So Long, Dan

                I’m not thoroughly understanding why I’m taking IndyCar driver Dan Wheldon’s death so hard, but I am.   I didn’t know him.  Never met the man.  Just watched him drive and live with glee and joy and enthusiasm.

                And now, he’s gone.

                I got so bored watching the ABC announcers yapping during the forever-long red flag period during today's race that I went upstairs to take a nap.  It was during that time that my 11-year-old, Nick, came in to tell me that a buddy of mine had just called.  Dan had died.

                I had DVR’d the race, and was able to watch the now-riveting parts of the ABC coverage that I’d missed.  I saw the announcement of Dan’s death, the crying of the other drivers and teams, the five-lap tribute (during which they played “Danny Boy,” of all things).

                During all this while, there were NFL games on other channels.  I love football, too.  I thought of all the times I’d seen an NCAA or NFL guy go down with an injury and heard the announcers get all serious, the players kneeling in prayer.  But those guys don’t die.

                In racing, they do.

                I love racing.  IndyCar, in particular.  The cars are so fast, so sleek, so cutting-edge and beautiful.  Nothing in sports eclipses the glory of the Indy 500.  But those open wheels . . . oh, those open wheels.  In Cars 2, female cars swooned over the open wheels of the Italian-sounding F1 character.  But those darned, sticking-right-out-there wheels—the nonsensical, aerodynamically unsound grandfathered-in homage to Indy’s early days, when they’d strip the fenders off of road cars to make them lighter and faster—have proven time and again to be horrifically dangerous.  Wheels touch, often on the counter-rotating leading and trailing sides, and carnage ensues.

                Nothing surpasses the beauty and sleekness of an IndyCar.  These slim, hyper-powered darts are the essence of motorsports.  But something has to change.  Ironically—and tragically—a new IndyCar chassis is in the pipeline for next year.  It’s a car Dan Wheldon test drove repeatedly—going so far as to jokingly call himself a “crash-test dummy” for the new chassis.  It features fairings that essentially enclose the rear wheels, reducing the likelihood of the very sort of wreck that cost him his life today.

                I keep seeing Dan’s photo from his Indy 500 victory this year—the one where he’s posed at the start-finish line with his wife, two-year-old and newborn.  The racing community and its fans loved this little Brit.  With his passion for racing, his impish smile and engaging personality, he’s the exact sort racing fans always love to see win.

                Godspeed, Dan Wheldon.  Grace and peace to you, your family and friends.  As the weeks and months pass, may we learn the lessons you taught us.

In A Good Place

            I just got my long-serving GTO back following two days in the shop having various services performed, and I realized a couple of things:  First, the old girl’s still got it; second, I am in a really comfy place with this car right now, and I’m not sure I’m prepared to leave it just yet.

            At six years old and with 80,000 miles on the odometer, the Goat has been my road partner longer than any car I’ve owned.  We’ve had a lot of fun together, and I still look forward to driving it each day.

Ironically, you’d never have seen that coming if you’d been there when I bought it.  At the time, see, I was in a love-hate relationship with a 2001 Corvette that owned me more than I owned it.  The Vette had been a financial reach.  With a second child on the way, it also was a badly timed decision.  It was so pretty and so glorious and so danged expensive that all I ever did was worry about it.  Commuting was a butt-clenching, white-knuckled nightmare, as I was incessantly fearful that every rotating tire on the road was about to toss up a rock.  I therefore put a mask on the car, which naturally led to washing the car every week, which led to vacuuming out the inside of the mask so the built-up dust wouldn’t chafe the paint.  And heaven help me when I took the car in for service:  Fearful that all the mechanics would conspire to drop tools on my car or open its doors into pillars, I often insisted that I be permitted to watch them work.  They loved that.

Ultimately, I was so scared to use the car as a car that I bought a used vehicle—a Chevy Astro van, no less—to serve as daily transport.  Even at the time, the irony was not lost on me: For the sake of my mental health, I—a car guy—was driving an utterly joyless vehicle while an incredibly rewarding sports car sat unused in my garage.

When the sheer absurdity of this arrangement became too much to bear, I bought the GTO.  Traded in both vehicles and actually made $12 on the deal.

The Goat’s looks didn’t inspire the lust or passion that the Corvette’s did, and it didn’t have the single-minded purpose that a pure sports car has, but it was the only GM product on the market at the time (the old Camaro was out of production, and the new one was still a twinkle in a designer’s eye) that fit my triune affordable-fast-fun requirements.  Besides, it had the same torquey LS2 V8 that Chevrolet was dropping into Corvettes.  My purchase, then, was made in a “This’ll do” frame of mind.

I’m sorry, my friend:  That’s how I thought of you back then.

As time has gone on, though, this car has endeared itself to me.  It’s also taught me a thing or two about what real, sustainable happiness is about.  For instance, isn’t it interesting how passion, for all its pulsating glory, makes such a poor companion over the long haul, but how a decent long-haul companion occasionally surprises you with passion?  And isn’t it enlightening to discover how a subtle form grows more beautiful when its function—its inner nature—proves its worth time and again?  And isn’t just plain being content a deep, deep joy denied to those whose only pursuit is passion?  You have to be in a special place to see these things, I think, and the GTO helps me see them.

Years ago, I read a book on Corvette history in which the author described the waning years of the third-generation Corvette—a model that was around from 1968 all the way to 1982, as “a comfortable senescence.”  I like that term, “senescence.”  It’s a graceful way to say, “The state of being old,” but in a warm, sweet, On Golden Pond kind of way.   I’m in a comfortable senescence with my GTO, and it’s good.

Yeah, I know I’ll replace it one day and begin this whole process anew.  I know I’ll go through that butt-clenching, white-knuckle phase.  And I’ll miss the GTO.  But the proof that I’ve actually learned something from her will come when I realize, I’m at that comfy stage again! 

I just pray it doesn’t take six years.

Short Trip, Long Journey

            My eldest son, Jake, could kick my butt at any driving video game out there.  But his first short stint behind the wheel of an actual car showed him just how different a pixilated car is from its non-virtual cousin.

            Jake’s been driving with me, of course, since the beginning.  I still remember how terrified I was on the trip home from the hospital.  I wanted to plaster our car with “Baby on Board” signs and have a police escort clear all the intersections.  Later, when he started enjoying Hot Wheels and other car toys, we began going for drives—first in my 1994 Camaro Z28, then in the 2001 Corvette that followed, and most recently in the 2005 GTO.  I’ve had a manual transmission all along, and Jake has progressed from placing a chubby little left hand under mine on the gearshift to actually changing the gears for me.

            The past few months, whenever I’m outside washing the car or working in the garage, Jake has begged to be allowed to move the car.  He’s sure he knows the drill of starting and moving the car, and will lay out the process step-by-step to prove it.  Regardless, I always say no.  Reciting the steps and doing the steps aren’t the same.  We let him start my wife’s auto-tranny SUV, but that’s a whole different deal.

            The other day, however, Jake got the jump on me.  He and I were going to go someplace on a weekend.  I was still putting my shoes on when he grabbed my keys and ran out the door into the garage.  I heard the garage door going up and thought I had at least a few seconds to finish tying my sneaker, but the boy was fast: I heard the GTO roar to life, then a screech, then nothing.

            I ran out the door and saw the car sitting about four feet rearward from where it had been parked, motor no longer running.  Jake was in the driver’s seat hanging onto the steering wheel, eyes wide, speechless.  I ran around the far side of the car to see if he’d come in contact with the edge of the garage opening.  No, but he was scant inches from it. 

Returning to the driver’s door, I tried to think of something to say.  I believe my first words were, “What the heck!?”

Jake finally started speaking, and the words tumbled out.  “I did everything right!  I put the clutch in and started it, but the car just jumped back!  I did everything right!  I didn’t give it any gas at all.  I don’t know what happened!”

It was then that I noticed the short skid marks ahead of each tire, and I put it together.  “Jake, did you move the seat forward before starting the car?”  He hadn’t.  Now, Jake’s tall for a 13-year-old, but not quite my height yet.  He simply hadn’t been able to keep his clutch foot all the way to the floor.  He may have lost focus, he may have wiggled or shifted—who knows?  But it was enough.  The GTO’s 400-horsepower engine doesn’t require any gas to get the car rolling—let up the clutch and it goes.  When it started backward, Jake panicked and braked, stalling the car.  “You just hit the brakes without putting in the clutch, didn’t you?” I asked.  Jake nodded.

When it comes to the boys and the doing of bad deeds, I’ve become much angrier over offenses that were far less grievous.  Considering this particular misstep involved my car, I’d have expected to be much more upset than I was.  As it happens, I mostly just felt relief that both Jake and the car were okay.  And the look that remained on Jake’s face told me that my yelling at him wouldn’t teach him anything he hadn’t already figured out for himself.  “You did the best thing you could’ve done, hitting the brakes like that,” I said.  Jake nodded, got out of the car, and walked inside.

That’s been a few weeks ago now, and he hasn’t pestered me for the keys once.

But he will.  That short trip inside the garage will become part of a longer journey, and we’ll write the next chapter in our driving history.

           

Confessions of a Coaster

            According to news reports, $4-a-gallon gas is radically changing my driving behavior.

            Within the past week, the talk radio station I listen to (as I commute in my 18-miles-a-gallon car) featured yet another “gas pains” story.  In this one, a dealer in electric cars was crowing about his long waiting list.  There were also the requisite sound bites from angry gas station customers explaining how they’re combining errands, carpooling and eliminating unnecessary trips.

The message is clear: like some petrochemical Black Plague, this bug is going to get all of us sooner or later.  We’re going to be different, and it’s just a matter of time.

It’s of grave concern, therefore, that I report some odd, uncharacteristic behavior behind the wheel of late.  Yes, it’s true:  I fear I’m coming down with this thing.  But before I describe this change, let’s talk about what’s not happening.

It’s not changing how I react to green traffic lights:  All too often, I’m still living The Secret Life of Walter “John Force” Mitty, imagining every light is a drag strip Christmas tree, every launch a test of my reaction time, every other driver a rival.

It’s not affecting my cornering.  As turns approach, I still fancy myself trailing Helio Castroneves into the final turn at the Long Beach Grand Prix, needing to trail-brake and execute a perfect heel-toe downshift in order to come out of the turn under power and pass Helio for the checkered flag.

It’s not stopping me from my occasional lunchtime Drives to Nowhere, taken solely for the way that a fun, engaging car rewards the senses.

Shoot—even a ticket the other day for doing 56 in a 45 didn’t change me.  Within an hour of being cited, I caught myself three times hitting speeds higher than I was ticketed for.

Now, don’t get me wrong—I don’t have a bottomless gasoline budget.  No one died and left me an oil well.  I don’t like spending 60 bucks for 15 gallons of premium unleaded any better than the next car guy.  To support my habit, I’m taking sack lunches to work every day and trying to spend less on other things.  Driving is just too fun, too essential a part of my day, to give up.

Still, I’m changing, and here’s how: When coming up on a red light, instead of just letting up on the gas and allowing the engine to help with the braking, I’m now actually taking my manual-transmissioned car out of gear and . . . coasting.

That’s right.  Hi, my name is Rob, and I’m a coaster.

I’m not sure exactly how things got this way.  At first it was just every once in a while, you know?  It seemed so harmless: Hey, there’s a red light ahead and I’m still kinda far away.  Wonder what my RPMs would be if I just popped it out of gear?  Wow!  They dropped from 2,000 to 400!

It was only a novelty until, curious, I checked the digital mileage calculator on the dash:  3,000 miles per gallon!

Okay, it wasn’t that high.  But close.

Then, as I contemplated the potential cumulative benefits of conserving all of those wasted RPMs by repeatedly rolling up to red lights with the engine disconnected from the wheels, it started happening more and more.  A quarter-mile of rolling here, an eighth-mile there, and pretty soon I was racking up some serious MWPs (Miles Without Power).

Even though I’m exhibiting this disturbing behavior, there is some consolation.  Call it “rationalizing” if you must, but the way I figure it, I can redeem all of these MWPs at the other end, see, when the light turns green.  One pays for the other, right?  Right?  Oh, c’mon someone—tell me I’m not in denial!

Ugh.  I sincerely hope I haven’t disillusioned anyone. 

Backing Up Your Bumper Sticker

            I’ve long had an aversion to any and all bumper stickers, and for several reasons.

            For one thing, they’re ugly and mess up your car.  For another, I really don’t feel the need to proclaim anything about myself to strangers on the highway.  Considering my fondness for acceleration—not to mention the borderline-juvenile glee with which I’ve been known to dispatch slower cars ahead of me—I figure I don’t need anything making me more memorable.

            Recently, however, I’ve had to reexamine this disdain for stickers.  Why?  Because my church has been handing them out.  It’s a discreet little window sticker—innocuous white letters stating “Central Christian Church” on a clear background.  I see them all over the place, and every time I do I think, “Hey, friend!  I go there, too!”  In the middle of a busy commute or a hectic workday, it’s nice to look over and see a fellow church member in the next lane.

But here’s the rub: I’m chicken to put the sticker in my window on account of how I drive.

I mean, it’d be bad enough having people think nasty things about my employer, my alma mater or my political party as they’re watching the back end of my car zoom away, but my church?  Don’t get me wrong—I don’t think I’m a jerk on the road.  I try to be considerate to everyone.  But I know darned well that there are times when my, um . . . exuberance . . . might leave a bad impression.  Just sayin’.  And at such times, it would just seem weird to communicate, in essence, “Hey!  If you enjoyed having your doors blown off just now, come to church Sunday and meet more people like me!”

This all resurfaced just yesterday when a coworker—a good Catholic and a first-rate husband and father—shared a story about his aggravating drive to work.  It seems he’d been in the left lane of the freeway in his BMW 3-series when a man slightly ahead and to his right changed lanes and got right in front of him . . . and slowed down.  Adding injury to irritation, this inconsiderate rolling roadblock then turned on his windshield washers, which missed his windshield entirely and arced right over his roof, dousing my coworker’s clean car.

When the opportunity presented itself, my friend passed his assailant and returned fire.  (Question: Are anyone’s windshield washers aimed right?)  This game of lane-change leapfrog continued when the slow guy—who now was laughing and visibly enjoying himself—suddenly found his accelerator, passed my friend and hosed him down a second time.

No word on whether either car sported a bumper sticker, but wouldn’t the whole thing have been funnier if there’d been a “WWJD” or “My child was student of the week” sticker involved?

            Lots has been written about how much braver some folks are in their cars than in their own skin.  Funny what two tons of metal, plastic and glass will do for the psyche, isn’t it?  Funny, too, how there’s often an inverse relationship between the braggadocio of the vehicle and the character of the person behind the wheel.  Reminds me of that saying about suddenly acquired wealth: “If you’re a jerk when you’re poor, you’ll be a bigger jerk with money.”   Bottom line, we’ll do things bumper to bumper that we’d never dream of doing face to face.  It’s a shame, really, and it’s something my conscience reminds me of every time I express my irritation on the expressway.

            After he’d told his tale, my co-worker and I had a laugh plotting various ways he could get revenge on his freeway attacker if he ever encountered him again.  Eventually, though, I just shook my head and advised him to let it go and be the bigger man.  To his credit, he did and he was.

Hm.  Wonder if my church has any more of those stickers?

Do What You Love

                I freely confess that I’m kind of a whack-job when it comes to washing my car.  There is The Way, and then there are all the other ways.

                Which are wrong.

                I honestly believe that the two scariest things in life are A) having a car full of kids park next to you, and B) allowing someone else to wash your car.

                You heard me right: Nobody but nobody washes my car but me.  I have never, ever been to a car wash.  Ever.  Those high school kids at the corner gas station washing cars to raise money for band?  Ha!  As if.  Go flail your arms at some other sucker.

                I thought my philosophy on this subject was clear to everyone, especially my family.  Which is why I was thunderstruck when my 13-year-old, Jake, asked if he could wash my car yesterday.

                How do you answer the unanswerable?  I was in the front yard working on the lawn when Jake asked.  As the question lingered in the air and I stood there, speechless, I thought, Shoot, why not ask if you can give me a haircut with a hacksaw?

                Now, to fully appreciate the irony of Jake’s question, I have to back up a step.  While this was going on, see, my nine-year-old, Nicholas, was across the street applying white paint to the trunks of my neighbor Wes’s citrus trees.  It was a job Wes had asked Jake to do, but not even the promise of twenty dollars could coax Jake into doing it.  He had done this job once before, and it had two fatal counts against it:  First, it took place in the morning—a time of day to which Jake reacts as though he were a vampire; and second, it was work.  I had assumed my whole morning was going to consist of puttering around in the yard while keeping an eye on Nick.  And now, this?

                “Jake, no,” I said, simply.

                “Why not?” he asked.

                “Because I have a certain way I do it,” I answered, in a tone I hoped would convey, That is just about the stupidest thing you ever asked me.

                But Jake persisted.  “Well, then can I clean the inside with that spray?” he asked.  And even as he posed the question, a sliver of regret stabbed me.  Jake was showing an interest in cars, and I was squashing it.  Still, couldn’t he learn to clean a car on . . . oh, I don’t know . . . a donor car?  My wife’s car?  Something experimental?

                I squelched my natural inclination to say “no” to everything and reminded myself that I’m not nearly as attached to my car’s interior as to its paint.  Spritzing the dash and seats with interior detailer and drying it off with a microfiber towel seemed harmless enough, so I gave Jake my blessing, breathed a silent prayer and returned to my lawn, counting on the drone of the lawnmower motor to drown out my anxiety.

                I emptied the grass bag several times, and each time I passed the open garage door I glanced inside.  Seeing one or the other car doors open every time I walked by, I was amazed at how long Jake stuck to the job.  It may have been the longest he's ever stuck to anything, come to think of it.

                Finally, I heard him calling out to me.  “Dad, come see.”

                I took a breath and went to look.

                There was Jake, in the back seat, having wiped down every leather, plastic or vinyl surface in the car.   The dash was clean, the instrument panel was clean, the seats were clean . . . all of it.  “Oh, and look,” Jake said.  “I even got all the dirt off the pedals.”  I looked: Brake, clutch and accelerator were aluminum-colored jewels.  There was no dirt or dust anywhere.

                And nothing was broken.

                When I got in my car this morning to drive to church and my butt squeaked in my squeaky-clean seat and my feet kept slipping off of my oh-so-clean pedals, I realized something: Jake doesn’t have a problem with work.  He’d spent an hour cleaning the interior of my car, and he’d made no money doing it.  He just needed the same thing we all need: Motivation.

                "Do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life," goes the saying.  Well, it’s fine with me if cars are what Jake loves.  They’re a good place to start.

By Extension

            There are lots of memorable scenes in the 1986 James Cameron movie Aliens, but the one I most enjoy is where Sigourney Weaver dons that mechanized “human forklift” suit and fights the alien.  Suddenly, our vulnerable, 130-pound, flesh-and-blood heroine transforms into a menacing ton or so of steel, hydraulics and pincers that allows her exterior, at long last, to match the kick-butt attitude she’s had all along.

            What’s engaging about that scene, I think, is that it so wonderfully gratifies the inner superhero in all of us—the part that watches a gliding hawk as it banks and swoops and thinks I want to do that, or that sees a cheetah on a nature show, legs all a-blur as it rockets over the savannah, and yearns to experience that kind of personal speed.  When Weaver’s in that suit, you’re like, OH yeah—THAT’S what I’m talkin’ about!

Does that happen a lot to you?  It surely does to me.  On some level, in fact, it’s almost like I believe that I really ought to be able to do these kinds of things; that, in fact, there’s something gone awry somewhere, because the longing is so potent that it’s as though I once upon a time had these abilities, only they’ve somehow been misplaced. 

And I want them back.

It’s a sensation I suspect Mr. Cameron understands, as he followed up that Aliens scene years later with an entire movie—Avatar—devoted to the fantasy of inhabiting a bigger, stronger, faster body that can do things your own body just can’t—that’s you, only more.

When people ask why I like cars so much, I sometimes try to explain this whole car-as-an-extension-of-self thing—typically with limited success.  And I get that.  It’s easier to stuff me into the tried-and-true “speed freak” or “poseur” pigeonholes than to really think about it.  And unfortunately for people like me, there’s a stigmatizing element out there—an element with more money than either sense or taste—that buys the kinds of cars I love in a vain quest to appropriate for themselves qualities they will never, ever personally possess.  Those folks make it tough for true believers.

To a believer, a car’s beauty is something you enjoy during a Saturday morning wash and wax, not when you hop out curbside at a swank, crowded restaurant and toss the keys to a valet.  To a believer, a well-executed heel-and-toe downshift as you turn left from one empty, pre-sunrise boulevard onto another is better than a hundred showy burnouts.  It’s about the communion you feel with the machine; how the two of you, together, do and feel and accomplish more than either of you could alone.   As you wait for the car, the car waits for you.

As my 13-year-old packs on pounds and inches and muscle seemingly overnight, gaining heretofore unimagined sway over the physical world, I can tell he’s already looking at my car and wondering, what would it be like to have . . . even more?  When I was washing my car the other day, in fact, Jake stood to the side begging repeatedly, “Dad, let me pull the car into the garage.  Just into the garaaaaage.  C’mon, pleeeeaze?”  Naturally, I refused.  The last such venture—in my wife’s car, an automatic—resulted in one rocking jolt forward and another rocking jolt backward.  I took the keys and ended that excursion before my wife’s SUV became our new coffee table.

My son’s day will come.  But as we all learned from Spiderman, with great power comes great responsibility.  The way I figure it, Jake’s busy enough right now figuring out what to do with hands, feet and shoulders that he’s still growing into.  The forklift suit can wait.  But once he gets it, it’ll be a high-performance driving school for both of us.  I’d like him to become a believer.