So yeah, folks...sometimes life gives you lemons, and you make lemonade.
Sometimes...life sends a tornado your way that just went through a lemon grove, and is hurling lemon trees at your ass.
That's what a good chunk of 2012 and 2013 were like, and 2014 was roughly the equivalent of righting a motorcycle that a second prior had been in a 'death wobble' while leaned over in a corner. At least for me, and if astrology has any weight, I had my share of fellow travelers in misery.
I learned a hard lesson. While I somehow garnered over 10,000 views on this blog - ??? - I only have 2 followers, but hey, I haven't been acting alive for a few years...but to the folk who might have been a little jealous of that high rollin' hobo with the fat Buick he had negative dollars in, well...read on!
So as mentioned in previous posts, the Buick was sold and the 240D Benz was a lesson in why some cars are meant for parts.
After selling the 240D back to California for $1500, I had to find a car...quick. My dog and I were essentially living out of a 24 hour coffee shop for a few days, catching a few half hours of passed-out-ed-ness along the way. As one can imagine, this isn't the ideal state to buy a car in. Desperate, tired, homeless (fer reals y'all)...not ideal.
So I ended up buying a 92 Chevy Caprice wagon from...a few scant miles away from where the 240D was bought in Palmdale.
Still, $900 later I'm the proud papa of a well beat GM Longroof. In the interests of brevity - new feature - the TBI produced most of the torque of the LT1 in the Buick, but down 85 horses from the get go - assuming the thing ran tops, which it did not. I had to use it as a between cars car, and eventually a friend let me know about a van he'd invested in years ago that had new parts and was mine if I wanted it, seeing as how he was on the other side of the country and I needed something better than the rear-main-leak-sporting Chevy if I wanted to get out of California and on to greener pastures.
So I sell the Chevy for 650 - runs great! - and move everything over to the Ford E350 I pick up a few towns over in El Segundo. The thing is extra heavy duty, but seeing as how it's 2013 and all I decide to flip this 460ci V8 sporting van for something less deadly to my wallet for interstate travel. Lotsa room, but mostly useless unless you kit it out. Plus cold steel box plus human and dog inside breathing plus cold weather = indoor rainstorm. Sprinkles, really, but still, yeah, not the scamp life Chris Farley promised me in those motivational speeches.
So after a lot of polishing, respraying of trim, and etc, the Ford was shiny and good looking enough to pull up in front of a house wearing a 'plumbing' sign, or 'bathtub refinisher' since that's the guy who bought the fine thing.
So again, nowhere to sleep but on the streets of Venice. I put the $1700 with some other funds I came up with, and after much deliberating bought The Goddamned Devil Himself, or a 1996 Nissan Maxima if you want to be all technical about it.
This thing was the culmination of bad decision making processes at work. I bought this off of some white trashy guys and should have walked when I saw the skulls on the license plate. And shift knob. And steering wheel cover. But hey, I always wanted a stick Maxima, since they were the car that really made me see how nice Japanese cars could be, but I got a base model with no LSD and no Leather and a lot of clutch slippage I didn't notice until too late and I now owned this pile.
They're a decent compromise car, but I've had two Nissans blow up on me out of two owned now.
The combo of decent gas mileage, low 15s in SE trim, and decently large dimensions for me, my pooch, and my stuff, plus a decent for the market at the time price of 1800 bucks - the most I've ever spent outright on a car, natch - was too much for me to resist. Black on grey, not bad looking, decent pep when it wasn't slipping...I figured I could feather foot it to Monterey, get some coin up, throw a clutch in, look for a job...car town, you know, and I have a few marketable skills in that arena...
So for some reason I worry about a few scant miles in difference and go up the goddamned Grapevine. Doing ok! Got some weed and hash for later (important for when we break down and get stuck in a downpour for 14 hours straight!) and it's slipping a bit...I have to make a judgment call: pull over and let it rest on the side of the road (past Castaic), and try to get said slipping clutch to deal with two heavy Micks and a trunk full of my life, back up to speed going uphill, or just keep going and hope.
Kept going, and hope was not enough.
The revs climbed. I'd later remember a Sport Compact Car article about replacing the 'lazy' gauges that come stock in even super-duper-over-engineered Japanese wondercars (cough) like the one I was driving. About how the computer purposefully wouldn't, say, let you know your temps were climbing.
All of a sudden, at 4500rpm, the Clack Of Doom comes and everything just grinds to a halt on the side of the roadway. No clutch, can't get the shifter into a gear, and the starter just goes HMMMM when I try it. After turning it off and turning it back on, NOW the temp gauge - a little above normal but okay before the COD happened - is buried in the red. Which in Nippon translates as 'seized'. Game over. Dead on the side of the roadway with everything I own. The nightmare I'd tried to push out of my mind was there in glorious technicolor. Me, my dog, every instrument I own as a musician, my tools, my books, the final keepsakes clung to after decades of a nomad like existence, a friend who was still a relative stranger and an ex con to boot...oh, and here comes the rain.
Good thing the car is dead, because getting out over the next 14 hours to sneak leaks on the side of the 5 and slogging through the mud has ruined the interior.
I haven't even put 100 miles on the odometer on the most expensive car I've ever bought, and I'm dead on the side of the road before I even reach the county line out of LA. Just like trying in the damned 240D...got to the 15 and turned around in full on, pouring oil down the crankcase automotive terror, but that time...we squeaked back onto 3rd street and managed to pull everything back together somehow.
When the 240D was obviously too far gone, I had a whole sequence of events I had to go through: don't shut the car off, don't let it overheat and seize, get everything in storage and find the crazy-homeless-broad-with-a-heart-of-(thankfully)-gold that watches your precious Woo Woo while you drop this husk off a few blocks away from Apocalypse Ground Zero...aka the Downtown L.A. Greyhound Station.
This left the brake fluid in the clutch line overheated. All of a sudden the clutch is almost gone...almost. I have a slight on-off switch to work with and a not-very-revvy diesel. Fuck it, if I get stuck I'm walking back to Venice to sleep on the ground anyway. Somehow, it gets off of the 10...stalls on the street! Out of juice in the Optima Red Top! Crap....got a jump! Ok, ok, get it up on the scale...barely. Give the lady my paperwork with the OM616 still running....she says ok just move it off of the platform...and...no clutch left. I get some help pushing it off.
The car has to - HAS TO - get on that scale under it's own power, or no deal. I was that close to just being out of a car, instead of being on my way to a leaky worn out Chevy wagon that was at least a nice flat place to sleep and stay warm with my pittie bull.
This time, though, Tuesday climbs into my lap...I'm getting some sleep...CHP won't give us a ride off of the road, no sense in trying to go anywhere until this rain breaks....big tough street bred Mick, trying not to cry as he thinks about what tomorrow is going to be like for him and his hapless dog. This time, there is no pulling it off. This time, we take it on the nose. We pay for that Buick, full dollar.
Continued in Part Two.
