Thursday, August 08, 2013

Zoom Along

A dear sweet wonderful angel loaned me a car for a few weeks. It has 5 speeds and a clutch. But I've known how to drive a clutch since my daddy taught me around age 7 or 8 in his little VW bug.

At that time VW's were not popular at all, but my father loved his bug. He would take me to an empty school parking lot. Then let me bunny hop in the VW while I learned to use a clutch.

Back in those days, the school had no fence, no gates, no guards. It just sat there empty on the weekends. It never occurred to anyone to break in or vandalize it. The school was in a neighborhood full of middle class homes. Sometimes kids would be playing ball in the fields around the school or flying a kite. The parking lot was usually empty, so it seemed like a great place to teach driving with a clutch. I never drove on streets until I had a driver's license except once in an emergency. I drove a pregnant woman to the hospital without a license.

I was sure I was going to jail for years for committing this transgression, but luckily I wasn't caught.

Monday night I drove Harley to school in the loaner car.

The next day we drove 14 miles to a dog park. It was the saddest thing we ever saw.

The massive flooding had destroyed the dog park. We didn't have a camera with us to take pictures.

It's been raining every day but once since I arrived at this new workamping in mid June.

So today, it's raining and I figured it's a good day to go shop because it's not too hot for the doggy. That means he can ride in the loaner car with me.

I only need to buy a few necessities, but it's fun to look at the massive amount of consumer selections available in America. The 23 years I lived on boats at sea and or in the Caribbean, shopping was a pain in the elbow. You couldn't find the things you needed much of the time. The prices were generally ridiculously high on what you could find, so shopping wasn't fun at all. It was a laborious chore.

Also, I was sometimes shopping for food for 12 people to eat gourmet delights without repeats for 7 or more days. That was hard work too and required several shopping buggies. I would fill one up, park it near a cashier then go fill up the next one and so on. Sometimes I had to go to several stores. Often when I wasn't looking, other shoppers took things out of my parked buggies.  It was maddening, to get back to the boat and realize I had 9 chicken breasts instead of the 12 I had put in the cart.

Today I got busy and  promptly FORGOT about the car and spent all morning cleaning and organizing the motorhome to get ready to drive it. I like to do that before I drive it around all day.

Then I remembered the car. That was why I was going out on a rainy day. Because of the car and the fact that it's not hot. Harley can ride with me in the car.

Sheesh. Maybe I will go shop for a new brain, one with better memory.

1 comment:

  1. After my heart bypass nearly two years ago, my wife has been complaining that my "rememberer" isn't working as well.

    So, finally, I went to a psychologist and he did some testing. He said it didn't show how I'd been before, but my memory and reasoning skills were lower than most other scores. Told me this wasn't unusual in cases like mine, and that the renewed blood flow from the bypass might actually improve the situation.

    But for now, I've got a GREAT excuse when I don't take out the garbage.

    ReplyDelete


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