Still swimmin'

Boy is it hot here. I say it every year, but every year it surprises me how hot it gets. I know the actual heat because my air conditioner in my car decided to only work when it wanted to. I would go into my sweet little 13-year-old car, caress it's hot little dashboard and whisper that I would change it's oil and wipe the bird doo-doo off the roof if it would just spew cold air for a few moments. Once in a while it would listen to my pleading, but more often than not I was forced to drive the beast to work and hope my sweat stains weren't terribly visible.

While John was out in the hot hotness fixing my air conditioning (woooo hooo for handy husbands!!) I was counting my blessings and reflecting on the different vehicles I have driven in my life. There hasn't been many - and it's mostly because my little Civic that has air conditioning issues and the inability to open the driver's side window has been my little Civic since I graduated from college the first time (1997). Even with all it's little problems, my Civic doesn't even come close to the worst car I ever drove . . .

I love telling people about the van that I drove the summer between my junior and senior year of college. It is one of those "I'll be more grateful for what I have" kind of stories.

My parents bought a slightly-used Toyota mini-van when I was about 10 years old. It was silver with red leatherette interior. There was some kind of story about how it was used by a hockey team before we bought it, but we just used it to haul six children up and down the West coast. We moved to Oregon and back to California in that van. I remember several road trips and camping adventures. By the time I was in college, the poor thing had almost 300,0000 miles on it and was on it's second engine.

Anyone who owned one of these little mini-vans probably, at one point, had it stolen. Thieves liked the ability to pop the ignition out with a screwdriver and drive off. Ours was stolen out of our driveway my senior year of high school and was driven two blocks away from our house. We never got the ignition switch fixed so you had to start it with a screwdriver - or an old toothbrush (it wasn't too picky).

Of course, by the time I was allowed to use it, there was no air conditioning and it had a "self-changing oil" feature that required that I fill the hot engine (that was located under the driver's seat) with oil every time I filled it up with gas. Did I mention that I drove this in the summer in Arkansas? This car is the sole reason why I will never get leather seating in a vehicle. Sweat and leatherette don't mix.

So it had a funky ignition and it was hot and I had to keep adding oil - no big deal, right? But wait - there's more! This tank of a vehicle didn't have reverse. You read that correctly - no reverse! Going forward was usually not a problem - but you try and put the thing in reverse and it would spurt and sputter and simply refuse to budge. While I was driving this car, I always had to remember to drive through the parking space or I would have to find someone to help me push it backwards. It happened often enough that the security guards on my parking deck knew what I needed when I started walking towards them. I guess when you're really grateful for something you forget that you have a crappy car without reverse. And I really was grateful! It was a vehicle. It was virtually free (except for the gas and the oil) so I could save all my money for school. It got me to work and back without major incident.

I hope that I didn't seem ungrateful that summer. By the next summer, the poor mini-van was toast. I drove it for the last summer of it's life - it's kindof poetic in a way.