I apologize to those of you who may have feared that I fell off the face of the earth this week. In fact, I only fell off the face of the Internet due to an absolutely brutal virus that I thought had gone away late last week but came back and brought like, 40 friends. My doctor thinks it’s just influenza but I’m thinking more along the lines of Montezuma’s Malarial Malevolence.

In any case I’ve been running a 103° fever for most of the week (it just today dipped to a “low” 100-101) along with assorted other miseries I won’t bore you with. But I just wanted to expend some of my little energy reassuring you, the Internets, that I still persevere. I should return to life sometime next week and I’ll have plenty to talk about then, I’m sure.

For now it’s back to bed, daytime TV and a gatorade overdose.

Have a better weekend than I will.

Yesterday Nik called me shortly after I had gotten to work and asked if it would be a problem for us to go back home since she wasn’t feeling well. She ended up sleeping most of the evening and I think she’s better today. But when I logged in to our team chat room this morning during my early shift, a concerned co-worker wrote:

(5:11:03 AM) xxxmo24: who's your wife doing?? is she feeling better now?
(5:11:10 AM) xxxmo24: how's not who's
(5:11:16 AM) phamilton162: hahah
(5:11:23 AM) phamilton162: that's a slightly different question

I Melt Ink

• An interesting article about football play-calling technology. Who knew there was a rule against using computers on the sidelines?
• If you haven’t already, you might want to check out StumbleUpon, which makes time-wasting surfing even more so.
• Morbidly fascinating list of facts about death.
• Gross, dude. [Thanks, Al!]

The Smallest Guy

Back in ’98 I worked for a daycare/preschool. Not exactly the most masculine of jobs, perhaps—if you subscribe to traditional gender roles—but being untrained in anything resembling early childhood education my utility there was limited. As a result my job could best be described as “human plaything.”

It was actually a pretty great job. For the most part I showed up, horsed around with a bunch of rowdy kids: Tossing footballs, attending tea parties, climbing jungle gyms, drawing pictures, playing board games, tossing the rugrats up into the air (and catching them, of course), reading stories and feeding them snacks and meals. It was like getting paid for recess.

Usually my kids were in the older age group: They went to school in the mornings and came by after school until their parents came and picked them up when they were off work. It worked pretty well since they weren’t the favorite age group for a lot of the teachers and other aides that worked there since they weren’t the cute little babies and toddlers nor were they the awe-struck and engaging preschoolers. The Kindergarten kids had their own teachers but they were old enough to be lumped in with the after school kids once regular school let out, so I played with them quite a bit as well.

Sometimes I would have a shift that started way earlier than the after school kids were due to show up. It was sort of awkward a lot because I didn’t mind hanging out with and taking care of the littler kids, and I certainly didn’t want to shy away from any responsibility but I think some of the old school daycare workers found it odd for me to be helping out in the toddler room or the nursery. At any rate there were plenty of times where I would end up taking care of pretty young kids.

One of my favorite assignments in those earlier hours was the pre-preschool room, or the Twos as we called them. As much as I liked hanging out with the after school kids (they could occasionally hold a real conversation with you and of course there was sufficient attention span to play an actual organized game or two), there is something hysterical and impressive about kids around late toddler age. For one thing, everything is pretty exciting for them: Most of them have this sort of gusto about their approach to life. What’s this new food? Dig the hands in and find out, shoveling a fistful of it in your mouth can reveal taste and texture in one motion. Efficient!

But their efforts to properly communicate are the best. They have enough cognition at that point to think and recognize and question but the language skills often lag behind so you end up with some approximation of English that is, at first, completely unintelligible but gradually becomes more refined. And an interesting thing happens when you spend a certain amount of time with them during this stage: You start to adjust your own comprehension to a level that can best decipher their stunted efforts at speech.

There was one little boy, Brian, who was in this room. Brian was my buddy. He had big buck teeth with a wicked inch-wide gap between them and a surprisingly deep voice for such a little guy. He was built thickly, like he was born to be a future linebacker or hockey D-man and he bowled over blocks and chairs and other children like a bull in a china shop. But he had a ready grin and he loved to hang out with me and show me all his cars and have me read him stories (Brown Bear was his favorite).

I learned after a few weeks of spending time with him to mostly understand his broken speech patterns. But I remember specifically the first time I heard him say something that was very, very close to real English (other than the standards like “Mommy,” “Dada,” “Juice,” etc). We were playing with some assorted toys and he noticed a large plastic dump truck off in the corner. He pointed and said with one of the biggest grins I’d seen on him, “A Biiiig Twuck!”

A big truck. And he loved it. A few times after that point we were outside in the play area and a service vehicle would roll by. Brian would point with glee and say in his little baritone, “A Biiig Twuck!” There was something about trucks that he found fascinating.

Of course he wasn’t the only little boy there that had an infatuation with trucks, but it goes to show that even that early on, there is something about boys and trucks that matches. Maybe it’s the power: Most regular cars are powerful in that abstract way that says, “This machine is stronger than ten men” but trucks are the ones that get the size and design to match the abstract; they have names like “Ram” and “Titan” and get engines that are much bigger and capable of feats that even the fastest cars couldn’t pull off. Or perhaps it is the utility: It’s a big powerful machine and it moves dirt! Or it’s a big powerful machine and you can carry a couch in it; you can even haul a big boat around behind it! Whatever it is, whoever invented the truck was a guy and he designed it for himself and every other dude he knew.

By 1998, a love of trucks was imprinted on the DNA of the smallest Guy I knew.

A Procrastinator’s Cautionary Tale

Last week our Saturn got towed. We had parked it in the parking lot of our apartment complex after the theft a few months ago and the subsequent insurance/safety test brouhaha with the following facts in mind: It was in need of or about to need some fairly costly repairs including a drive belt, an engine bracket, new brakes and a few assorted unknown factors like the passenger door handle and some kind of short in the electrical system that usually made the warning ding go off when the driver’s door was open, whether there were keys in the ignition or not.

We planned to pick at the repairs one by one and eventually we’d trade it in somewhere down the road. But a few weeks after we got it back from the thieves I tried to take it down to have the brakes worked on and when I tried to start the car the battery seemed like it was dying. Nik wasn’t home at the time so I didn’t have the means to jump it and left it alone. When she got home, I slacked about getting it done and it wasn’t until a couple of weeks later that I went out to try again, this time with jumper cables in tow.

The first try of the ignition revealed that the battery wasn’t just dying, it was dead and bloated. We tried to jump it to no avail. Nik called a tow company to inquire about getting it hauled down to the brake shop and he seemed to balk at the prospect of towing the car. “Try jumping it for a longer period of time,” he suggested. I was irritated and decided to deal with it at a later date.

For the next couple of weeks the car got progressively worse looking as the dust and heat caked a thick layer of grime onto the car and it sat unattended in one of the valuable open parking spaces in the lot. Each time I passed it—going to the laundry room, getting the mail, hopping into the Honda for some other excursion—I noted the Saturn with grim contempt and told myself, “You better do something about that.” Instead I played video games and watched Netflix DVDs. I fiddled on my computer and tried to avoid the drama and expense of getting the car fixed.

For the most part it wasn’t an issue; I had the train to take to work or, since Nik started working close to my office, we could commute together. A second car was nice but not mandatory, so long as Nik and I were doing the same things or one of us was okay with staying around the house. It made the procrastination easier.

Finally last week Nik came home from work on a day I was doing the work-at-home thing. “Tell me you did something with the car,” she said. I looked at her with a raised eyebrow.

“Huh?” I offered, hoping she was having a bit of fun with me or perhaps had gone completely mental.

“The Saturn isn’t down there. What happened to it?”

“I dunno,” I said truthfully. “I was just down at the laundry room a couple of hours ago and I didn’t notice it missing.”

“Do you think it got stolen again?” she asked.

I sighed dramatically. “I don’t know.”

Nik began to get on the horn, trying to call the office and from there moving on to the police. There was no answer at the office so she started looking up the police department number.

“Wait a sec,” I interrupted. “That car wasn’t stolen, it couldn’t have been.” It was Nik’s turn to raise an eyebrow. I continued, “It doesn’t run at all. Unless some thief is out there carrying spare batteries with him, it had to have been towed.”

Nikki’s lip curled into a sneer. “You’re right.”

When we finally tracked down the office rep, they informed us that they had indeed towed the car. They didn’t know the exact reason but it could have been a number of things, including having been parked in the same spot for too long. They gave us the number of the tow yard it had been taken to and told us we’d have to get it from them. A quick call to the towing company revealed that the cost for getting it out of their yard was going to be $210 smackers if we got it that day, and it would go up $45 each subsequent day it remained.

We took off from our jobs early that day to drive in to pick it up, which idiotically had to be done in person. We still needed it to be towed to wherever since it wasn’t running so we contacted AAA (with whom we have a special membership that allows us to do unlimited tows within a certain range for free—one of the better service packages we’ve ever decided to pick up) and had them meet us at the other towing company since they weren’t the AAA affiliate in our area. Natch.

We had the Saturn towed to a nearby auto shop that I like and told the guy there, “Just get it running. There’s something wrong with the battery, so fix that and leave the rest alone.” A couple of days later the guy called me and said he’d tried to recharge the battery but it didn’t hold. They had changed the battery for me a couple years earlier and said it was still under the original warranty so he replaced it for the cost of labor alone, something like $40. Which was finally a bit of good news regarding that dumb car.

In the meantime the Honda started having some problems with the suspension on the rear passenger side: A heavy thunking sound that could be heard mostly when going slowly over heavy bumps or making tight corners. Plus the maintenance light was coming on so we needed to take it down to the shop as well. Nik made an appointment for Friday since she had the day off and I was working from home. After my shift was over we piled into the Civic and drove to the first auto shop to pick up the Saturn. From there we drove straight to the Honda dealership and dropped off the Civic, taking the Saturn over to a nearby detail shop to get cleaned up. The tag on the Saturn had indicated that the rationale for towing was “Unsightly Appearance” so I didn’t want to risk getting it towed again.

While the car was getting washed up Nik and I walked across the street and had lunch at the Olive Garden. We talked about the car while we ate. The situation was essentially this: We were talking at least $1,000 worth of repairs to get the Saturn into decent running condition (the kind that would let us get from the 138,000 miles to around 175,000) for a car that at the moment was worth maybe $2,000 to a private buyer. So at most we’d make $1K on the deal and more likely we’d walk away with something akin to $500 or less (especially if you counted the $250 we’d just spent on it and any advertising or haggling that would certainly occur). But the longer we let it sit without being used, the more it was just a waste of space.

We toyed with several different ideas but in the end we talked carefully about our finances and decided that we might just want to look into trading it in and seeing what we could get for it. I had already looked up online with some car payment calculators and the Kelly Blue Book that indicated we could afford the payments on something that was in the neighborhood of $14,000 assuming we got at least the bottom trade-in value for the Saturn and didn’t get stiffed on the APR. So as we payed for lunch and walked back across the street toward the carwash place, we decided we still had some time before we picked up the Civic—maybe it was time to start shopping.

An Exhausting Experience

The first place we stopped was the Toyota dealership that also ran the carwash/detail joint. We were rushed the moment we exited the Saturn by a thin blonde woman in maybe her early thirties. She smiled and showed a row of badly crooked and unevenly spaced tiny teeth and spoke with a ridiculously thick Russian accent, reminding me of Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons. I suppressed the urge to implore her to say, “Moose and Squirrel.”

I could tell Nikki didn’t like the woman (whose name I never quite understood so took to calling her “Svetlana” whenever she wasn’t around), which was probably due to the fact that minus the bad teeth, excessive makeup, poor wardrobe choices and pushy, car-salesman demeanor she might have been reasonably attractive and anyone with two brain cells to bang together could tell that she used her appearance to help her with her job. It wasn’t going to work in my case, but she pushed the angle anyway especially once she found out that it was I who would be the interested party in this case and not Nik.

My general attitude toward car salespeople is similar to my attitude toward roaches: I’m sure somewhere in the grand scheme of things they serve some purpose but I’m at a loss to distinguish what it is and in the meantime they just really repulse me. So Svetlana grated on me as she showed me a couple of trucks, most of them out of my price range. She did have a Chevy Colorado in white with a manual transmission that I took out for a test drive. It was okay, but it didn’t really have a lot of power behind it and I could tell that Nikki wasn’t impressed; whether that was a by-product of her distaste for Svetlana or something about the truck, I couldn’t tell.

I informed Svetlana and the manager she brought over to badger me into “running the numbers”—which is code for giving the über-high pressure sell routine—that I wasn’t going to talk numbers with anyone until I had done a lot more shopping. The manager told me something that I was peripherally aware of but was funny to hear said right out loud; he said it was nearing the end of the month and sales staff were under the screws to get their quotas met and he’d do practically anything to get me into a deal that very second. I politely declined and said I would return if nothing else came from my continued searching.

As we left Nik got a call from Honda saying our car was ready. So I dropped her off at the service center and went around front to see what they had in the way of used trucks.

My desires in a truck were pretty minimal: I would like some sort of extra cab room but I would certainly be happy with a standard cab if everything else was good. I preferred a bed liner already installed but I like the spray-on kind better than the drop-ins and those can be harder to find, so no bed liner was okay too. I prefer non-automatic gizmos: I share my father’s distaste for automatic windows and “power seats” seem like a really stupid feature to me unless they have the seat memory feature typically available only in really high end luxury vehicles. The only real mandatories I had were Air Conditioning (I live in California’s Central Valley so that’s a deal breaker if not available) and cloth seats: I hate leather, probably a by-product from too many burned tushes and a sour experience with our leather sofa. The main decision-making factor: I have to like the truck. It’s a tenuous requirement, sure, but it helped in a way because I wasn’t easily swayed by fancy extras the salespeople kept trying to push on me.

The Honda guy showed me a couple of Chevy Silverados, also in white. One was too new, too big and too loaded to even come close to my price range so I dismissed it outright. The other was better in terms of price and had some nice features (although it did have the stupid power windows). It also had a camper shell which I wasn’t crazy about, since I don’t have a place to store such a monstrosity and I wouldn’t use it anyway, making it just one more thing I’d have to try to sell off. It also had a dead battery when I first looked at it so they sent a service guy out with the jumper cart to give it a boost and I hopped in for a test drive.

We didn’t even make it around the block before the battery died again and we were stranded by the side of the road in mid-turn at a stop sign. The salesguy I was riding with called for someone to drive over a rental and pick us up. When we got back to the showroom the sales manager called me over and said he wanted to talk numbers. I literally laughed in his face. “I don’t think so,” I said, still holding back the guffaws.

“Why not!?” the manager asked, incredulous.

“Dude, it broke down on the test drive,” I said.

“Yeah, but we’ll change that battery for you!”

I recalled something my father once told me, a cautionary tale. He said he had tried to buy a used car with some sort of obvious defect. The dealership told him of course they would fix that right up… if he just signed the papers they’d have it squared away while the financing was settled. In the end the problem was not properly fixed and the lesson my dad learned and passed to me was, “Don’t buy a used car with issues thinking they’ll make it right before you go. They won’t because once it’s yours, they don’t care anymore.” Words to live by.

“I appreciate the offer,” I said, still laughing, “But I don’t buy cars that don’t make it through the test drive.” The manager was dejected but conceded that there wasn’t much he could do if I didn’t like the truck to begin with.

Nik and I picked up the Honda with the understanding that the maintenance had been handled but the suspension problem would have to be dealt with at a later time so we made a follow-up appointment and headed over to the Chevy dealership. The last truck I had which was a hand-me down from my dad (and which I absolutely loved, by the way—I told you trucks are in my DNA) was a Chevy S10 and it ran forever so I figured it was a good place to try.

The salesguy that greeted us there was a paunchy ex-Marine with a closely shaved head in a slightly earlier stage of male pattern baldness than I. He showed us around a bit and we got to talking price ranges. He said he had a co-worker who had just traded in his 2500 Silverado (in handsome dark grey) and it wouldn’t be ready for sale for about a week but if I wanted I could give it a spin.

He brought out some guy’s keyring complete with silly keychain ornamentation and what I assumed was a house key. The truck drove well and had a nice, spacious extended cab. There was an aftermarket stereo system installed that sounded nice and I felt good driving it. The problem was that it hadn’t been inspected yet so there were a lot of signs that the previous owner hadn’t taken very good care of his ride. That was a problem because I was pretty sure that if things like the seat brackets and dashboard went unattended under this guy’s ownership that things like oil changes and tire rotation had also let slide. As a chronic procrastinator myself, I know the warning signs. There is no solidarity in that particular club, I assure you.

The salesman told me it would be about a week before the car could be ready to sell and he didn’t even have a clear idea what the price would be but the range he quoted sounded like it would be kind of a headache to talk him down to my comfort zone. So I told him I’d be back in a week if I couldn’t find anything else in the meantime.

We headed home after that, deciding to pick up the hunt the next morning.

What a Difference a Dude Makes

When Nikki bought her cars (the Saturn was “hers” and the Civic was also her purchase) we went to one place each: The Saturn dealership for the SC2 and the Honda dealership for the Civic. And both times we looked at exactly one car: The one we ended up buying.

I didn’t protest (much) at the time; I figured that my approach to buying a car would be drastically different because I’m both cheap and picky whereas Nik is more impulsive but determined. In fact when it came to buying the Civic she didn’t even want to see other options: Once she saw the blue ’05 four-door she was adamant and nothing was going to stop her from owning that car.

Actually shopping for a car for myself was a new experience. I have only ever driven either generous gifts or hand-me-downs. My parents bought a Chevy Corsica when I was in high school and after my mom bought her Saturn my folks let me drive around the Corsica for a couple of years before I totaled it in an unfortunate incident involving a garbage truck. After that I drove my dad’s truck around (which like I said before, I loved) even after I made a serious rookie driving mistake and turned into a cement post, severely damaging the front bumper (but not rendering it undriveable). After that my dad took it back and fixed it up to sell and I began driving his old Geo Prism around for a few years, eventually he gave me the pink slip and it ran great until it developed some serious electrical issues that would have cost more than the car’s worth to fix so I donated it to charity to get a tax break.

Then I bought a Ford Explorer from my father-in-law that was the second car I really liked to drive (I liked the Corsica but not for the car, more for the fact that it was a car) but I had to sell it back to him when I got laid off and money got pretty tight. Then Nik and I shared the Saturn for years before we got the Civic and I drove the Saturn for about a year until it’s recent issues.

The point here is that this is the first time I was going to be actually choosing the car I would be driving. This meant that I was going to do this right or not at all.

My goal was this: I wasn’t going to get ripped off. I would haggle with these people and make sure that I got the most truck for the least money and very, very little actual cash down. After all, I was shopping used not new and I had a decent trade-in that was completely paid off so my down payment was a silver ’97 SC2. If that meant I needed to drive around to 50 dealerships and break 49 salespeople’s hearts and shop for three weeks, by gum I was ready to do it.

I made sure to apologize in advance to Nikki since I knew she’d be with me the whole time but probably hating 95% of the experience.

Prototypes

Nik and I went to breakfast/lunch Saturday morning over the hill in the Bay Area. I had seen a black Chevy Silverado with low miles on it during my Internet shopping that was in my price range and wanted to check it out. The dealership was a 45 mile drive from our house, out over 580 to 680 North toward Sacramento. But there were plenty of places to look at in between so we went into Fuddrucker’s for an early lunch and I ordered the Kobe Beef Burger, a half pound slab of high quality ground beef that I felt reasonably comfortable ordering “Medium” and found it to be among the best hamburgers I’ve ever eaten. We ordered too many fries and stuffed ourselves before heading out for round two.

The first place we stopped was a large Ford dealership across from the hamburger place, not because I like Fords (hate ’em, actually) but because they were a big lot and I figured they might have a decent used selection. They didn’t and we did a full circuit around the place without being approached by a single salesperson. Normally I’d be delighted not to be bothered but in this case the lot was so large that I felt I might have missed a motherload of used trucks unless I was pointed in the right direction. After ten minutes of wandering in the hot August sun we decided they didn’t care enough for our business and left.

We stopped by a small GMC dealer just up the road and were greeted by what I began to form in my mind as the prototype car salesman: Rotund belly in a company-issue polo shirt tucked into an expansive belt and a ready cell phone in a quick-draw holster. His jowly face wobbled with mock sincerity as we poked around, this time wishing for the Ford treatment as he lurked uncomfortably nearby while I examined the ample selection.

“See anything you like?” he called.

“I don’t like these prices, that’s for sure,” I spat. None of the more than 15 trucks were listed for less than $22,000, even the older 2001 and 2002 models with obviously high mileage and crummy fuel economy.

“Well, shoot,” the anonymous salesman said with what I assumed was supposed to be relaxed courtesy but came out as an angsty whine, “the price is the easiest part! Do you like any of the trucks, though?”

I curled my lip and looked right at him, noting his large pupils and beaded sweat across his expansive brow. “Nope.”

We left.

As Nik and I drove to our next stop I complained to her that I hadn’t yet found anything I felt like I would really consider to be a purchase-worthy truck. I griped that I didn’t even need to find the truck I would buy, I just wanted to find something like a bellweather to compare everything else to. She was sympathetic but I could tell her patience was wearing a bit already, especially as I rattled on about “two or three dozen more” stops.

We drove past a Honda dealership that only sold used cars. I had Nik flip around and go back. We exited the car and standing right in front of me was a gorgeous dark green Toyota Tundra, a 2002 model with extended cab and bed liner. I walked over immediately and felt rather than saw the girthy, aged salesman sauntering up behind as I popped open the driver’s side door and leaned in to check the interior. Cloth seats, power everything, V8 with remarkably low miles for a four-year old car: Under 32,000.

“Can I drive it?” I asked. The salesman was older, probably pushing 60 and wearing the standard uniform. He took my driver’s license for a copy and came back a few moments later with the keys. He actually let Nik and I drive it alone, without his accompaniment and we took it down a few blocks and back around. I felt myself grinning and I drove. I loved it. The power accessories were a bit much but I could learn to live with it. It handled like a dream and had a remarkable feeling of power. Towing a boat? Yeah, I can do that. Moving a sofa? Sure, no sweat. Going camping? You better believe it.

Back at the dealership the guy told us the price: $18,995. Too high. Too high by about five grand. It was going to be a tough road to get him to peel his commission back that far so that I could get into the truck. He asked if I wanted to run some numbers. I paused for a second, considering. I still hadn’t seen the Silverado I found online. I declined, saying I had one other place to check and if it didn’t work out, I’d be back. I meant it this time.

We drove away and I felt a lot better. I’d found my bellweather.

The drive to see the Silverado at the distant Ford dealership was torturous. I kept returning my thoughts to the Tundra. How could I make it work? What could I say to get him to knock $5,000 off of a beautiful, loaded truck with surprisingly low miles? We had to call HB to look up directions to the dealership in the unfamiliar town since I had forgotten to do that at home. Too late to turn back now. HB’s instructions got us there with very little hassle.

When we stepped on the lot a non-typical salesperson moved in quickly, thin and tall with massive lips and braces swarming over his bad teeth. He wore a tie and spoke quickly but softly, which I was finding to be rare with salespeople. I told him about the truck I had seen online and he knew right away what I was talking about. He lead us over to a Silverado long bed with a single cab, manual transmission. Nik balked again at the stick shift. We crammed into the cab, three across the bench with Nikki’s legs uncomfortably pressed against the salesman’s khaki pants so I could shift and took it for a test drive.

It drove pretty well but we figured out quickly that it was sweltering hot in the cab. Nik tried to find the A/C to cool us down. “Hey,” she remarked, “There’s no A/C in here.”

The salesman twisted the handle on the door, rolling the window all the way down. “Here’s the Air,” he said with a laugh. We didn’t even smile. I drove around the unfamiliar town, up and down a couple of freeways, noting that the visibility wasn’t great as I tried to change a few lanes. It could have been the tightly packed cab or my growing discomfort in my jeans and black t-shirt against the scorching leather seat, but I didn’t feel that rush from the Tundra.

When we got back Nik and I took a walk to talk things over. “It’s a pretty nice truck,” I said. “But no A/C…”

“We live in the Central Valley, babe,” Nik said gently. “A/C is pretty much mandatory.”

“I know. But the price is so right,” I said, trailing off. The sticker price was under $12,000, well within my price range especially once I started talking them down and putting forth my trade-in.

“But you don’t know what kind of deal you could work for that Tundra,” Nik replied.

“That’s true.”

“Maybe we go talk to them, see if they can throw air conditioning in aftermarket,” she suggested. I balked. Aftermarket A/C? Did that even work?

“Well, let’s just see what they say.”

We went back in and told the salesguy about our dilemma. “I’ll be honest,” I said. “This is the second nicest truck I’ve seen in two days. But it has a few things I’m not crazy about, one being the leather seats and the other being the lack of air…” I went on to explain our climate situation.

“Let me see what I can do about that,” he said in a chipper voice and disappeared. A few minutes later he returned with the King of all salesman prototypes: His vast gut spilled over his belt looking like a mammoth ball of dough squeezed through a cardboard tube and restrained by a shiny silver polo shirt with black lapels sopping up the sweat from his beefy neck. His thickly furred hands were adorned with cheeseball gold jewelry and his swarthy complexion made him look like an extra from The Sopranos. When he spoke he gesticulated wildly and smiled too much for it to be sincere.

“What I’ll do for you is put in some air conditioning for $1,300: Now that’s half the price of retail so we’re getting no profit at all. Plus I’ll throw in some sheepskin seat covers to protect from that leather.” He trailed off into a diatribe about his wife liking leather seats and him hating it, eventually rambling about breaking down cost points into daily amounts of chump change. My attention wandered and my eyes glazed over. Blah, blah, blah. I didn’t like this guy at all.

I repeated myself when he came up for air. “Well, the thing is that, while generous, your offer still doesn’t change the fact that this is the second best truck I’ve driven. The fact is that truck is a bit out of my price range but I’d kick myself if I didn’t at least go down there and see what they could do for me.”

“Well, how much is that other truck.”

“It’s more than this one, but what I’m saying is that money wise, we’re good to go on this one here. I can totally make that happen.” Guido and the salesdude’s eyes grew wide and I think I saw a trickle of drool appear on Guido’s chin.

“So what’s the price on the other truck?” Salseguy asked again.

“It’s in the neighborhood of ninteen grand,” I said, honestly. Salesdude and Guide exchanged a look.

“Well, shoot, son, why didn’t you say so!? We got something like that right here!” I raised an eyebrow.

“Oh?” I wondered how on earth they could know what I was looking for based solely on a price point. Salesdude crooked a finger at me and began walking quickly toward the back of the lot.

Nik and I hustled to follow and as we got outside Nik took a suspicious glance at the line of F-150s. “Are you going to show us a Ford?” she asked, spitting the last word out like a piece of gristle. Salesdude stopped short and turned; “Yes, ma’am.”

I piped up, “I don’t buy Fords.”

In retrospect it was probably the wrong thing to say at a Ford dealer. He launched into a tirade about how the F-150 was rated #1 by so and so and had solid body construction this and that. I glazed over again. “Uh-huh. Well, I’m a Chevy guy so no thanks.” I said. Fixed Or Repaired Daily: That semi-amusing fake acronym popped into my mind. Found On Road Deserted. Beaten, Salesdude showed us back into the front, where the truck was parked, and said to wait, he’d be back in a moment. I knew he was going to get the manager to put on the screws, they certainly didn’t want us to leave.

When they got back they gave me the once-over again. By this time I was getting annoyed. I said for what felt like the hundredth time, “Look, give me your card and I’ll go check out this other lead. If it doesn’t work out I’ll come right back here and we’ll work something out.” It was starting to feel more and more like a lie each time I had to say it. The “But what abouts” and “What would it takes” kept flying and I said firmly, “Just get me your card.”

Salesdude paused, unsure how to handle such a right pain in the rear. His desire for me to buy the truck was clashing with his desire to kick me in the pants, I could tell. He sighed, “Okay, but I gotta go inside to get the card. Follow me.” Nik told me to go wait by our car and she’d get the card. Then we put the good-cop/bad-cop routine on them.

I pretended to fume outside. It wasn’t much of a stretch. Inside Nik waited patiently as Guido worked her over again for a few minutes and she finally came back out, bearing an expensive-looking four-color business card. “He says they’ll throw in the A/C for free.”

“Yeah?”

She smiled. “And I told them you were on the verge of walking away. That if they didn’t back off they’d be sure to never see us again.” I grinned back at her.

“Nice,” I said, more than a little in awe of my wife.

“Shall we see what they can do about that green one?” I only nodded and started the car.

The Last Place You Look

We were only a block from the Honda Used Car dealership when I noticed the Toyota place, nestled back off the main drag so it could be visible from the freeway. “What about there?” I asked, pointing. Nik groaned.

“I’m sorry,” I said softly, “Am I driving you crazy?”

“I’m just tired,” she said. I could almost hear my words about dozens of dealerships echoing in her head. We had stopped by the library on the way out to check a copy of the Kelly Blue Book for 2002 Toyota Tundras. I had a scrap of paper the marvelously friendly librarian had given me to take notes listing the expected retail prices of that particular model. It had been a happy surprise: The listed values were much closer to my comfort level than the sticker price. I knew that with over ten collective hours of driving and testing and looking and dealing with high-pressure salespeople she was ready to be done with it.

“One more stop, I promise.”

She sighed and hung a U-turn. “Okay, one more.”

The prototype salesguy was named Jon. He hated me from the get-go. I wouldn’t answer his leading questions designed to push me toward the higher-priced vehicles. I told him he was charging too much for stuff I could find (and had seen) elsewhere. I wasn’t impressed much with his explanation that these were certified pre-owned (“Used,” I corrected him) vehicles and other dealerships couldn’t offer that level of service and satisfaction from having a trained technician do a 116 point inspection. “Still too high,” I said. He rolled his eyes.

I found her near the end of the row. Toyota Tundra, just like my bellweather I had been on the way to try and work a deal for. No extended cab, but no stupid electronic whiz-bangs that drove up the price. Automatic. No bed cheap bed liner (no liner at all, a minor annoyance). CD player with decent stock speakers. Cloth seats. V6. 2004, a full two years newer than the bellweather. Nice charcoal color. Tan interior, no plates. I test drove it and felt the grin spread back across my face. Being a non-extended cab, Jon went with me on the ride and Nik stayed behind. When I pulled up she smiled at me, luminous.

“That’s your truck,” she whispered. I just grinned and nodded.

The paperwork was a nightmare. I told them how much I wanted to spend, what I had to offer in down payment (my trade-in) and told them to make it happen. They came back with some ridiculous sum that included an extra $2,000 cash down payment. I laughed them out of the room. They offered me a higher monthly payment with no cash down. I laughed again and repeated what I wanted. They tried to get me to sign a commitment form that said if they got me what I wanted I would agree to buy. I told them to go jump, that I didn’t sign commitment papers and if they wanted me to buy it they’d better work a little harder on making their precious numbers work.

They sent in Paul, another prototype with a wicked burst blood vessel in his right eye that made him look like a bad boxer. He shook my hand limply and I disliked him immediately. He told me I had to work with him if I wanted to get anywhere. He tried to get me to sign commitments and I told him to go jump, and that if he dropped the price of the truck so that it would match my payment offer he could take my word that I’d make it happen. He seemed to take that as a verbal contract and Nikki rolled her eyes at us and laughed to herself.

I knew at the time that I had them in the palm of my hand. They wanted to sell the truck, we had great credit scores and I’d told them I’d been inches from going to another lot to see what they could do. If they let me walk, they’d never see me again. They wanted me as a customer very badly, but they wanted me to shut up and stop cutting into their profits, too. I decided to throw them a bone since we hadn’t brought the Saturn and they were making bids on it sight unseen. The Saturn was never going to see a used car lot I knew so it was auction bait all the way, but it was still something of an internal basket case no matter how well kept it appeared on the outside. I offered to throw in $500 cash down if they could make my lowball offer happen.

They met me in the middle and dropped the sticker price to do just that. They said they were giving me top dollar on the trade in which I knew was bogus but let slide since they didn’t ask the pertinent questions about the car condition (not that I lied or actively omitted anything but I wasn’t going to offer up that it needed some work to be a smooth running machine; I figured it would run as-is for another 10,000 miles at least which was enough for me to say it was in Fair condition); had the Saturn not needed some tuning up I could have gotten twice what I was asking for it.

Jon, bitter and annoyed that I had cost him some commission and angry with me for playing some mild hardball waved us toward the front office to sign paperwork. An hour later I was on 580 Eastbound, driving my new-to-me 2004 Toyota Tundra, blaring In Flames’ Clayman album on the stereo and feeling, as I looked over the tops of the traffic in front of me like I was sitting somewhere close to the top of the world.

I got myself a Big Twuck. And Brian would be impressed.

Fast-Track came down from Seattle this weekend to be there for Mr. Drywall‘s surprise birthday party. It was a fun party and afterward we headed back to FT’s folks’ place to say good-bye before heading back over the hill to home.

Of course as we were departing I noticed FT’s little brother coming out of the house and I had to stop and say a quick “Hi” since I hadn’t seen him in ages. We chatted for a few minutes and pretty quickly the topic of his new bike came up.

He has one of those mini-motorcycles: Not the eensy ones that stand maybe a foot and a half tall and make grown adults riding them look somewhat silly although everyone riding them always seems to be having a great time. No, FT’s brother’s bike is about twice that size, standing three feet off the ground but still much smaller than a regular motorcycle. Of course once HB heard about this, he was instantly asking to ride.

HB zipped around the neighborhood for a while and FT’s brother finally had to head out since he had been on his way to other activities. He let us continue to fiddle with his mini-bike and after FT and HB had their turns I gave it a whirl.

The little bike probably gets up to 50 mph when properly tuned, but there was some sort of problem with the bike’s body that made it rattle fiercely when it got up around 30 mph. Still, 30 on a three-foot bike feels pretty fast and the bike wasn’t exactly made for performance turning so it was a hoot as long as you were going in more or less a straight line.

I was having a total blast zipping up and down the street a few times. Eventually I resigned my turn and we asked if Nik or Gin wanted a ride. At first they refused but eventually we were able to get Nik to get on provided we stayed with her, running down the court as she puttered along, keeping close watch to make sure she didn’t fall. She seemed very nervous at first but she was smiling wide when she reached FT’s driveway safely. After a few moments we even talked her into making another lap on her own. She certainly didn’t crank on the throttle the way the guys did, but she rode all the way down and back without incident and declared the experience to be a lot of fun when she was back on solid ground.

So we were having fun, and of course HB decided he needed a real motorcycle fix so he talked FT into dragging out his actual Harley and giving it a spin. At some point (I’m not sure how exactly since I was zipping down the street on the mini at the time) he hit a squirrelly patch of pavement and almost dropped the bike. He caught most of the weight and wasn’t going fast at all so there was no damage but it did force Gin to run down to the middle of the court in uncomfortable party shoes that were more designed for looks than function. HB was fine and the bike looked to be no worse for wear so disaster averted.

It was shortly after that HB and FT began urging me to give the big bike a try.

I should preface this by pointing out that most of my friends are into motorcycles. If they don’t actively ride now, they did at some point in the past and probably 80% of them own or have owned their own bikes. Me, not so much.

I don’t know what it is, really. I mean, I like motorcycles; I think they’re cool. What’s not to like, really? They’re cool looking, loud machines that you can tinker with and ride around and a lot of them go really fast. That’s a guy’s toy if I ever heard one described. But for various reasons I always admired them from a distance and never felt (much of) the urge to procure or ride one. Perhaps part of it is that I’ve always felt they were expensive to the point of being a luxury that I haven’t had a lot of opportunities to afford.

The extent that I’ve stayed out of the motorcycle game is such that aside from the mini bike I had just ridden a few moments earlier and a couple spins around the block on another friend’s little zippy go-kart (which doesn’t really count but is closer to riding a motorcylce than I’d ever gotten to that point) I had never even sat on a running motorcycle.

So I get on FT’s Sportster and he and HB are barking all sorts of tips and explanations: Here’s the clutch, that’s the shifter pedal, this here is the throttle, etc. After several moments of instructions I tried to put the bike in gear and killed the engine. We spent a few anticipation-draining moments trying to get it started again (some sort of fuel lever was acting goofy) but finally it roared back to life and rumbled underneath me.

“Just down to the end of the block and back,” FT said.

“And don’t forget to repsect the power of it,” HB added, “It’s a lot more machine than that little mini over there.” I nodded grimly. Power. Respect. Got it.

I eased off the clutch and twisted the throttle gently, not too much. But I let off the clutch too quickly and the engine died again. I pulled the clutch back in and gave it some gas as I hit the starter switch and listed with satisfaction as the obnoxiously loud engine gave another approving roar. I had coasted a bit toward the end of the driveway and I didn’t have as much momentum to worry about, so I eased back again and turned the handle for some juice. And I started to move.

The first few seconds were a bit nerve-wracking, as I wobbled a bit under the weight of the machine and the painfully slow speed. I remembered how the mini bike was much easier to handle when you got going so I tentatively applied more pressure to the throttle and sure enough, the wheels stabilized under me and I jet forward, amping my speed faster than I expected from such a minor throttle adjustment.

A slow grin spread across my face as I rumbled past the inlet to the twin courts toward the opposite end. I glanced at the speedometer and noted that I was traveling at about 23 mph, which seemed pretty fast on the short stretch of road. The houses that curved around the dead-end street began to loom in my vision and I decided it was time to slow it down and turn back around.

I pulled smoothly on the right handle, the brake, and waited for a second to adjust to the slowing speed. Except right from the start I knew something was amiss because my velocity wasn’t decreasing as I expected, and the houses ahead were still getting closer. I tried gingerly to turn just a bit to my left to avoid rushing up on the neighbor’s driveway in a barely-controlled, unfamiliar machine and applied more pressure to the brake handle.

Suddenly things went very wrong. The front forks began to wobble violently and the speed of the bike still had not gotten much lower than twenty miles per hour. I felt what control I had slip away rapidly and I launched my feet out to try and gain some purchase. Of only the stupid thing would stop moving so fast…

The bike tilted heavily to the right and I planted my foot on the asphalt in an effort to keep from going over. The weight of the bike and the speed (maybe 15 mph by this point) landed square on my right leg, which caught the momentum of the tilt and pushed back: Equal and opposite reactions. At the same time my grip and control over the handlebars was forgotten for just long enough to allow the front tire to twist sharply to the right, almost facing the headlight back toward me at a 45° angle.

Still my own momentum and the rebound from the salvaged tip to the right acted on the bike and my body, sending the machine down to the left and tossing me foward over it’s twisted handlebars and into the street where I broke my fall the best I could with my arms, felt my head hit the ground and I rolled over myself coming to a stop on my back.

I felt HB’s presence before I actually saw him, as he squealed to a halt on the mini bike just behind me. I tore myself from the ground in an effort to appear brave or tough or whatever. I tried to take a mental stock of my condition but my brain received only one message from my body: “Malfunction!” I staggered over to the low brick wall that leveled out the neighbor’s yard from it’s natural downslope and sat down, shocked and hurt.

My hand broke through the general chaos of sensations first, reporting serious road rash on my left palm. I glanced at it and noted the nasty torn hole that was seeping trace amounts of blood around embedded gravel chunks. HB was coming over now, asking how I was. I grunted a reply at first, still unsure how bad off I was. As if accepting my ability to hobble to the brick wall and make noise as indication that I wouldn’t require a paramedic immediately, he went over to check the bike’s condition.

For a moment I forgot about my own condition: I had lain my friend’s bike down. Unforgivable sin? Minor inconvenience? Pricey mistake? I didn’t know the reaction I would get, nor the damage I had done, and I suddenly had to know. I managed to get up and felt the first gripe from my right hip as I stood. Okay, left hand and right hip so far, I thought.

The left turn signal was broken off and the left rearview mirror swung wildly on its peg. The left rear saddlebag was badly scuffed and in the relative darkness of the evening streetlamps, I couldn’t see how badly damaged the black gas tank was. My heart sunk. I had wrecked FT’s motorcycle. Some friend.

I felt my hands start to shake. HB said something reassuring and immediately began to try and coax me back on the bike. My right elbow suddenly piped in with a belated status report, “Pain here!” it announced. I checked it and noticed a grim slash of bloody cuts and dirty, ragged skin hanging loose from raw-looking scrapes. There was nothing I wanted less at that moment than to sit back on the motorcycle.

“Don’t let it beat you like that, man,” HB said matter-of-factly. “Here’s what you did wrong: You didn’t respect the power. Now this time…” I cut him off.

“No way, man,” I said. “I’ll just take this little one back.” I slapped back the kickstand and started to push forward on the safe little toy bike.

“Come on, dude,” HB pressed sternly. “You just got going too fast. This thing is heavy, it’s powerful. Look, you don’t even need the throttle, just use the clutch to control your speed. You have to take this back to the garage.”

For a moment I caught myself in the midst of a waging war within my head. On one hand the aching parts of me, now increased to my right arm, wrist, shoulder and especially hip as well as my left hand, screamed in unison to not dare getting back on that death-trap and expose them to such agony again. On the other hand my brain was calmly, rationally telling me that it was stupid to make one mistake and then give up. No one learned by quitting.

So I put the kickstand back down on the mini bike and walked a bit shakily back to the Harley. I swung my leg over it and ignored the groaning protest in my hip as I righted the bike toward the home end of the courts (HB having already turned it around for me). I gently tested HB’s clutch theory and the bike moved a little under me. A thrill of fright spread through my entire body as the wipeout from moments before replayed in my mind and I quickly squeezed back on the clutch and brake. HB noted that I needed to apply both when it was time to stop.

Of course. Duh.

I know how to drive a manual transmission car, why was this different? You can’t just brake, you have to apply the clutch too. That must have been why I didn’t stop the way I expected to the first time. But no matter what, I wasn’t risking using that throttle. So I tried again, easing back on the clutch until I was traveling fast enough to stabilize my balance and pull my feet up to the pegs. In less than twenty seconds the ride was over and I pulled tightly on both clutch and brake as I drifted casually to a stop in front of FT’s driveway where I gladly killed the engine and stepped off the bike, feeling a new wave of pain hit as I stepped down on my right foot.

Of course at that point I was finished and I deflected HB and FT’s efforts to get me back on the bike for a more triumphant second attempt. Eventually they realized I wasn’t going to give in and they changed their tune, handing me congratulations for getting back on and riding back after the fall, which didn’t feel like such an accomplishment—more of a brain-rattled snap decision, but I sincerely appreciated the sentiment regardless.

We went our separate ways shortly after that, my hip growing more painful the longer I stood or walked and the stinging in my hand and arm building to an uncomfortable whine in my head. I apologized profusely to FT for wrecking his bike, which it turned out was not much worse for wear aside from the originally noted turn signal and mirror (which HB was quick to point out he could fix quickly and with parts he already had lying around his garage). I tried to offer to pay for or do whatever I could but FT seemed more interested in having me try to ride again than whatever might be wrong with his bike. Somehow it made me feel worse, him being so understanding about it.

So that was my first experience with a motorcycle: A real motorcycle. It took me less than 90 seconds to lay it down and mess myself up fairly significantly. I woke up the next morning with my back hurting, possibly from trying to compensate for the pain in my hip, possibly a latecomer to the pain parade the fall started. Either way it’s been a fairly uncomfortable weekend, but I’ll survive.

As for me becoming a biker… I don’t really see that happening. I don’t think the experience gave me some unnatural phobia of motorcycles, but I know two things to be true: One is that I don’t like big, heavy bikes. If I ever try riding a motorcycle again, it will be with something more my size and speed (by that I mean small and slow). The other is that when it comes to single-person vessels, I much prefer jetskis.

They hurt less.