Growing Older On A Treadmill Chapter 7 (Sample Vehicle Chapter for Crowd fund)
I love motor vehicles, but I don’t like to drive fast. I’m not a fan of the interstate nor a big fan of SUV type vehicles. Ah, motor vehicles, they too, are a big Swiss army knife. They do everything we want them to. They’re work horses, They’re transportation from point A to point B, They’re speed demons, They’re the pretty women we dress up, Travelling music boxes, death machines, We sing songs about them and from a bird’s eye view, they are the mobile bird toilet targets. It’s not just the vehicles we love or care about, It’s the stories behind them that we love to share with folks about the vehicles we have or dream about.
I have a lot of stories about one car in particular. My mom brought home a Chrysler Lebaron convertible. It was all black with gold trimming The interior was light brown and made of suede. Many bad things happened to that car, The Stereo shorted out so I only had AM radio for a whole year before installing a new radio. My mom backed up into a tree and put a huge dent mark in the trunk leaving a huge hole. We had to replace it with another trunk from a lebaron but the trunk we got was painted white and not black like the rest of the car. It was a pearl white. We got it repainted black later during the car’s lifespan. When the Trunk was still white, It gave it that cop car look that gave the impression that it was a cop car from a Law enforcement television series.
Another good story is when my Dad and I accidently blew up the interior of the car with fireworks leaving burn marks all over. We were setting off fireworks after a rain on a fourth of July. The ground was still damp and soft and we thought it was a good idea to watch our fireworks with the garage door open and by sitting on the trunk of the car. The top was down on the car and we weren’t really concerned about it.
We decided to put a bottle rocket down in the grass and light it. The thing shifted in the dirt towards us and we did our best impression of action movie explosion dives in opposite directions of off the trunk of the car. The bottle rocket hit the radio and started sparking and blew up in the car creating burn marks all over the interior. Me and dad learned our lesson that day to KEEP THE GARAGE DOOR CLOSED WHEN USING
1
FIREWORKS! Mom was beyond furious and wanted to go SheHulk on the both of us. That is a time I will never forget .Learning is a part of the purpose of life and we definitely learned something that day.
One of my other favorite stories of that car is when me and a friend of mine, went to go pick up Metal Gear Solid 3 for Playstation 2 the day it came out. We were so eager to play it. We drove to the mall where there was a gamestop to go get the game.
Back then, I was obsessed with having a cowboy hat so I got one as a birthday present one year. My friend who went with me sported a mohawk hairstyle and I had my cowboy hat on while driving. People were staring at us and laughing and we could never figure out why. We hit one of the longest stop lights in my town. it took so long, that the both of us started singing the jeopardy theme and by the time we got done singing the whole theme one time through, The instant we hit the last note. It turned green and we went on our way. People were still looking at us and laughing at us still trying to figure out why. We got to the mall to pick up the game and we drove home and thats when we figured out why people were laughing at us. There were some women staring at us laughing in a car in front of us on the way home. It dawned on us that I looked like a cowboy with my hat on and he was my mohican indian buddy. The modern day version of The Lone Ranger and Tonto in a wannabe cop car Chrysler Lebaron convertible, People who looked like we were members in a village people cover band.
I have many other good stories of that car that I can’t recount them all but one of my other favorites was the radio shorting out and the only thing I could listen to was either sports or conservative talk radio on the AM radio band. Just for fun, I would crank up Neal Boortz, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Michael Savage at stop lights while people were making frowny faces at me because people are so mad at conservatives. I however didn’t care and though it was truly funny.
Cars these days are on the road are not as fun anymore as they were in the years of the past. Everyday I see the same cars over and over and they have the same colors and it just leaves me a dying hope for the auto industry. Cars are also getting so small that you need to have a degree from a clown college in order to operate them with
2
passengers in the car. Today’s make and models all seem to have the same conservative body style with very few accented change here and there. It’s all the same to me, Toyota, Ford, Honda, Scion, Dodge, Chrysler, Chevy, Nissan, Jeep and Jaguar, Mercedes Benz, Mazda, Volkswagen, BMW, Subaru, Lincoln, Cadillac, Hyundai and Audi and KIA to. There are so many car models. They all look alike to me and it drives me crazy. Why be the same when we can be creative. I know there’s this revival of classic pony cars coming back with the Camaro, Challenger and Mustang but there has to be more.
Speaking of the colors, The cars I see on the road today are all a shade of a grays, blacks, blues, reds, whites and beige or brown, Once and awhile you see a green or a yellow. Me and dad were perusing for a new car to shop around to get an idea about pricing. We went around to many dealerships. We stopped at a Toyota dealership where a friend of mine was working and he showed us around and we looked at Camrys. Most of those cars were white and there is a HUGE COLOSSAL PROBLEM WITH WHITE CARS! You walk into a parking lot and EVERYONE AND THEIR DOG HAS A WHITE CAR THAT NEARLY ALL LOOK THE SAME! You’re all thinking, “Dude, Where’s my car?” The only way to tell the difference is by the license plate or the front grill or if you decorated it in some fashion to stand out. Different should never fit in, different is simply that, being different from another.That is my advice to the automobile industry in America, and I have some ideas for the future. I don’t know what it’s like across the world but they might want to read in on this as well.
Think of those car designers of yesteryear and think how they could design a car. Think of Ed “Big Daddy” Roth. Pull out design concepts from yesteryear and think of how you can remake it for a modern time. Think of Harley Earl and John Delorean minus the drug problem. Think Like Harley Earl and Jim Wangers. Take notes from every country’s designers. Take their concepts and share notes between each other. Pimp ze automobile. Take hints from custom vehicle builders. Those people are getting crazier every day with their designs. Heck, Let the video gaming industry take over the automobile industry for awhile and see what they can design. Let Turn Ten studios, The
3
Creators of Forza Motorsport for the Xbox. Give those people a chance to see what they can do. In the game, They let their fanbase use a vector graphics program and paint and put decals all over a car. It’s a truly fun thing to do in that game if you know how to work it properly. Let Kazunori Yamauchi and his video game studio of Polyphony Digital, Inc. Internet vehicle blogs should have a say in this as well. The one I read all the time is Jalopnik. They’re awesome and crazy and have brilliant ideas and have excellent vehicle articles. also OFFER MORE COLORS THAN THE BLAND COLORS I MENTIONED ESPECIALLY WHITE! It should be a rule as well that if you create a vehicle and give it a name of a car that's going to be revived from the past, give it retro styling so it looks like that car from the past to give it the illusion of the car from the past so people can share stories of that car from the past. That rule should be automatic.
I know what you readers are thinking, ”Hey author, if you know so much about the car industry, then can I ask what your dream vehicle is?” Why dear reader that is a good question to ask. My dream car would be a 1969 Pontiac GTO Judge two door hardtop with a pixelated lime green paint job with one big dark green pixelated stripe going down the middle of it I would have a star wars bumper sticker on the bumper along with another bumper sticker of the Mystery Science theater 3000 silhouette. The car would have an autostick transmission so I could switch between Automatic and Manual transmission on the fly with no problem. It would be a car that I would love to take a beautiful girl to the beach with (while listening to the Beach Boys) and also to bring the car to classic car shows. I’m honestly dead serious about this. Vehicles should always be fun no matter what purpose they’re built for.
I love going to car shows, Car shows have been a favorite activity of mine ever since I have had a love for classic cars. More people need to own Classic cars and join in on the fun of owning one. Every time I see a classic car on the road, I give that person a cheer because that person is different from the rest. Again, different should never fit in. It is simply that different from another.
One of the best car show stories I have is when I was at a car show at a dealership. Me and my dad were so hungry. We found the food truck and ordered some
4
food. I ordered a hot dog with some mustard and a soda. I noticed there were various sauces and spotted a sauce that I have seen before on a family reunion trip. The hot sauce was called, PAIN 100%. I poured a little bit of it on my hot dog but a whole lot spilled out onto my hot dog. I didn’t want to order another hot dog so I ate that hot dog anyway, BAD IDEA AND LESSON LEARNED!!! The rest of the day I felt my head ache so bad and my stomach was on fire. It felt like I ate an H.R. Giger alien and it was crawling around ready to burst out of my stomach and scream to scare people. I walked back to my dad’s car and barfed on a pile of ants. If you have too much hot sauce on a hot dog, order another or ask for another dog. Another part of the purpose of life trying to teach me what I needed to learn.
One year for Valentine’s Day, Mom gave me and dad tickets to a huge classic car auction show in America. It was the Barrett Jackson Collector Car Auction and Auto Show. You might have seen it before. It’s a televised car auction where they have hundreds upon hundreds of classic cars go up for auction on TV. It’s treated like a giant sporting event over the course of a weekend. It is complete with camera crews and commentators talking to you about their opinions and details on every car that goes up on the auction block. If you want to see your dream car on TV or up close or in real life, BarrettJackson Collector Car Auction would be the place to go or tune into when it airs on TV.
It is not just a car auction, that is only one small portion of it. You literally have to be there to see the entire thing! It is Disneyland for cars, car companies, and most of all, Car people. It is a convention with booths with people selling merchandise. Companies have booths selling their products and they have product demonstrations. Artists have booths selling their car art. Car Memorabilia is everywhere across the entire auction and it gets sold off early before they even start auctioning off the cars. You can see new car models for the year and the next year from an assortment of companies. Some companies set up a test drive where you can test drive new vehicles. You can also do ridealongs in the bigger more powerful cars. When I went to the show, me and my dad went 100 mph in a brand new corvette that year. I literally had my tongue
5
stick out like a dog looking out a car window.
There were so many cars that went up for auction, there were more cars than the total number of cop cars from both Blues Brothers movie combined. The auction as I said before is only a small portion. There is so much to see if you ever get a chance to go. It is an awesome experience. The atmosphere there is excellent and it was a great escape for a weekend from mundane life. Me and Dad thanked my mom by buying her a scale model car of her favorite car, a classic 1971 Jaguar XKE. She liked the car when she saw the movie, “Harold and Maude”. It’s one of her favorite movies of all time. me and dad thought it was a very nice thank you gift for getting us tickets to Barrett-Jackson.
6
I love motor vehicles, but I don’t like to drive fast. I’m not a fan of the interstate nor a big fan of SUV type vehicles. Ah, motor vehicles, they too, are a big Swiss army knife. They do everything we want them to. They’re work horses, They’re transportation from point A to point B, They’re speed demons, They’re the pretty women we dress up, Travelling music boxes, death machines, We sing songs about them and from a bird’s eye view, they are the mobile bird toilet targets. It’s not just the vehicles we love or care about, It’s the stories behind them that we love to share with folks about the vehicles we have or dream about.
I have a lot of stories about one car in particular. My mom brought home a Chrysler Lebaron convertible. It was all black with gold trimming The interior was light brown and made of suede. Many bad things happened to that car, The Stereo shorted out so I only had AM radio for a whole year before installing a new radio. My mom backed up into a tree and put a huge dent mark in the trunk leaving a huge hole. We had to replace it with another trunk from a lebaron but the trunk we got was painted white and not black like the rest of the car. It was a pearl white. We got it repainted black later during the car’s lifespan. When the Trunk was still white, It gave it that cop car look that gave the impression that it was a cop car from a Law enforcement television series.
Another good story is when my Dad and I accidently blew up the interior of the car with fireworks leaving burn marks all over. We were setting off fireworks after a rain on a fourth of July. The ground was still damp and soft and we thought it was a good idea to watch our fireworks with the garage door open and by sitting on the trunk of the car. The top was down on the car and we weren’t really concerned about it.
We decided to put a bottle rocket down in the grass and light it. The thing shifted in the dirt towards us and we did our best impression of action movie explosion dives in opposite directions of off the trunk of the car. The bottle rocket hit the radio and started sparking and blew up in the car creating burn marks all over the interior. Me and dad learned our lesson that day to KEEP THE GARAGE DOOR CLOSED WHEN USING
1
FIREWORKS! Mom was beyond furious and wanted to go SheHulk on the both of us. That is a time I will never forget .Learning is a part of the purpose of life and we definitely learned something that day.
One of my other favorite stories of that car is when me and a friend of mine, went to go pick up Metal Gear Solid 3 for Playstation 2 the day it came out. We were so eager to play it. We drove to the mall where there was a gamestop to go get the game.
Back then, I was obsessed with having a cowboy hat so I got one as a birthday present one year. My friend who went with me sported a mohawk hairstyle and I had my cowboy hat on while driving. People were staring at us and laughing and we could never figure out why. We hit one of the longest stop lights in my town. it took so long, that the both of us started singing the jeopardy theme and by the time we got done singing the whole theme one time through, The instant we hit the last note. It turned green and we went on our way. People were still looking at us and laughing at us still trying to figure out why. We got to the mall to pick up the game and we drove home and thats when we figured out why people were laughing at us. There were some women staring at us laughing in a car in front of us on the way home. It dawned on us that I looked like a cowboy with my hat on and he was my mohican indian buddy. The modern day version of The Lone Ranger and Tonto in a wannabe cop car Chrysler Lebaron convertible, People who looked like we were members in a village people cover band.
I have many other good stories of that car that I can’t recount them all but one of my other favorites was the radio shorting out and the only thing I could listen to was either sports or conservative talk radio on the AM radio band. Just for fun, I would crank up Neal Boortz, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Michael Savage at stop lights while people were making frowny faces at me because people are so mad at conservatives. I however didn’t care and though it was truly funny.
Cars these days are on the road are not as fun anymore as they were in the years of the past. Everyday I see the same cars over and over and they have the same colors and it just leaves me a dying hope for the auto industry. Cars are also getting so small that you need to have a degree from a clown college in order to operate them with
2
passengers in the car. Today’s make and models all seem to have the same conservative body style with very few accented change here and there. It’s all the same to me, Toyota, Ford, Honda, Scion, Dodge, Chrysler, Chevy, Nissan, Jeep and Jaguar, Mercedes Benz, Mazda, Volkswagen, BMW, Subaru, Lincoln, Cadillac, Hyundai and Audi and KIA to. There are so many car models. They all look alike to me and it drives me crazy. Why be the same when we can be creative. I know there’s this revival of classic pony cars coming back with the Camaro, Challenger and Mustang but there has to be more.
Speaking of the colors, The cars I see on the road today are all a shade of a grays, blacks, blues, reds, whites and beige or brown, Once and awhile you see a green or a yellow. Me and dad were perusing for a new car to shop around to get an idea about pricing. We went around to many dealerships. We stopped at a Toyota dealership where a friend of mine was working and he showed us around and we looked at Camrys. Most of those cars were white and there is a HUGE COLOSSAL PROBLEM WITH WHITE CARS! You walk into a parking lot and EVERYONE AND THEIR DOG HAS A WHITE CAR THAT NEARLY ALL LOOK THE SAME! You’re all thinking, “Dude, Where’s my car?” The only way to tell the difference is by the license plate or the front grill or if you decorated it in some fashion to stand out. Different should never fit in, different is simply that, being different from another.That is my advice to the automobile industry in America, and I have some ideas for the future. I don’t know what it’s like across the world but they might want to read in on this as well.
Think of those car designers of yesteryear and think how they could design a car. Think of Ed “Big Daddy” Roth. Pull out design concepts from yesteryear and think of how you can remake it for a modern time. Think of Harley Earl and John Delorean minus the drug problem. Think Like Harley Earl and Jim Wangers. Take notes from every country’s designers. Take their concepts and share notes between each other. Pimp ze automobile. Take hints from custom vehicle builders. Those people are getting crazier every day with their designs. Heck, Let the video gaming industry take over the automobile industry for awhile and see what they can design. Let Turn Ten studios, The
3
Creators of Forza Motorsport for the Xbox. Give those people a chance to see what they can do. In the game, They let their fanbase use a vector graphics program and paint and put decals all over a car. It’s a truly fun thing to do in that game if you know how to work it properly. Let Kazunori Yamauchi and his video game studio of Polyphony Digital, Inc. Internet vehicle blogs should have a say in this as well. The one I read all the time is Jalopnik. They’re awesome and crazy and have brilliant ideas and have excellent vehicle articles. also OFFER MORE COLORS THAN THE BLAND COLORS I MENTIONED ESPECIALLY WHITE! It should be a rule as well that if you create a vehicle and give it a name of a car that's going to be revived from the past, give it retro styling so it looks like that car from the past to give it the illusion of the car from the past so people can share stories of that car from the past. That rule should be automatic.
I know what you readers are thinking, ”Hey author, if you know so much about the car industry, then can I ask what your dream vehicle is?” Why dear reader that is a good question to ask. My dream car would be a 1969 Pontiac GTO Judge two door hardtop with a pixelated lime green paint job with one big dark green pixelated stripe going down the middle of it I would have a star wars bumper sticker on the bumper along with another bumper sticker of the Mystery Science theater 3000 silhouette. The car would have an autostick transmission so I could switch between Automatic and Manual transmission on the fly with no problem. It would be a car that I would love to take a beautiful girl to the beach with (while listening to the Beach Boys) and also to bring the car to classic car shows. I’m honestly dead serious about this. Vehicles should always be fun no matter what purpose they’re built for.
I love going to car shows, Car shows have been a favorite activity of mine ever since I have had a love for classic cars. More people need to own Classic cars and join in on the fun of owning one. Every time I see a classic car on the road, I give that person a cheer because that person is different from the rest. Again, different should never fit in. It is simply that different from another.
One of the best car show stories I have is when I was at a car show at a dealership. Me and my dad were so hungry. We found the food truck and ordered some
4
food. I ordered a hot dog with some mustard and a soda. I noticed there were various sauces and spotted a sauce that I have seen before on a family reunion trip. The hot sauce was called, PAIN 100%. I poured a little bit of it on my hot dog but a whole lot spilled out onto my hot dog. I didn’t want to order another hot dog so I ate that hot dog anyway, BAD IDEA AND LESSON LEARNED!!! The rest of the day I felt my head ache so bad and my stomach was on fire. It felt like I ate an H.R. Giger alien and it was crawling around ready to burst out of my stomach and scream to scare people. I walked back to my dad’s car and barfed on a pile of ants. If you have too much hot sauce on a hot dog, order another or ask for another dog. Another part of the purpose of life trying to teach me what I needed to learn.
One year for Valentine’s Day, Mom gave me and dad tickets to a huge classic car auction show in America. It was the Barrett Jackson Collector Car Auction and Auto Show. You might have seen it before. It’s a televised car auction where they have hundreds upon hundreds of classic cars go up for auction on TV. It’s treated like a giant sporting event over the course of a weekend. It is complete with camera crews and commentators talking to you about their opinions and details on every car that goes up on the auction block. If you want to see your dream car on TV or up close or in real life, BarrettJackson Collector Car Auction would be the place to go or tune into when it airs on TV.
It is not just a car auction, that is only one small portion of it. You literally have to be there to see the entire thing! It is Disneyland for cars, car companies, and most of all, Car people. It is a convention with booths with people selling merchandise. Companies have booths selling their products and they have product demonstrations. Artists have booths selling their car art. Car Memorabilia is everywhere across the entire auction and it gets sold off early before they even start auctioning off the cars. You can see new car models for the year and the next year from an assortment of companies. Some companies set up a test drive where you can test drive new vehicles. You can also do ridealongs in the bigger more powerful cars. When I went to the show, me and my dad went 100 mph in a brand new corvette that year. I literally had my tongue
5
stick out like a dog looking out a car window.
There were so many cars that went up for auction, there were more cars than the total number of cop cars from both Blues Brothers movie combined. The auction as I said before is only a small portion. There is so much to see if you ever get a chance to go. It is an awesome experience. The atmosphere there is excellent and it was a great escape for a weekend from mundane life. Me and Dad thanked my mom by buying her a scale model car of her favorite car, a classic 1971 Jaguar XKE. She liked the car when she saw the movie, “Harold and Maude”. It’s one of her favorite movies of all time. me and dad thought it was a very nice thank you gift for getting us tickets to Barrett-Jackson.
6
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