I drove the Nissan to work today. A small, barely notiecable exhaust leak in the Nissan had developed into a land based foghorn, warning anyone and everyone that the car was coming.
There are certain lines that I am not willing to cross…and this is one of them.
I can drive a car with faded paint (the Paseo). I can drive a truck with no interior and a few rust spots. (Wild Bill) But I will not, nor will I let my family drive a car that sounds like the Carpathia coming to the rescue the Titanic in the thick fog!
Whenever I am driving a car with an automatic transmission (like the Nissan) and have to park on an incline, I pull into my space, put the car in neutral, engage the emergency brake. I then put the shifter into “Park” and turn the engine off. I do that to avoid putting stress on the transmission when the car rolls back that unavoidable few inches when my foot comes off of the brake.
My space in the company parking lot is on an incline. I parked and went inside and got busy.
The man who sits directly across from me in the office starts work an hour later than I. He and I talk about cars pretty often. We share an affinity for inexpensive cars that run well and drive nicely.
Since he is pretty skilled amateur mechanic, I am always picking his brain and asking his advice or recommendations. Conversely, he has taken an interest in my various vehicles and will usually ask me how this car or that is running, if I got the repair done that we had talked about, etc.
He is usually a little grumpy when he arrives for work. I don’t know why. Once he settles in for the day, he is great to work with.
This morning he was practically giddy upon his arrival. Instead of his usual routine of wordlessly walking straight toward his desk and turning on his computer, he came toward my desk trying his best to hide a sly smile that kept trying to break out.
As he got closer, he reached into his pocket and pulled out his Blackberry, punched a few buttons and said, “I got something that I want you to see” while handing his phone to me.
“You bought one!?”
I thought that he was showing me that he had bought an early 90’s Nissan Maxima that looked just like mine.
He wasn’t…
“When I first came over the hill and saw a white car in the street, I thought ‘Why are the cops at at our facility?’ Then I realized that it wasn’t the cops. When I got a little closer, I then I wondered, “What is your car doing in the street?”
As he was talking, it started to dawn on me that he was showing me a picture of my car…
in the middle of the street! (Click on this picture!)
When I got out of the car the first time, I didn’t put the car in “Park” and I didn’t fully engage the emergency brake. So the car must have slowly creeped down the incline and out into the street.
If I didn’t put the emergency brake on at all, the car would have rolled down the incline, crossed the street and crashed into the office of Charlie’s Collision Center!
As it was, all that was damaged was my ego! By the time I got downstairs to drive it back into my space, several other guys had their phones out taking pictures!
