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2 MAY 04: D-X GAMES
Before we get to our main topic - let's hear it for BRAD COTTER!!! The Opelika singer won the USA Network's "Nashville Star" competition Saturday night! He wins a big recording contract - which means we've probably seen the last of his free concerts outside a golf course.
(Maybe his first record should be a song of encouragement to "Jennifer" from American Idol. It seems she's been crying for a week about getting voted off.)
Now to our topic: today is a big anniversary for me - marking ten years since I bought my current car! I honestly didn't expect to have it so long. After all, my last two cars were totalled in crashes in six years or less.
My current car came to me in a very peculiar way. On the way home from church in downtown Atlanta, I was in TWO collisions - practically at opposite ends of the same entrance ramp to the Downtown Connector! Sadly, the second wreck left a driver in the other car injured. It also left several 12-packs of beer to be removed, since that car rear-ended me.
My rider and I spent much of that Saturday afternoon in an Atlanta impound yard, while we waited for a neighbor to pick us up. During the following weeks spent dealing with the insurance company, that neighbor told me in no uncertain terms: "You are going to buy a Honda Civic or a Toyota Corolla!" These new fathers can be SO authoritarian....
I should explain why this neighbor spoke this way. Leonard was an immigrant from Nigeria, who roomed with me for a few months before he became married. (I sang at his wedding, and I can sing at YOURS as well.) He can be demanding when it comes to cars -- like insisting his rent-a-car MUST be red. [True!]
Sometimes Leonard's English can be a bit fractured - but in the culture of the church we both attended at the time, a married man was the head of his house, and a single guy like me had very little power. So when he told me what car to buy, it was W.W.J.D.:What Would Jesus Drive?
With Leonard's instructions ringing in my head, I only had one real choice after work on May 2, 1994. In Atlanta, only a Honda dealer was on the MARTA line between downtown and my duplex -- Toyota wasn't.
After looking around the lot for awhile, I chose a new Honda Civic DX from Nalley Honda As I would later explain to friends, I'm a Civic-minded man....
If you're looking for my humble Honda around town, it's - wellllll - it's cranberry-colored. I dare not write "purple," as that's the color of big bad Kansas State University.
(But then again, it's certainly not the color on the Honda factory sticker - which claimed my car was red.)
What sort of a deal did I work out for my Honda? What do you mean, DEAL?! I had been driving rental cars and riding MARTA buses and trains for two months, since the two collisions. I figured I had nothing to stand on - since my only alternative was riding buses for several more days.
With a big insurance-company check for a down payment and a 36-month plan worked out, I drove my new Honda home. And before 10 minutes had passed, even before I'd changed out of work clothes and offered a prayer of thanksgiving for the car, Leonard was on the phone. Who needs angels watching over you, when nosy church neighbors live across the street?
"Richard!" Leonard said on the phone in total disbelief. "You haven't put your Club on your car yet?!?!" You know, "The Club" people put lock onto the steering wheel to guard against auto theft. Well, it wasn't a theft that cost me my OLD
car....
"Can't I at least change clothes first?" I asked Leonard. He considered that acceptable - but a short time later, he crossed the street to examine my new car. "There's a bump right here," he noted on the hood around the rod which holds it up. So? I finally had a running car - and even Cindy Crawford has a beauty mark.
No, Leonard's interest in my new car did NOT end there. He insisted on driving it home from church the next weekend! Maybe someday, he'll reveal to me he filled out J.D. Power automotive surveys for years....
If I still lived in Atlanta, my humble Honda probably would be well above 120,000 miles after ten years. But the mileage isn't even to 100,000 yet -- in part because I've lived in Columbus seven years, and in part because my neighbor Leonard now lives in Minnesota.
To be fair, Leonard made a very good call when he told me to buy a Honda Civic. It's a compact hatchback which gets very good fuel mileage - which tempts me to stick my tongue out at SUV drivers at gas stations right now.
It's on the highway where my humble Honda really shines. On the way to a family wedding two years ago, I traveled between Kentucky and Missouri at 50.2 miles per gallon! But then again, part of that came when a giant motor home was
practically on my rear bumper during a one-lane construction zone in Illinois -- so maybe it pushed me.
(I think there's another explanation for it, which I've come to realize driving compact cars for years. People DO get better gas mileage when there's a strong wind at their backs.)
There's another thing about the decision to buy a Honda Civic and not a bigger car. As a single guy, I don't need anything bigger. But which comes first here: the large impressive car, or the future wife who's impressed by them and needs them?
It turned out Saturday was a day with hidden tension for me, concerning my car. I tried to drive to church and back with the gas gauge near empty. Maybe I was a bit TOO worried about it - because I coasted down hills on Talbotton Road and Fifth Street heading home.
The church I attend expects people to fill their gas tanks before the Sabbath starts. I'd already done that twice in April, and didn't want to do it a third time. So stretch your tank, and show OPEC you're a Yank....
Thankfully, I've never run out of gas while driving - and I didn't this time, either. I made it home, then made it around a few blocks to a B.P. station after dark Saturday. Barring an emergency, I can simply wave at all the SUV's in the gas stations for the next three or four weeks.
I should note I AM cutting back on driving a bit, because gas costs so much. My once-a-month trips to Kroger stores in Auburn or Opelika are out, until prices come down. Now will someone please tell Kroger there's an empty FoodMax storefront on the Phenix City bypass? It's been waiting for them for three years....
Now some other short trips around the area on a wet weekend:
+ A funeral procession rolled down 10th Street downtown - and the hearse driver from Progressive Funeral Home pointed out the window at Veterans Parkway, directly at a driver next to me. That driver then put his vehicle in reverse and backed out a few feet. Was he trying to avoid smelling the remains?
+ I walked by South Columbus Elementary School during recess and heard a child shout, "He used the A-word!" I never realized "Alabama" was considered so disrespectful.
+ The Ledger-Enquirer reported District Attorney Gray Conger sneakily switched to the Republican party, and re-filed for re-election. What suddenly led to this change? Are all the Republicans running for Tom Buck's House seat planning to hire him as an aide?
+ A well-informed source tells your blog Trent Aric is leaving WRBL, to do TV weather in Miami. As handsome as Aric is, all he'll need is a pair of sunglasses to fit right in.
(I hope this source is better informed than the one who told me Mara Kelly was leaving WRBL a couple of months ago - because I still see HER on the air.)
+ The "Real Time" telecast from Cascade Hills Church featured a taped dramatic scene, with a real Columbus police car and an officer in uniform. It's one thing to moonlight with a second job, but with a city squad car?!
+ Instant Message to the New York Police Department: Why are you running radio ads promoting an upcoming police test at Fort Benning - for enlisted personnel ONLY? Are you suggesting Columbus officers really aren't that good?
COMING THIS WEEK: We take a big risk.... while fearing we might be developing Alzheimers....
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