Pas des Deuce

Best in Show IMHO

When they were last here, I only got a few photos before the batteries in the Canon croaked.

This year, I was aware when the deuces rolled into town; even if I hadn’t caught a clip on the evening news, I couldn’t miss the roar of the engines or the slew of candy-coloured paint jobs cruising up and down the main drag at the end of the workweek. Boy Sister and I sat outside the Blanshard Street Starbucks and watched them trickle through the intersection, unable to blend into traffic because they are made to stand out. He got some great snaps of rear bumpers and front fenders, or whole delivery vans and local SUVs – taking pictures of a moving target takes some practice and more time than we had on our lunch break.

They also rumbled along the road outside my living room window. I spent Friday evening deuce-watching from the sofa, gleefully noting that the event known as Northwest Deuce Days brings a plethora of restored classics out of the garage. So much chrome, so many brilliant shades of wow! ... and the sound! That glorious, deep, rich, beautiful baritone grumbling purring roaring bellowing sound! No earplugs, please – if I’m going to lose my hearing, let it be to a vintage rod.

It’s the best weekend of the year.

On Saturday morning, I made sure the Canon was juiced for the deuce and took it over to Clover Point for the Poker Run parade. I found a plum spot at the crest of the hill and started snapping. Sure, I got my share of back ends and front bumpers, but eventually I got the hang of when to press the button. I came away with 55 photos worth keeping.

I may have deleted a few more than that, but my favourite rods stayed within the frame:

And when all was said and done, I would have taken this one home:

I know. Sue me.

Auto Biography XV

“A Fine Set of Wheels”

This photo is not the photo I would have used for this post; however, the shot I would have used was never taken. It’s forever etched in my mind, though. If a picture is worth a thousand words, put up your feet while I try to describe the scenario on the night before we traded Jules for a new Volkswagen.

Our dear friend Treena has a professional grade camera and offered to take some photos for posterity. We don’t have many pictures of our beloved Camaro. What we do have are “working” snaps, pictures taken on road trips or after weather events like the Blizzard of ’96. We never did do the photo op we talked about when he was brand new. That’s why, in the shots Treena took, there’s a dent in his right flank and the hood on the driver’s door mirror is still wearing its factory primer (we never got it painted after the lens went phht!—but that’s another story). All the same, we took immaculate care of his motor and safety features; he had over 160,000 kms on him when we let him go, but he still ran like a dream.

I digress.

On his last night with us, I drove Treena up to Craigdarroch Castle and watched her do her photographer thing. She circled the car, snapping this way and that, taking cool background shots, artsy angle shots, and whatever else shots she felt would do justice to her unwitting subject. Through it all, Jules stood quietly, not posing precisely, but behaving like a gentleman for the lady. I wish I’d thought to bring my own camera, not to try my hand at emulating Treena, but to catch the moment when Jules ceased to be an inanimate object and became, for a brief instant, a living, breathing creature.

I was standing behind and to the right of the car as she crouched to get this shot. Treena is a delicate little thing, a fairy child with hollow bones, who might be blown into the trees by an aggressive gust of wind. Jules was coiled like panther, muscles bunched and thrumming, as she hunkered by his nose and lifted her camera. In that moment, in the mystic evening light, he looked about to pounce ... but then he lowered his head and let her take his picture. Seeing the two of them in that frame created a delightful memory which, unfortunately, I can only share through these inadequate words, but which will stay with me for the rest of my days.

Auto Biography XIV

“Jules”

Mum: “Jings, Betsy.”

Older older brother: “It looks like it’s going 100 miles an hour and it's standing still!”

Management co-worker: “Clearly the admin staff are making too much money.”

To this day, I don’t know how much our brand new Camaro cost. I do remember that the purchase process was excruciating. I went to three banks and was told at each that I wasn’t a good risk because I had no collateral and the car wouldn’t be worth what I was paying for it. (That’s when I learned that loans are only given to people who don’t need the money.)

I don’t even remember how we wound up at the dealership in the summer of 1996, perusing a shiny automatic that looked green from one angle, blue from another, and purple at a third. The colour was called “mystic teal”. The sales dude was called Anthony. From the instant we set foot on the lot, he was on us like white on rice. A likeable young chap, determined to get us the car of our dreams. Well, of Ter’s dreams. She was the Camaro freak – but if I had to own a Chev, the body style in 1996 was my first choice. The old Camaro was starting its death spiral, so my sole condition for upgrading was that a replacement have no previous owner. No abused lease rejects, no neglected pre-owned wheels spiffed up for suckers. I wanted to manage a new vehicle from scratch.

That new vehicle eluded us for weeks because of the “no collateral” clause. We test-drove a less-expensive Cavalier, but who were we kidding? It was Camaro or bust. Eventually, we told Anthony thanks but no thanks and drove our crotchety old wheels back home.

The gods—and Anthony—were not about to let us go, however. Some days after bidding Mystic Teal a final farewell, the phone rang. “I’ve found two new Camaros for you, ladies, but I know you won’t want one of them.”

I dared to ask why not.

The kid replied, “It’s silver.”

Oh, yeah. Aside from “no previous owner”, my other sole condition was “not silver”. (I still don’t understand the appeal of silver cars.) “Okay,” I said, “what’s the other one?”

“Black.”

I sighed. “We’ll be right out.”

Driving down Cook Street, we were absolutely silent. I was fed up thinking about how to get a car we clearly couldn’t afford, until my little voice murmured the very words that Ter spoke aloud as she turned left onto Bay Street.

“We could call him ‘Jules’.”

Well, that was akin to kissing the bear’s nose. Once he had a name, he was ours. Or, rather, we were his.

The financial whiz at the dealership wheedled a deal with one of the banks that had originally told me to sod off—this after I refused, at the age of 35, to ask my dad to co-sign a loan—they gave us a handful of clams for Ter’s old Camaro, and the two of us left work early to collect our new toy on the first day of autumn in 1996.

The car was being shipped from the mainland and hadn’t arrived yet. I will always remember sitting at the dealership, looking out the plate glass window at the traffic streaming along the highway. Suddenly, there he was: sleek, black, shiny; a panther prowling up the outside lane, a tawny yellow eye blinking right as he turned off the main road. “There it is,” Anthony announced “your new Camaro.”

Taking possession of a brand new sportscar is a joy unlike any other. A new mother doesn’t feel as much for her newborn as I felt on first glance at our fabulous, glossy, witchy-eyed ride. I was practically salivating. I’ve no idea what Ter was thinking or how she felt ... but have I mentioned that our fresh-from-the-shell baby was a standard shift and she had learned on an automatic? That’s right, folks. Ter did not know how to drive a stick.

But, in typical Ter fashion, she was fearless in her enthusiasm to learn. The very next night, we were in the mall parking lot, she behind the wheel, me having kittens in the passenger seat—to this day, I don’t know how I taught her to work the gears but I must have done something right because she was soon cruising in expanding circles around the lot. “Let me take it home,” she said, bubbling over with pride at her mastery of clutch and gears. (In truth, she did pick it up pretty fast.)

Erm, ahhhh, uhhhh ... “Okay,” I croaked.

So, of course she chose the route that featured what we refer to as “the Fat Choy Hill”—an intersection at the crest of a 40% grade with a Chinese market perched on one corner. It would have been fine had the light stayed with us, but no, as we approached, green turned to amber turned to red. I, who had once rolled my dad’s Toyota about twelve feet back on a gentle slope, recommended downshifting to keep the wheels in motion, to no avail. And, yes, the car stalled not once but twice, with a BMW breathing on our bumper and me freaking out at Ter’s elbow. Give credit where it’s due, though: flustered as she was, the bumblebee got her wings whirring and achieved liftoff as the light went red again. We got through the light.

The BMW, naturally, ran it.

* * *

It feels odd to write so clearly about a vehicle long gone, but he served us well and we loved him to the last. I have said before that you can’t own a car for fourteen years and not have a bunch of stories to tell, so further tales from “Ter and Ru and a Car Named Jules” will be posted as more memories surface. Stay tuned!

Park Plates

Ter and I have long considered putting personal plates our vehicle. The problem is, what to put on them? She wouldn’t be any keener on DURAN E or HOK E HOS than I’d be for FOOD E or WIK N WU. We’d thought of putting JULES on Jules, but it’s good that we didn’t because Jules is no longer with us. As it was, Tiggy inherited his predecessor’s plates, which were at insurance time this year, over twenty years old.

The dilemma would have continued indefinitely had ICBC not ridden to the rescue. Earlier this year, in cooperation with BC Provincial Parks, they’ve issued a number of license plates featuring four “super, natural” vistas—mountains, lakes, forests ... and a spirit bear.

Well, shoot. Problem solved.

The bear plates have been cropping up on cars all over town. The numbering sequence started at PA000A. By the time we got our plates, so many had been sold that the sequence began with PB. “ ‘Peanut Butter’,” I said to Ter at the insurance agent’s office, where we were both required to sign the changeover from our old license number.

She glanced at me, pen in hand, and said nothing.

“Or ‘Panda Bear’,” I continued, musing.

That got a slightly better result, but still no hats and horns. Since our brains are not geared toward accepting blends of letters and numerals, it’s always helped me to use either the phonetic alphabet or make up a word association of my own. For instance, our old plates began with “JBM”, which, in the phonetic alphabet, translates to “Juliet Bravo Mike”. Thanks to my wee sister, who suggested it when I asked what she’d use, it also translated to “Jellybum.”

Anyway, we signed the papers and took our shiny new plates out to the strip mall lot, where a freshly-laundered Tiggy eagerly awaited his new tags. Getting them into the plate holders proved a tad challenging, as the holders have been bashed about but good over the past seven years, but Ter persevered and eventually they slid into place. Affixing them to the bumpers required new screws to replace the old rusted ones (our first stop on this little adventure was the hardware store), and no small skill in lining up the holes. Ter hunkered by the back bumper and spent a while doing just that, with varying degrees of success. Eye to eye with “PB” while her patience gradually thinned, she finally looked up at me and said, “We could also use ‘Pooh Bartz’.”

That did me in. I howled. “Pooh bartz” is an interjection originally coined by my older sister in lieu of a metaphor more colourful while yet residing in our parents’ house (both my sisters have an odd gift for coining words/phrases/sayings), and it’s stayed with me deep into my relationship with Ter. That she would blurt it out in relation to our prized new plates slew me right there in the parking lot.

Later, she tried to override the option with “Polar Bear”, but I fear I was ruined for anything else when it comes to remembering my new license number.

Pooh bartz.

Seen Through a Coffee Shop Window

not my view, but a reasonable facsimile

I took myself down to the local coffee shop one workday last week, fully intending on drafting this weekend’s blog post. I had no idea what my subject would be. Life of late has been more about living and less about musing—you might say I’m gathering material for future posts—but I reckoned that, surely, inspiration would strike once I assumed the position.

Armed with a Mumbai chai, I took a seat in the window, opened my book, uncapped my coloured Sharpie ... and nothing came. Nada. Zip, zero, zilch. The blank page leered up at me, daring me to mar its pristine whiteness with my purple genius. I stared back, immobilized, though not with fear. My mind was merely as blank as the page in front of me.

My Zen homework has taught me not to panic at a writer’s block. Sometimes it’s just not meant to happen. On another day, my genius will blaze brighter than the halogen high beams on an Audi. Just not today.

Sigh.

Rather than forcing the matter, I decided simply to enjoy my tea and watch the street action through the window. I kept the book open, though the cap went back on my pen. My cup was almost empty when I noticed something so typically incongruous of a First World society that I had to write it down: a white Porsche Cayenne pausing at a crosswalk while a homeless man pushed a shopping cart laden with all his worldly goods in front of it. Wealth and poverty in a single, poignant image. I wished I’d had my camera with me.

Then I realized I’d had a ton of impressions in the past half hour; seen countless vignettes worthy of note (to me, anyway):

A lapdog wearing a raincoat.

Tourists carrying shopping bags.

An older couple strolling arm in arm.

A sleek and shiny Tesla—twice!

The bus ballet (they really do a dance, merging around and into traffic from the stop outside 

the window).

A quartet of orange umbrellas bobbing in a cluster along the far sidewalk. They stood out so bright and cheerful in the grey drizzle, I christened them “orange blossoms”.

The faces on passersby: grim, worried, anxious, vacant, lots of frowns and not many smiles. Sad.

A toddler pushing a stroller while his mother steered him from behind, and the tiny hand lolling from the stroller itself as the occupant enjoyed the ride.

A hipster girl wearing a backpack as big as she was, pausing to read the “we’re hiring” sign in the coffee shop window.

Soft jazz on the shop’s sound system, followed by a cool cover of Roxy’s “Love Is The Drug”, then something by Florence and the Machine (her voice is so distinctive).

The store manager came by to tidy the tables behind me. “On your own today?”

“Just hanging out,” I replied.

“Killing time?”

“Nah, I was doing that in the office.”

He laughed. I said I’d see him tomorrow, then I packed up my stuff and went back to work.

It might not be genius, but I got my post after all.

De Deuce, You Say!

Ahhhhh, the heavy, Dior-esque perfume of leaded gasoline. The rib-quaking rumble of a chrome-plated V-8. The leonine roar of that same engine. The affronted bellow of a lesser model, revving to crest the top of the slope as it awaits the traffic flag’s all-clear. People clapping, horns hooting. A pair of old guys parked on the tailgate of a vintage Dodge pickup, providing Muppet-like commentary as the parade flows past.

And the colours! Candy apple red, basic black, pearl white, sunshine yellow, Tang orange, deep purple, sky blue, mint green, burnished copper. The occasional two-tones: black and white, black and red, red and orange, orange and yellow, buff and wood-grain. The detailing: flickering flames, grinning skulls, swooshes and swirlies in complimentary shades of turquoise and magenta. BC plates and US plates on exotic roadsters and hulking sedans. White wall tires, sparkling spoke hubcaps, rag tops and hardtops, white-haired seniors and tattoed twenty-somethings behind steering wheels as big as manhole covers.

The deuce coupes come to town every couple of years. When they do, they bring out the automotive afficianados among the locals and jam up the neighbourhood for the better part of a Saturday morning. I was sitting in the Ocean Room last weekend, reading while the world passed by my window. Normally, I hear the nondescript drone of ordinary traffic punctuated by a diesel tour bus, but when I heard something with a carburetor, I looked up to see a fluorescent orange hotrod zipping along Dallas Road. It was followed in quick succession by a bright yellow deuce, a black gangster-mobile from the 1930s and a purple-and-azure 50’s Plymouth. The event is called for the deuce, but anyone with a classic car is welcome to the party—even if you’re driving Grandpa’s rusted Olds because you can’t afford anything newer. They converge on Clover Point after breakfast on Saturday and cruise from there along Dallas Road to wherever lunch is scheduled.

After twenty minutes of gumball colour streaming, I couldn’t stand it. “I’m going down to see the cars,” I called to Ter. “I’ll be back in a half-hour.”

Except I forgot to bring my phone to remind me of the time. I brought the Canon instead, managing to snap maybe twenty pictures before the batteries died (I haven’t used it much lately), then finding a spot simply from which to enjoy the show. I’d have stayed to the last of the estimated 1200 cars, but Ter had an appointment and I was going along for lunch afterward.

I love my 2010 Tiguan. I loved my 1996 Camaro, too, but Blue Thunder was my first and Blue Silver was my baby. I love cars in general, so much that I wish I’d thought to take auto shop in high school except that it wasn’t offered to girls and among the countless other clues I’d not had at the time was my ability to comprehend the workings of an engine. Learning how to tinker under the hood never occurred to me, though I think I would have enjoyed it. Nowadays, with vehicles run by computers, designed from the same template and only available in five shades of grey, it’s disheartening to think that the art of the car may be dying out … until the deuces come to town.

Long live the classics.

Bibliography XII

“James Bond Cars” – Frédéric Brun

And in the “Pretentious Coffee Table Book” department, a hardcover tome packed with photos, anecdotes and specifications associated with the vehicular co-stars in the 007 series from “Dr No” to “SPECTRE”, including the oddball entries like space buggies, tanks, and airplanes. Did I die and go to Heaven when I unwrapped this baby? Pretty much. Yeah, sure, there are photos of Sean Connery, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig sprinkled throughout, but … who cares?

Ter claims that I have an instinct for engineering and I have always had an eye for automobiles (I remember identifying a Dodge 500 by its rear lights when I was a little kid in Quebec), so my excitement here is far less surprising than the giver of the gift—my little tea fairy, Treena, who has no idea at all about cars beyond trying to avoid being hit by one in a crosswalk (so far, so good). Whenever I start rhapsodising about the Tesla in the parkade or the Maserati standing outside the coffee house, she glazes over. But, gods bless her, she thought of me when she saw this book and I will adore her forever because of it.

Page after page of glossy, glorious photos in black and white and in colour, of Aston Martins in various stages of assembly, blocks of text describing how the DB5 and beyond became part of the Bond mystique, stories from the drivers and technicians behind the stunts … and there, on page 81, is a full colour shot of the Mustang Mach 1 from “Diamonds Are Forever”. The car was a bit player in my favourite of the 007 films, but it stole the scene it was in by ripping it up during a chase in Las Vegas. Other Mustangs have appeared in Bond movies—Ford gave the producers a pre-production model for the scene in “Goldfinger” where gentleman spy is distracted by pretty girl in white convertible, and a million new cars were sold as a result.

I’ll expect nothing but pleasure when I pick up this book to kill the few minutes between dinner and dishes, but then again, who knows? Inspiration can hit when one isn’t looking, and a hot car often heralds the introduction of a new character with a story to tell …

Auto Biography XIII

“Classical Gas”

Blue Thunder didn’t have a standard issue gas cap. The cap was locked, the little door meant to conceal it having disappeared during the decade before the car fell into my hands. A previous owner must have replaced the original cap, securing the contents of the tank from theft by siphoning. Fuel was an outrageous $0.42 cents a litre in those days. “Regular” fuel was leaded, and unleaded was the pricier option. Thunder, like the majority of vehicles at the time, ran on regular.

I was twenty-three years old, and the era of full service gas stations was on the decline. Most outlets had the option of full or self-serve, and if you pumped your own, the price was a little lower. I once overfilled Thunder’s tank, spewing gasoline over my shoes and the car’s rear quarter, but that didn’t spook me out of the self-serve lane. I was a fully independent female and perfectly capable of fuelling up by myself.

Blue Silver came with the Ford factory gas cap. You can identify an early Mustang’s model year by the front grille and the gas cap which, in 1966, was solid chrome and so big that it required both hands to unscrew. Fortunately, Silver’s previous owner had seen fit to secure it in place with a coil of cabled wire that made it impossible to leave the cap on the trunk after refuelling, but my arthritic hands often had some difficulty twisting it back into place once the tank was full.

One evening I pulled into the station, unscrewed the cap, pumped in five bucks’ worth of regular, replaced the cap and went on my way—Christmas shopping, I think, because there was no other reason to drive alone into town after dark. It was a half-hour drive, part highway and part city street, until I got parked. Stepping from the car, I was hailed by a young guy who had driven in behind me and wanted me to know that my gas cap was hanging by its idiot string. He’d followed me from the highway and tailed me to the mall, staring, no doubt, into the gaping maw of the open tank the whole time.

There’s nothing like the automotive equivalent of walking up the street with your skirt caught in your pantyhose to scare an independent female out of pumping her own gas.

After that, I paid a little extra to have an attendant fill Silver’s tank for me. After she was sold and Ter took over driving duty with both Camaros, I had so few occasions on which to address the fuelling issue that I haven’t pumped a drop into the Tiguan and he’s almost six years old!

IntroSPECTRE

The best Bond ever?

Take Diamonds Are Forever off the table and I might agree with you.

Hey, whatever the title, it’s James Bond, the gentleman spy extraordinaire, played to the 21^st century hilt with steely-eyed panache by the best actor to play our hero since Sean Connery. Light on plot, heavy on action, sardonic dialogue peppered with witticisms, it’s a guaranteed win no matter how hi-tech the projector.

SPECTRE in IMAX would have had me vomiting from motion sickness before the opening credits (which I think rank among the best in the entire series. Sam Smith did a super job with the theme, too!), so the gods be thanked that the film also opened in the old-fashioned regular format to accommodate vintage era fans. Ter and I were planning to wait a few weeks, but couldn’t stand it once we discovered it wasn’t exclusive to the hi-def, 3-D, über-size, holographic, king’s-ransom-admission theatre at the local Cineplex when it was released. We got our tickets online and happily ate popcorn and chocolate for lunch.

As plots go, this one continues from Skyfall and referenced both Quantum of Solace and Casino Royale, threading together the most recent four in the 007 series quite nicely. There were a few “Really??” moments, as are customary in a Bond movie, and the girl fell in love a little too quickly after  insisting that he stay-the-hell-away from her—but that’s picking nits. Overall, it’s a cool continuation of the franchise that got a potent shot in the butt when Daniel Craig signed on in 2006. Less a spy than an assassin, he owns the role simply by standing still. Put him in the field and watch him save the world without employing alien superpowers or stripping down to a blue Spandex onesie.

I do wish he’d quit destroying those Aston Martins, though. I can sit unmoved through a bloody brawl or a screaming torture scene, but I want to weep when the car meets its inevitable demise.

RIP DB10

Auto Bio XII

“My Other Car is a Jaguar”

Tiggy was back in the shop two weeks ago—he’d started idling rough and after a few days employed a visual aid to shift our attention to action. Ter came home on Sunday with the announcement that my first Monday after vacation had just gotten interesting: the “check engine” light had come on.

Crap. What fresh new hell is this, Tiguan?

We arranged to have me drive him in and Ter took the limo to her office. Turned out to be little of nothing—some carbon buildup on the spark plugs was giving him hiccups, so the techs cleaned off the plugs, sold me a bottle of fuel tank cleaner, and reminded me (shame, shame) to give him supreme instead of regular unleaded gasoline. A small cost at the end of an anxious day, but I like to threaten my loved ones with their expendability.

Poking along in rush hour traffic, we approached the Jaguar dealership that dwarfs the VW shop half a block down the street. I gave him a tap on the dashboard and pointed. “See that red F-type, Tiguan? Take a good hard look and be grateful that I don’t turn you in right now.”

Hey, he doesn’t need to know that one Jag will cost three of him.

* * *

A few days later, I happened on this article. A rave review of the F-type coupe so well-written than it’s practically poetry. Sure had me salivating … until I got to the one flaw in the big cat’s form. Apparently the ergonomics aren’t that great. How disappointing. Is it enough to stop me from salivating? Nah. In my dream, the car is comfier than an old shoe.

Auto Biography XI

“Das Bomb”

Fourteen years after buying Jules, it was time to replace him. Ter was now commuting up the highway to work, through a micro-climate infamous for weather that made the low-slung Camaro a hydroplaning hazard. She also spent a lot of time looking up tailpipes and being blinded by bullying headlights in the mirror, so she began talking about an SUV. A larger, higher vehicle would make her feel safer on the road, and since my whole life goes with her whenever she drives away, I was fine with her decision. The tricky part was finding a vehicle that we both liked.

Not that we conducted a coordinated search. Truth is, I liked not having a car payment every month, and we were still so fond of Jules that parting with him seemed like a betrayal. It helped that nobody was producing an SUV that matched our individual wants with mutual needs; we saw nothing on the street that inspired us to further investigation. They all looked the same. They were too big, too boxy, too ordinary, too not right. Typically, as Jules got Ter through one more winter commute, the notion of a new vehicle started fading as spring approached.

Then the Vancouver Olympics happened. A new Volkswagen commercial began running during the evening TV coverage. I have always enjoyed VW commercials, though their bugs and bunnies are not remotely attractive as a means of transport. Besides, everyone knows that Volkswagen drivers are idiots; they’re all over the road, dodging through lanes and trying to get ahead of everyone else—annoying as heck and not that fashionable to boot. But VW TV ads are great. This one in particular:

Aside from showcasing the way I normally drive, I liked the compact look of the vehicle. I liked its strange little name, too: “Tiguan” – a smaller SUV with the power of a tiger and the reflexes of an iguana. Big fun for me, boy. I could spin some fab donuts in that little guy. But did I say anything aloud? Heck, no. It was a Volkswagen. No way would one of them wind up in my driveway.

Uh huh.

Ter got serious about wanting a new vehicle shortly after the Games ended. We talked about trucks ad nauseum but I wrinkled my nose at anything she suggested, and vice versa. Finally, she said, “I haven’t really liked anything except that little Volkswagen.”

Uh oh.

Turned out we’d been in agreement from mid-February and hadn’t known it. She called me at work one day: “I’m looking at the Volkswagen website …” which was basically a call to arms. We pored over specifications and argued about colours (I preferred white, she wanted black). I put a pic of a Tiguan on my computer desktop.

“What’s that?” a co-worker inquired, bending over my shoulder for a closer look.

“My new car,” I replied.

“What is it?”

Saying “Tiguan” only earned a puzzled look, so I resorted to answering, “A Volkswagen.”

We brought Tiggy home on May 1, 2010. They were good about moving Jules while our backs were turned; I recall patting his rear fender on my way into the dealership, and when we saw daylight again, the stall where we’d left him was empty. And there, all puffed up and proud like the vehicular version of Moon Pie, was Tiggy.

The joy of a Tiguan in 2010 was that few other people in town owned one. Ours was rare enough to prompt total strangers to ask what it was. Gradually, more of them appeared on the street and nowadays, I see them in bunches every week. But people still ask about ours. Even Tiguan owners will ask. “How do you like it?”

“We love it,” is our standard reply.

Aside from the annual service curse, he’s exceeded my wildest expectations. He hauled the weight of an ex-husband to the recycling depot in 2011. He helped us move house twice. He has delivered new furniture, carried bags of books and groceries, and most importantly, he has transported Ter safely to work through three soggy winters without the slightest skid. He grips the road and growls before he pounces; if I’m at the wheel, he’s the first away when the light goes green. He’s cute and zippy and he has a kick-ass boss stereo system.

He das bomb.

Auto Biography X

“The Power of Mum”

You wouldn’t think it to look at him, but Tiggy, our sweet little SUV, is cursed. He has only required annually scheduled servicing since he was purchased in 2010 and, on the whole, he rocks. Ter and I are madly in love with him. He’s safe, solid, dependable, quick as a lizard, fierce as a tiger, and cute as the proverbial button.

Except after he’s been serviced. Here’s the history:

2011 – Tig’s first scheduled service and I’m sure something happened the next day, but perhaps this is only because something did happen the following year... and the one after that ... and the one after that ...

2012 – on her way to work the day after Tig’s second scheduled service, Ter hears a loud bang! and the steering goes funky. She pulls over immediately to discover the far rear tire is flat as a pancake. When the tow truck arrives, the driver shows her the chunk of metal responsible for the gaping hole in the tire’s tread. Eyes wide, she gasps, “When did I pick that up?”

“Oh, right now,” the guy assures her. The tire is shot but the dealer doesn’t carry that model, so it takes a couple of days (and a couple hundred dollars) to get Tig a new shoe.

2013 – on her way to work the day after Tig’s third scheduled service, Ter is rear-ended when the guy behind her doesn’t see that traffic ahead has stopped. Tiggy weathered it fairly well, but Ter was whiplashed and to this day is still in treatment for it. Tig spent two days in the shop and is sporting a new rear bumper, paid for courtesy of the other guy’s insurance. Needless to say, both Ter and Tiggy are now hyper-nervous about tailgaters. I merely wish that a flame-throwing exhaust pipe was an option, ’cause I’d have ordered one while he was in for repairs.

2014 – on her way to work the day after Tig’s fourth scheduled service (and immediately following a chiropractic adjustment), Ter is merging onto the highway when Tiggy *binks* at her. She’s accustomed to his *bink* – usually he’s signalling that the temperature is ripe for snow, so she’s actually about to say, “Tig, it is not going to snow!” What emerges is a sharp, “Crap, Tiguan! What the hell is this?”

The tire pressure warning light has engaged. Panicked and in pain, she gets him to the dealer, where a technician is corralled to inspect all four tires. The diagnosis is a computer glitch—a fair assessment, since immediately after the tire incident in 2012, the same light went on, Ter had the same panic attack, and it turned out that the computer needed resetting to acknowledge the new tire. Present day mystery solved—but while the car is here, the part they ordered to fix the oil leak has come in, so can she leave it with them for the day?

What oil leak?

Oh, the one that had been discovered during inspection and supposedly fixed the day before. Apparently the service associate thought the fix had been made, but such was not the case. Ter is really steaming now – she has to interview a new finance clerk in the afternoon so she must get to the office. Hand it to the service staff at the shop—they rallied to take care of her and her leaky little SUV. She got a courtesy car and Tiggy got his oil leak fixed. He was also washed twice in two days; more baths than he’s had all winter.

We’re now in the clear … until his next service appointment in 2015.

I’m only superstitious about hockey games, but this after-service curse is getting ridiculous. In a weird way, and perhaps unwittingly but one never knows, I think Mum might be responsible. Years ago, once Ter and I had agreed to replace our beloved Jules, the time came to tell my parents what we were getting. We knew going in that it could cause a ripple because my folks were kids in Scotland during WW II and Tiggy is ...

... a Volkswagen.

Dad took the news pretty well, but my stalwart-rebel-Scottish-nationalist mother was uncommonly reserved. After a while, she quietly confessed, “My dears, I am sorry, but I remember what the Germans did to us during the war.”

Giving the sentiment due consideration, we bought the VW anyway. Gods bless her, Mum says she’s forgiven us (as if we were ever in danger of being disowned—that’s Dad’s gig), but I suspect that deep inside, whenever she looks at our Tiguan, she winces. Ja, he’s German. He nags like a Nazi and makes you sit up straight. He runs like a military machine and thinks he’s superior to every other car on the road … but he’s our little tank and we love him so, Mum, can you please do something about lifting the hex?

Auto Biography IX

Jules’ Bells

a fine set of wheels

Jules was bought brand-spanking-new – three months before the blizzard of 1996 hit. A friend had said that if you can imagine yourself thinking that's a fine set of wheels some years down the road, then you should buy the car now. I looked into the parking lot on the morning of December 28 and saw nothing but a rumpled snowscape with a solitary red taillight peering balefully through the virgin white. I nearly had a heart attack.

You can’t own a car for 14 years and not have a hatful of tales to tell when you’re done. Jules took Ter and me on some grand adventures during his time with us, many of which will be their own Auto Bio posts. He was a ‘96 Chev Camaro, black, standard 5-speed, low, sleek, witchy-eyed and gorgeous even after he was well past paid off. I still see versions of him on the street and admire each one as it cruises past. It’s hard to believe that the model is almost 20 years old. I won’t call it a classic, but it sure was purty. And because he was ours, Jules was the purtiest of them all.

Living in a Victorian mansion from 1993 had turned us into froufrou junkies and our mutual love of Christmas eventually spilled out into the car. Ter had noticed ornaments hanging from the rearview mirror in parked cars and thought it would be cool to dress up the Camaro in kind. An annual tradition was for us to each buy a special decoration for the tree; on one year’s outing, we bought Jules his bells. They were tied with a red ribbon to his mirror, and every time he hit a dip or a bump, he’d jingle. Such a merry sound, it was destined to keep us in the holiday spirit no matter how crappy the weather or dismal our mood. With that many bells tingling on the string, you had to be a king-sized Grinch to stay grouchy.

Inevitably, the old horse began to fail and in the spring of 2010, we replaced him with another brand new vehicle, one better-suited to Ter’s work commute and my old bones. When it came time to pull out the Christmas decorations that year, we found Jules’ bells wrapped in their crunchy tissue, waiting to be strung from his rearview mirror. There was no question, either. They were his bells; they wouldn’t be hung in the new car.

Now we hang them on our tree.

Auto Biography VIII

“The Bumblebee’s Camaro”

1990. Ter was starting her first fulltime government job and I was working graveyards at the radio station for $6.00 an hour. Blue Silver was our primary mode of transport, but with my odd hours and Ter now working 9 to 5, one vehicle was going to be challenged. We were living out of town and, as my younger older brother once described it, the bus service to and from consisted of “Three buses a week and all on Monday morning.”

It was time for Ter to buy herself a car.

She had admired the 1980s Chev Camaro for as long as I had known her. When she pictured herself owning a car, that was the one. She fancied the Berlinetta model, but has never been that stubborn about compromise. She came home one day all pumped about seeing a 1987 Camaro parked by the roadside with a “for sale” sign in its window and wanted me to go with her to see it.

You’re supposed to dream about the car of your dreams; that’s why it’s called the car of your dreams. You’re not supposed to own one from the get-go. That was my belief, anyway. Our family vehicles had always been previously-owned, functional for the purpose, and apparently expensive to maintain. We have no mechanics in the family, so whenever something went wrong with the car, it was a costly pain in the posterior for my parents. I grew up expecting the same fate to befall me, so despite my passion for the art of automotive design, Thunder had been chosen for practicality over aesthetics. Silver had been far less realistic given my financial situation, but she was a classic Mustang, end of argument.

Ter grew up in the big city. Neither parent drove, so there had been no family car. She learned to drive in 1985, taking her road test in my Dodge and sharing Silver until it became evident that a second vehicle might be in order. Her auto experience so differed from mine that it never occurred to her that she should start small with something practical, like a Toyota Corolla or a Honda Civic. She had no idea that you work your way up to a sportscar. Naturally, I didn’t tell her any of this; I figured she would look at the car, decide it was too expensive, too big, too far beyond her reach, and let it go.

She didn’t. She bought it.

In her purest state, Ter is a bumblebee with absolutely no concept that her aerodynamics make flight impossible. If she wants something badly enough, she simply makes it happen. I have seen her will in action countless times over the years and, good or bad, it remains one of the world’s unsung wonders. One of my favourite stories is of her dad sitting out with one of his cronies when she drove her snappy new prize into the parking lot at their apartment building. Dad’s pal said to him, “Is that her boyfriend’s car?”

Dad proudly replied, “No, it’s my daughter’s.”

He knew.

Auto Biography VII

"Judging a Character by His Wheels"

humble pie 2000

A horrifying development in my current short story. One of the sexiest characters I have ever written is driving a plastic Mustang. How can that be? Where did I go wrong? No one is perfect, but a plastic Mustang??? Kill me now.

I was barreling happily along, watching the story unfold as I typed. Feeling pretty good about it, too, as I attempt to apply some advice that Nicole posted over at The Paper Teapot a couple of weeks ago: “Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page for each day, it helps. Then when it gets finished, you are always surprised.—John Steinbeck.” She followed up with a bunch of his quotes which I will address anon, given that I loved every one of them, but at this point I was merely forging ahead with no end in sight.

I get through the first scene: the morning after with Cristal and her mystery lover. Then the second scene, still that morning. Then the third, where they must part and she realizes that he drove her home in her car the previous night. It made sense to me, so I went with it. Then the fourth and fifth scenes poured out and in the sixth scene, she spies him in the rearview mirror driving a … something. I couldn’t see what it was. I know it’s not the black Jeep; that belongs in another story. I was getting hung up on the details, though, and that directly countered Steinbeck’s advice, so I typed in “(his car)” and kept going.

Then I walked into the village, paying particular attention to the vehicles around me in hope that one would strike a chord. And, much to my chagrin, one did.

Since I am such a car fiend, I try to populate my stories with vehicles I myself would like to drive. I am also a Mustang snob. My wee sister, who drives a 2006, is constantly subjected to my scorn on the purity of the breed and how Ford totally missed when they tried to recreate the classic body style using modern technology—kind of like George Lucas continually reworking (and re-releasing) Star Wars because CDI is so much better now than what he had to work with in the 1970s. Because you can doesn’t always mean you should. (Good advice, Ru; maybe you should take it when you think of revamping some of your old writing!) So imagine my surprise when a shiny black convertible cruised along my sightline and it was no stretch to picture Cristal’s lover behind the wheel. Then I recognized the make and model, and my hair buzzed out like I’d been Tasered. Augh! A black plastic Mustang! Oh, noooooooo! Say it isn’t so! What does that say about the character? He’s supposed to be a hero, a real Joe Cool, a worthy recipient of my protagonist’s heart. Well, I’ll tell you … in truth I fear he’s a bit of a bad boy and Cristal might be in for some trouble with him, in which case the fake Pony is probably a righteous choice for him.

I want to warn Cristal that he may be bad news, but I’m just the scribe. She is trying to convince herself that she should feel something for him, given how intimate she has already been with him, so I have no idea how this is going to end. Well, I hope. I’ll have to keep writing and see …

Auto Biography VI

“Black Jeep”

He drives a black Jeep, a hardtop Renegade or Rubicon that resembles the thousand other black hardtop Jeeps cruising around town. I don’t know the year; Jeeps look pretty much the same no matter how old they may be. His has chunky tires and an impressive stereo—I hear Pearl Jam playing when heʼs idling at a stoplight.

He has curly dark hair and the lanky grace of a hockey player, slightly at odds with solid ground but a guaranteed swan on the ice. Heʼs handsome, of course, with bright dark eyes and an irrepressible grin. No slave to fashion, heʼs usually in jeans and a button t-shirt. His style hints at a love of the outdoors, of hiking in the wilderness or windsurfing along the sea coast. Heʼs a nature boy, tricky to capture and trickier to tame, but like all wild creatures, if you are quiet and bide your time, he will come.

I donʼt know who he is, but I want to find out, so Iʼll be quiet and bide my time, and one day, he will come.