22 May 1999: A New Car!

This time, you say "A new car!" just like Bob Barker, no line change.

RDC wondered whether the Terrapin should be detailed before we traded it in. I think detailing is just the grossest waste of funds and resources: it's a car. Does it run? Yes? Then drive it. The detailing would have cost $99, and I bet the detailers would have had a great laugh at a stripped Tercel with ripped seats getting that kind of attention, but they were deprived. For a fifth of that, it was washed, waxed, vacuumed, and Armor-All'd, still by people other than us, which was the only thing important to me. He drove it to the dealer, and it behaved the whole way, and the dealership's test drive consisted of driving it from one side of the parking lot to the other, so its dicey radiator didn't get a chance to perform. It earned the Blue Book price we hoped for but didn't expect, and after four hours of faxing and credit checking and tedious financial hassles, RDC left the Terrapin there and drove off in our new Subaru Impreza Outback.

Oh the bliss.

I still think driving is best with windows down and air-conditioning therefore unnecessary, but driving a car with a black vinyl interior and no A/C in as ruthlessly sunny a place as mile-high Denver has given me a new appreciation for the luxury that cooling power is. Since the interior is gray and the windows are tinted and the seats are cloth instead of vinyl, however, it doesn't seem to get as hot as the Terrapin, at least not yet, in May.

I bussed from work to the mall and met RDC there. He said he might look for a birthday present for me, and soon enough he pressed something into my hand, "I got something for you." It was, of course, the car key. What a good present! I had to pee before we drove home and I did that, then after I bought a couple of cards we headed for the parking garage. I was going to drive, so I asked for the car key. "You're kidding me," said RDC. I wasn't.

What I noticed, running, was that I could run, not only at all but also down stairs. And there was no way the car key could be gone. Not now, not on the first day. I threw myself into the bathroom, whose dozen toilets are each in a little room with a big shelf for all your packages (it's a swanky mall). Naturally my stall was taken, yet as I knocked on the door there was no answer. When I spoke, the woman did answer, warily: no key on the shelf, but maybe the cleaning lady had seen it? In the vestibule stood the janitor with her cart. She had seen me gallop in and now out, and she smiled and gestured toward her cart, then lifted a few layers of towels. There lay the car key.

I thanked her profusely in English and regularly in Spanish, since I only know to modify "gracias" with "muchos" but nothing more poetic. Then I didn't want to drive home, because I'd already tested my luck--I didn't want to test it further by not having Banzai in the car. Does that make me superstitious? Maybe. I don't want to be anything of the sort; I've driven with Banzai since I could drive and will continue to. RDC had cued a song for me to drive to, but it worked as well to ride to: "Eyes of the World" live on an evening Branford Marsalis decided to play with the Grateful Dead, so it has wonderful saxophone solos.

The car is nice. We like the car. The car is good. We like the car a lot.

At home, RDC dug through his bag for the other keys. He gets the nicer one with the plastic at the top--there must be technical words for the parts of keys, the part you grasp and the stem that's cut to match tumblers--because he carries it singly; I get the plain metal one because I use a keychain. The valet key goes in my treasure chest as a spare. Seconds later I was hunting for my key. Damn. It wasn't a good day, key-wise. I had thrown it onto my knapsack on my way toward my treasure chest, and having deposited the spare I was going to put my key onto its keychain. No key. I am surely the stupidest creature ever to lumber across the earth.

I dumped the entire bag onto the floor and checked the every pocket, thinking the key could have fallen into the deep narrow checkbook slot beyond the reach of my fingers. Nothing. I put everything back, one item at a time, riffling through the pad of checks and unfolding my wallet. Nothing. After everything was back in place I slung the pack to its usual resting spot, and I couldn't wait for RDC to come back with dinner so he could drive me to a sanitarium. Next to my foot was the key. Damn.

That was the end of our exciting Friday.

Today we took the car up into the mountains and over Guanella Pass. I took the car up to Georgetown, RDC took it over the pass, and I took over again on the other side. Before we got out of the city, we evaded a drunkard in a big old Murkan boat and called 911 on his irresponsible self, and then up I-70 we climbed. And we climbed! No staggering, no choking, nothing of whatever the Terrapin did instead of climbing. We used to floor the Terrapin in 3rd gear to get up the foothills, and if any slower vehicle cut us off, the Terrapin just choked. Not today. Up up up, into the foothills, past Red Rocks, over the hogbacks, past the "Sleeper" house (now abandoned), past the bison herd (captive, belonging to the Denver Buffalo Company), past one of Buffalo Bill's graves (which I hope the bison can poop on freely), through a bit of Arapahoe National Forest (although too late in the day for bighorn sheep sightings), and into Idaho Springs.

The old mining towns are depressed now, I suppose unavoidably, and this one, nestled in the river valley that the interstate takes advantage of, lives off the ski traffic and has bad air. But many of them are lovely, walkable, filled with wooden frame houses painted in the vibrant colors you want throughout dark winters. The eastern end of Idaho Springs caters to the skibound traffic with cheesy restaurants and cheap motels, but the quaint western end has a Carnegie library.

We stopped in Safeway to pee and get snacks. A pudgy matron closed the door to the women's room just as we entered the back area and hadn't emerged by the time RDC came out of the men's room. I asked him to wait for me as I too used the men's room. Once again I was thankful to be an accomplished peer who needs no seat. There was no way I was going to touch that. At least there were hot water and paper towels, so I could wash my hands and then touch nothing else, neither handle nor faucet nor knob, until I was back among the pesticide-ridden produce and could feel clean again. When I came out, she still hadn't finished. Anyway, I wasn't arrested for using the men's room, which was a good thing.

RDC got Red Bull and I got oj, and with Fig Newtons, blueberry Nutrigrains, and baked chips, we left. I tried the Red Bull. It takes like Robutussin or something else I was given as a sick child, comforting and nostalgic and not what I would expect a stimulant to taste like. RDC took over driving now, and we continued on to Georgetown, "The Town that John Denver Saved," where the Guanella Pass road begins.

I guess developers wanted to put condominiums into Georgetown, although it's still below the last climb to Loveland (a small, no-account ski mountain) and a climb and descent through Eisenhower Tunnel to Summit County and the main ski areas. John Denver campaigned with name and money and somehow prevented the town from being Aspenized.

("Aspenized" is the Colorado word for it; I personally like Aspen but of course I didn't know it before it did itself to itself.)

Georgetown is as pretty as Idaho Springs, and the highway runs alongside it instead of through it. And there are no condos. For those or other reasons, the town hasn't been overrun with convenience stores and it's lovely throughout. One part of it we saw in slow motion when another big ol' tank of a Murkan car pulled abruptly into the road ahead of us, the driver not looking to his left at all. He proceeded to creep along at about fifteen miles an hour, brakes on, occasionally putting on his blinker as he and his passenger wondered where to turn. I was laughing: these people were the living stereotype. RDC wasn't laughing: he was driving. Finally they made one of the dozens of turns they'd signaled for, and seeing their faces only confirmed what we already knew. They had an interminable, progressive disease, DWA: Driving While Aged.

Anyway, they did turn, and almost immediately we commenced turning too, lots and lots of switchbacks as we climbed above Georgetown. As we ascended, the little lakes and reservoirs we passed had progressively more ice on them. We stopped at one with a crust at its upstream end. The ice clung to rocks several feet over the water, so it seems like the water level has fallen considerably since the ice formed, which I don't understand. There should be more water now with the spring run-off. Whatever: they were all reservoirs, and so all their water levels were controlled by humans.

And the Impreza on the washboard dirt roads with rocks and potholes! The lap of luxury, it was. You didn't have to seek out the potholes; they were unavoidable. But the all-wheel drive assured the car of its footing, nothing rattled, and the CD player didn't even skip. I had put in Eric Clapton's From the Cradle leaving the house, and before Georgetown we put in the Grateful Dead's American Beauty. Except for "Candyman," and not even excepting "Candyman" according to RDC, this is a great driving album for a perfect blue sunny day. And "Ripple" came on, the best song on the album and one of my favorite Dead songs, and the Impreza got its name.

RDC needs to name his cars after Dead songs, just as I need to drive cars only in the company of Banzai. His first car, a candy-apple red Volvo station wagon, was Sugaree, and then of course the Terrapin. Now Ripple. Probably.

We feasted our eyes driving between 14ers with a huge storm front pouring in from the Divide. When we stopped at the top of the pass, we saw the few, the proud, the insane, tromping off with skis strapped to either side of their backpacks. The sensible people were coming off the mountains, down by noon and safe from afternoon storms. And then we drove on. After all, we were driving.

The lakes at the top were not reservoirs but natural and still completely iced over. I put my toes into lakes and reservoirs along the way that had ice around their edges, and I hope that sometime in the late summer, in August, I can swim in one. What's 11,000 feet? Just a pleasant chill.

The descent was faster than the ascent, or so it seemed, and suddenly we passed over cattle grates and were on flats. So it was my turn again, and with the Cowboy Junkies I drove us home.

The car is nice. We like the car. The car is good. We like the car a lot.

It was DMB's birthday and we left a message before setting out. We checked the status of phone service a couple of times on the way, and while we had full service on the north side of Guanella Pass, it dropped out in the wilderness of the south side. In civilization again, service returned but outside our area, which is the basic cross of I-25 from New Mexico to Wyoming and I-70 from Utah to Kansas. We were far enough from either to garner roaming charges. This was when DMB called back, though, and I picked up. "You're driving!" she reprimanded. "No, we just pulled over to switch places. Now I'm driving again so here's RDC." After they hung up, RDC and I wondered where exactly the immediate service area became roaming service area. "All roads lead to Roam," I told him, and nearly peed with laughter. He didn't. He's not the classicist I am, and furthermore I nearly pierced his eardrum.

At Alfalfa's we sampled several pestos and a seeded French loaf. The attendant overseeing all of this kept pronouncing "pain" as an American hurt rather than a French bread, which didn't dissuade us from buying both scrumptious loaf and succulent cilantro pesto for supper, in front of movies.

I rented "Star Wars." I've seen "Jaws" a bunch more times than "Star Wars"; this is the first time I've seen "Star Wars" since I saw the "special edition" in the theatre, which was the first time I had seen it in years. So anyway this was somehow the first time that I noticed that John Williams apparently wrote only one piece of music to accompany the blowing up of a large deadly thing at the last instant.

And it's not the special effects that 22 years of technology have been unkind to. It's the acting. Where did they get these losers?

And why didn't Chewbacca get a medal at the end? And did you know Lucas based that march through troops bit on a scene from "Triumph of the Will"? (It's a propaganda movie directed by the brilliant [which is why Lucas used it, despite the politics] Leni Riefenstahl about Hitler.)

Oh, and CNN this morning asked some folks older than the regular demographic what was happened on May 19th. Not one knew, but when the reporter told two retiree couples "Star Wars," they did realize. She asked another woman if she expected to see it, and the woman said no, that Venice or Florence were more her thing. Boomer. Hmm, see a $7.50 movie or flit to Italy?

And now, "Elizabeth."