were encircled by late-model Toyota Camrys.  There was one ahead of me, one at about two o’clock, another beside me, and yet another a couple lanes over.

I mean no offense to Camry owners.  It’s a perfectly sensible, serviceable car—the right tool for many a basic transportation job.  And Toyota obviously sells the heck out of them.  But seeing four so close together—followed by another identical pair just a mile or so down the road, believe it or not—had me flashing back to that scene in Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones where the camera pans over that vast sea of identical, biologically engineered storm troopers.

The rugged individualist in me swelled with pride that I, by golly, did not drive a beige, white or silver sedan.  But just as I was getting smug, I remembered my nice, safe career.  I remembered the white walls in our home that my wife’s been begging me to paint, the relative sameness of the last several years, and the fact that our family’s just-completed Disney trip was the first truly “new” thing we’d done together in ages.

With a jolt, it occurred to me: All too often, I’m more Camry than Camaro.

            Not that everyone has to be a Camaro, a Corvette, a Lambo or a Ferrari.  “We can’t all be heroes,” said Will Rogers, “because somebody has to sit on the curb and applaud when they go by.”  So maybe it’s okay with some folks if they’re the ones who sit on the curb.  Maybe it’s okay for them to be a Camry.

            But I don’t think that’s for me.  In fact, I know it’s not.  Irrespective of one’s budget, it’s always possible to choose exciting over dull.  Even if it’s just paint color, you can do it.  See, my true self, I think, has always been the guy who bought those fun cars.  And now, at 50, I want to take more cues from that true self; I want to make it my mission to be that guy all the time, in every area.  I don’t want to sit on the curb.

            Legendary auto writer David E. Davis Jr., when he founded Automobile magazine years ago, made a promise to all future readers.  His car mag, he said, would feature “no boring cars.”  What if each of us resolved, in like fashion, “No boring life?”  What if we traded in our inner Camry for something memorable, moving, motivating?
           
            Chevrolet, if you’re listening, I’d like to order either a Victory Red or Synergy Green Camaro ZL1 once they’re available.  Put black stripes on it, too.  And Rob, if you’re listening, live so as to be a fitting driver for such a car.  Crisis, schmisis.

Sunday, March 20, 2011

Keep Moving Forward

            It’s always interesting when a message comes at you, totally unbidden, from multiple sources at the same time.  I freely confess I’m not very adept at picking up on life’s little breadcrumb trails, but when the breadcrumbs look more like jumbo-sized loaves, I figure it’s time to pay attention.
            Our family spent most of the last week at Disneyland, and we had a wonderful time—such a good time, in fact, that I found myself truly regretting that we’d allowed nearly six years to elapse since our last visit.  The boys, 13 and nine now, had been just seven and four at the time.  All week long I couldn’t stop thinking of that previous trip.  And the one before that, when Nick was an infant, and even the one before that, when Jake was just three and Nick was still on the way.  The boys chuckled when I told the story of how I’d nearly ruined Disneyland for little Jake on that first trip by making Space Mountain our first ride together.  The dark and the fast movements terrified him so much that every other time we got in line for a ride, Jake kept asking, “Is there a . . . a TUNNEL?”  And if there was a tunnel involved, he would patently refuse to go.
            So I spent the first part of this week’s trip looking backward, getting sentimental over days gone by, thinking of how the boys have grown and changed, and regretting . . . what, exactly?  That we hadn’t made more trips to Disneyland?  That somehow I may have missed something somewhere?  Some opportunity to extract the absolute most from my boys’ childhood?  I couldn’t pin down the exact source of my melancholy, but it was there nevertheless.
            But then the trip started to take on its own identity—to have its own catchphrases, its own humorous memories, its own place in the trophy showcase.  Jake—my now-giant, strapping seventh grader—even helped bring me back to the present when we were in line for Space Mountain.  Ten years removed from that initial encounter, Jake got a mischievous grin on his face and asked, “Dad, is there a tunnel?”  I had to laugh.  Jake had made a new memory out of an old one.
            That seemed like a moral in and of itself: That it’s okay to cherish a memory, so long as you don’t neglect to make new ones.  The way is forward, after all, isn’t it?  Always forward.  No matter how much time has passed, no matter how long ago those sweet memories occurred, you have the chance right now to create the things whose memories you’ll be cherishing tomorrow.  It’s an ever-renewing phenomenon.
            Interesting that I ruminated on this while at Disneyland.  It was Walt Disney, after all, who said, “We keep moving forward, opening new doors and doing new things, because we’re curious, and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.”  The park itself is a testament to that philosophy: Favorite old rides (Matterhorn, teacups) remain, but there’s always something new under construction to make you want to come back again.
            While all of that was going on, I’ve been keeping track of a major re-do of the track at Phoenix International Raceway, the one-mile oval just west of Phoenix that we natives like to call “The Jewel in the Desert.”  My friend in the communications department at PIR, Nicole Scheider, has been posting photos of the project, and I have to tell you—they’re hard for me to look at.  They’re not just repaving the place, they’re actually reconfiguring it.  The infield road course will be gone, the front straight will be wider, the turns will be banked more, and the famous “dogleg” on the back straight is being reshaped.  All of that is great, of course, but sentimental slob that I am, I can’t help remembering that the old track is where I saw Mario Andretti win the first IndyCar race I ever attended, back in 1988.  It’s where I got the autographs of Al Unser, Al Unser Jr., Arie Luyendyk, Roger Penske, Emerson Fittipaldi and Eddie Cheever.  I've waved the green flag there, and once I even got to say, "Gentlemen, start your engines!"  Best of all, I drove on that old track surface myself when I twice attended the Richard Petty Driving School.  It's all gone now, chewed up by giant, pavement-munching machines.
            Yet again, though, it was someone else’s enthusiasm for the here-and-now—and the future—that snapped me out of it.  When I expressed my remorse to Nicole, she shot back a message riddled with enthusiasm: “It’s a big dirt track!  Monday starts the digging of the pedestrian tunnels!”  Just as Jake’s good humor had infected me, so did Nicole’s.  Cool! I thought.  Pedestrian tunnels!
            Then, as if to cap off a week of contemplating this topic, I sat in church this morning and listened to a sermon on God keeping his promises.  At one point, the pastor told us to write something down:  “Forward movement is the natural direction of a Christian.”
            That line didn’t seem to have anything to do with anything.  But then the pastor elaborated: “The fulfillment of God’s promises is always out there, forward, ahead of you.  It’s easy to look at everything that’s right here, all around you, and get consumed with that.  But he’s made his promises, see, and he’s out there ahead of you, already fulfilling them.”
            Disneyland.  PIR.  Church.  A curious combination of locations to conspire to teach me something, but conspire they did.  All of them seemed to be muttering a quote I once read: “The past is valuable as a guidepost, but dangerous if used as a hitching post.”  I’m not sure where this trail of breadcrumbs leads, but I’m eager to find out.  Whatever the answer is, I know it’s out there, ahead of me.

Friday, March 11, 2011

To Everything, Turn, Turn

“Dad, how far would you have to turn the wheel to go around that corner?” asked Nicholas, my nine-year-old, as we ran an errand in the GTO.

Wow.  Talk about déjà vu, I thought.  My mind flashed back four decades. . .

“Dad, how far would you have to turn the steering wheel to go around that corner?” I asked my father as the two of us sat in an idling car outside a store.  Mom was inside running an errand.  It was the early 1970s, and I’d have been about 10.

I was very curious about the whole act of driving.  In my child’s mind, I imagined that when a driver approached a corner, it was necessary to know in advance just how much steering was required to negotiate the turn: That’s a right-hand turn, so I must turn the wheel three-quarters of the way around.  The way I reckoned, it was all about pre-calculated actions and results: You moved your foot this far on the gas pedal to get to such-and-such a speed; you pushed the brake this hard to stop before you got to the stop sign. 

Maneuvering a car, therefore, was virtually an act of genius.  I was flabbergasted that Dad did it so easily.

Dad—never one to use more words than absolutely necessary—didn’t address any of that.  He merely looked at the turn I was pointing at, laid a finger alongside a spoke of the steering wheel, and pushed.  “Oh, about that much,” he said, as the ridiculously over-boosted 70s-era power steering allowed him to rotate the wheel about 90 degrees.  I shook my head, amazed that he could catalog all of these innumerable strategies in his brain, retrieving just the right one for just the right circumstance. . .

“Dad?  How far?” queried Nicholas once again.  I returned to the present.  Since the car was moving, I couldn’t use my father’s “about this much” answer.  Instead, I told Nicholas to watch the wheel as I made the right-hand turn.  Once I’d completed it, Nicholas said, “How did you know it was going to be that far?”

Oh, how funny:  Nicholas was thinking of driving just as I had as a child!  As inputs and outputs that you had to plot out in advance!  This was my chance to really explain it as I wished it had been explained to me; to disabuse him at this tender age of a misconception I’d carried until well after I had my first driver’s license.  My mind began to whirr.

“It’s not like that, Nick,” I said.  Unlike my father, I was going to use words.  “You’re not really thinking consciously, ‘Oh, I’m gonna turn the wheel this far.’  You just—well, you get to the turn, start turning the wheel . . . and from there on you just turn however much you need to in order to get it done.”

Nick was listening, so I kept going.

“Everything about driving is like that,” I continued.  “You do whatever you need to do for the circumstances.  You react to the situation, have a look at the results you’re getting, and then you either do more or less until you achieve what you want to achieve.”  I took a breath and tried to sum up:  “You just . . . you go do it.  You can’t really know in advance how much of this or that you’re gonna need until you’re into the situation.”

At that point, I believe, Nicholas started in with the questions.  I suspect I answered them, but I must’ve been on autopilot.  A thought suddenly preoccupied me.

In that moment, I’d stumbled on something else I wish I’d understood better when I was that tentative, contemplative boy:  That life itself is something you can’t plot out in advance; that you can’t wait until you have all the answers before you budge; that you have to go out and do it, make adjustments as you go, and keep adjusting until you get the results you want.  Ultimately, steering and braking and accelerating only have meaning within the context of moving.

I suppose that’ll be a talk I’ll have with my boys another day.

Monday, March 7, 2011

Lessons in Waiting

And while the thrills are fading
The joy is in the waiting
Somewhere in the grand design
It's good to be unsatisfied
It keeps the faith and hope a little more alive

                                - Downhere, My Last Amen

I’ve loved the look of the current-generation Camaro ever since it debuted as a show car in 2006.  One glance at its sculpted flanks and menacing visage and I thought, Dang, I gotta get me one of those.

In a heartbeat, I made the new Camaro my desktop background on my work computer, taped a poster of it to the back of my office door, and placed a Hot Wheels model of it on the shelf behind me.  I even joined an online Camaro forum.  These are the kinds of things I do when smitten.

Let’s get this part out of the way: I still do not own a new Camaro.  But the waiting is helping me understand that a dream deferred isn’t necessarily a dream denied, and I’ll tell you why.

I really, really do want a new Camaro.  Badly.  Not that I don’t still love my 2005 GTO.  I do.  It runs as strong as ever, even with 73,000 miles on it.  But that odometer—ugh.  I looked at it one day and suddenly thought, You know, this car is never going to be worth more as a trade-in than it is right now.  Thus motivated, I went inside, pulled up the Chevrolet Web site, and pieced together a car with the options I wanted: Synergy green, black stripes, manual tranny.  Then I did a search for the trade-in value of my car.  I looked at the numbers and my brain started clicking.

It was that close to being do-able.  Ugh.  I needed more information, so I shot off an e-mail to a local Chevrolet sales lady I know.  I heard back from her almost immediately.  What do you know?  They had that very car in stock.  A meant-to-be feeling welled within me.  Without knowing precisely when it happened, I transitioned from “what if?” to “I might do this!”

I arranged to stop at the dealer after work to see the car, then called my wife and made my case.  She sighed a lot, but ultimately said, “Go ahead; do what you want to do.  You’ve always wanted one.”  I could tell she wasn’t completely on board, but I thought I could get her to come around.

At the dealer, I found the Camaro displayed indoors, under bright lights, on a stand that tilted the car forward like a watch in a jeweler’s case.  Wow.  My sales lady got the keys and we sat in it.  More wow.  From someplace, a man appeared and asked for my GTO’s keys.  He was going to appraise it.  He came back and told me the trade-in value would be exactly what I had expected.  Then there were end-of-the-month discounts that further narrowed the gap between my trade and the Camaro’s price.  This was moving so fast!

I called my wife.  I called my mother.  Dang it!  No one would make up my mind for me: it was up to me to make the right decision.  I stood and stared at the car, trying to picture myself driving it home.

And there it was, in my mind’s eye, parked in my garage:  Parked in the garage of a house that needed paint, flooring, cabinets and counter tops; parked at a home whose backyard landscaping still wasn’t finished; parked under the same roof as outdated bathrooms badly in need of remodeling; parked where two boys have scads of activities that need to be paid for.

In the end, it was I who came around, not my wife.  I handed the keys back to the saleslady.  I thanked her for everything, but said the timing just wasn’t right.  She seemed a little stunned.  I don’t think she was accustomed to seeing people come so close and then . . . just say “no.”

Driving home, I was numb, bummed . . . but at peace.  The farther I got from the dealership, the more I knew I’d done the right thing.   As I turned into my neighborhood, I found Nicholas out on the sidewalk, waiting.  He’d heard his mother on the phone with me and learned I might be driving a new car home.  “Sorry, buddy,” I said after I parked.  “I didn’t get it.”

“That’s okay, Dad,” he said.

Just a few days after turning down the Camaro deal, I learned that Chevrolet will be coming out with a new, more powerful Camaro model for 2012—the ZL1.  Interesting.  Supercharged 550-horsepower engine and some other enhancements.  I have now made that car my computer desktop background.  Maybe that’s what I’ll save my pennies for.

Last weekend, while washing the GTO, Nick came outside and stood next to me, watching.  “Dad,” he pronounced, “I want you to get a new car, but I also really like this car.  I like how it looks.  It’s pretty.”

Nick’s right: I’m in a great situation exactly as I am.  That Camaro show car debuted five years ago, and I haven’t died of desire yet.  What’s another year or two?  The dream’s not denied.  Just deferred a little bit, and that’s okay.  It’ll be all the sweeter when it comes true.



Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Lessons in Wax

            I don’t know what possesses a person to make him enjoy waxing a car, but whatever that bug is, I have it.  Bad.

I can’t have inherited it; so far as I know, my father never waxed a car in his life.  Scarcely ever washed one, either.  Dad firmly believed that if a car’s windshield was clean and everything was in working order, that was enough.  Besides—he was more interested in the places the family could go and the things we could do in the car.  The car was a means to an end for dad, whereas to me it’s more of an end in itself.

So this obsession, I think, is one of those deals that skips a generation.  Case in point: Dad excelled at math and became an engineer, whereas I sucked at math and had the audacity to get a journalism degree.  Now my 13-year-old tells me he wants to be an automotive engineer, and my nine-year-old is surprisingly good with multiplication (especially his “twelves,” which I never could remember).  Neither of them likes to clean anything.

Ever.

The other day, I thought this was all about to change.  A succession of rainy weekends had left the GTO in a pitiable state, and I’d finally had enough.  I didn’t have time for the full wash and wax, but I knew I could squeeze in a quick whisk with a California Duster and a wipe-down with some Meguiar’s Ultimate Detailer.

My nine-year-old, Nick, was in the garage trailing me and yakking away (gabbiness did not skip a generation) when he suddenly declared that he wanted to do the same thing for my wife’s Chevy Traverse.

Wow!  An opportunity to instill some of my car-cleaning cleverness into my son!  A chance to teach him that car cleanliness is closer to godliness than pretty much all other kinds of cleanliness!

Excited, I got Nick his own micro fiber towel and his own spray bottle of Ultimate Detailer (you didn’t think I had just one, did you?), then showed him the process.  He listened, then went to town.  When he later saw me waxing my car’s hood and trunk lid, he wanted to do that, too.  I got him a sponge applicator and another micro fiber towel and showed him the whole “wax on, wax off” process.

After observing Nick a minute, I went back to work on the Goat.  What a great father-son moment, I thought.  We’re both in the garage waxing cars!  I lost sight of him while he was on the far side of my wife’s vehicle; preoccupied as I was with my own car, I was only vaguely aware of him orbiting the Traverse over and over.  Amazingly enough, my chatterbox child was relatively quiet as he assiduously applied his newfound skill.

            The silence ended when Nick declared, “Dad!  Look how pretty it is!  I wanna show Mom!”  I looked up from my post at the front of my car and was aghast.  One glance down the side of my wife’s vehicle—illuminated as it was by the bright sunlight streaming in through the open garage door—revealed an array of wax smears the like of which I had never seen.  Giant sweeping smears, little pinwheel smears, vertical, horizontal and diagonal smears—pretty much every smear in the smear book was represented.  I think there may have been triangles, too.  Perhaps an octagon.  The only saving grace: Nick’s too short to have smeared up the hood.

            Knowing Nick was proud of his work, I just stood for a moment.  Finally, I said, “Honey, I think you left a little . . . uh . . . wax.  Let me show you how to get it off.”  And I wiped down a panel the right way, showing Nick how the reflected sunlight told you whether you’d gotten it totally clean.

“Stop, Dad!” he implored, taking a step toward me.  “I see, I see!  I want to do it myself so I can show Mom!”  So I stopped.  Nick proceeded to take his towel and go over everything again, energy and enthusiasm undiminished.  He probably removed, oh, another 50 percent of the smears before he pronounced the job truly, totally done.  He leaned over and looked at the reflection, as I’d just taught him, and then ran inside and dragged my wife into the garage.  “Look, Mom!” he beamed.  “Isn’t it shiny?”

To her great credit, my wife simply smiled, thanked Nick and told him what a great job he’d done.  The rest of the weekend, she drove everywhere with all the smears intact.  She didn’t wipe a single one of them off.

As I put everything away, I started thinking.  When I wax a car, it’s kind of self-indulgent, really.  I do it because I enjoy it, and because I want my car to look good.   I’ll work tirelessly removing water spots only I can see, holding the car to a standard that matters only to me, spending way more time than is necessary . . . just to make myself happy.  And here were my wife and son, both content with far less.

Or far more?

Nick hadn’t waxed my wife’s car for the joy of waxing a car properly; he’d done it for the reckless, crazy joy of making someone else happy.  Was this yet another thing that had skipped a generation?  Curious: I had presumed to teach Nicholas something; instead, he taught me.