Ok, clearly I don't know how to post an image.
Grrr, that was a valid URL.
Patio - I smashed a smaller version of that Datsun into a tree once....'twasn't my car..... didn't have a license....ah, the good old days...
bunny, having been involved with both sanctioned and impromptu motorsports since my teens, I have had occasion to have a hand in the destruction of a fairly representative sample of The Auto Bulilder's Art. I've pretzled a couple of bikes, too. I've never lost my sense of wonder at the eery silences which punctuate the actual slamming-and-banging moments.
timber.
...shiver....hate 'em....
Oh, I love 'em. You never feel so alive as immediately after a near-encounter with serious harm (unless it's trudging out of the woods with your throat swollen nearly closed in thirst; that's just a drag, I can tell you). In a four month stretch -- strangely, not long after my 21st birthday -- I had the pleasure of metal crunches astride a bike, in a car, and underneath a Genie lift. Woo-hoo, whatta year!
pdog, I've never wrecked a Genie Lift. I'm sure great personal inventiveness was involved. I once, however, did manage to back a car off a raised garage lift. That was interesting. A mere six-foot drop onto a concrete floor does an incredible amount of damage to a car.
timber
<laughing>
Yeah, I imagine it would.
The lift was not extended. It was all a misguided attempt to tip it down onto it's side so we could wheel it through a low door. I'm amazed that we were able to tip over a 3000 lb lift so easily, and that it would prove so hard to catch.
I'm determined to figure this out.
Yay, cjhsa ... you got it! I love the old Land Yachts. I once had and treasured a '79 Lincoln Continental MK V ... more or less a two-and-a-half ton, 80 MPH livingroom. Looking at the world over an acre or so of hood gives one a unique perspective, doesn't it?
dlk.....sorry it took so long to respond.....
You, me and cars.....something spooky going on there.
Hands down, my Lemans would have beat your Lemans. :wink:
My college tank...one of my favortie cars actually
Corinthian leather and shag rug...gotta love that 70's stuff
I changed one of my old cars Capris Classic <had big holes in the doors and floor> into a stock car and did what I had the biggest fear of first time out....crashed the wall....ouch !
didnt fear the wall after that though..kinda really
Okay.....a little off subject.....
My Dad taught my sister and I how to drive.....in a four speed Ford Pinto.
Anyway.....
Picture a fifteen year old who has 'trained' on this Pinto for the last four years.....
Mom has picked up me, sister and a friend from the mall in the Lincoln Town Car.....halfway home she pulls off the side of the road and tells me to drive.....jesusmaryandjoseph.....I lasted all of about three miles!
autos
Oh what memories I have of my first, second, & third cars, as I went through college and completed pharmacy school at the ripe young age of 32, (and graduated from Pitt, magna) The trusty, the thrifty, able to jumpstart with the help of only 2 guys, VW beetle. I had three of them. And the most interesting feature of each was that the last 2 were hand painted by me. They were all ancient, and a miracle that they ran at all. The first was a quite ugly light green, but it didn't last very long comparatively. Next was the one I painted with Rustoleum and a
brush - a very bright lovely shade of blue, my little girls loved that color.
I DID make it look a bit more normal by using that rubbing compound
or whatever it is - smoothing out some brush stroke lines. Being in Pennsylvania at the time, we were forever having vehicle inspections -
a curse to me, (they never have such a thing here in Florida)because
of the snow, the salt the potholes, and the general winter trauma done
to everyone's car, every 6 months I was destined to spend HOURS
just trying to Bondo the body to the point of passable, so that it had
no holes bigger than a dime, or whatever the rule was then. Really, I
got quite proficient at body work back then. Last prior to graduation & getting my first REAL car, meaning one that had just been manufactured,
was the one the girls named Betsy. Another ancient VW beetle but this one was bright Rustoleum RED! I spray painted this one, with somewhat better results than the blue. It DID need alot of body work... tons of
bondo spent on that car. The main problem with the VW beetle is that
with the engine being in the back - there is ZERO heat coming into the vehicle at ALL! I had a commute to school of a mere 15 miles into downtown Pittsburgh and then out to Oakland... but would you believe
that it took me an hour -- to an hour & a half every day? Betsy gave me grief not wanting to start in the winter too. So, at home, where everything is on a hill of some sort I just always parked her facing downhill on our street - so if she did not feel like starting in the normal way - I may have a shot at jumping her in gear. ANYTHING to avoid riding the trolley into town and then switching to a bus the rest of the way out to school - which took about two hours. ( I was at the time living with my parents while I finished school, due to my horrific fear of living alone after the trauma
of 1975- so I was living in an affluent neighborhood, & all the neighbors seemed to get quite a kick out of me out there on the street, fixing up
my pretty red piece of crap excuse for a car for one more inspection period. )
Then, I got lucky and found from a fellow student - a garage that
charged you a little extra, but they were a bit more lenient and were
not nearly so strict about the inspection standards...as long as all of
your lights were working, and turn signals and most of the things readily visible to the police, they turned a blind eye to some of the holes in the car, or tires that were just a tiny bit past the inspection standards. So,
by the time that I graduated, we had a hole in the floorboard in the
front passenger side floor, about the size of a baseball, ...and during a really heavy rain - the girls just plopped some newspaper or a piece of vinyl or a plastic frisbee over the hole to keep the rain from sloshing up into the car. One of my most memorable experiences occurred due to
the fact that to get into the city of Pittsburgh (from the southern suburb) you HAVE TO go through one of the 2 major tunnels, and over one of
several bridges. They don't call it the city of three rivers for nothing.
So, one day as I was just driving in to school, I looked down at the hole in the floorboard and there just happened to be a big pothole (a hole) in the Fort Pitt Bridge also, so I could look down through the hole in my
floor & thru the hole in the bridge and see the Allegheny River from
the driver's seat. What a hoot! I froze so badly every winter that I even tried hunter's socks, the kind of socks that you put batteries in to keep your tootsies from freezing and being numb by the time I got to school, but they didn't work worth a plug nickel, it never failed that by the time
I got to the school parking lot - and still had a hefty walk to do - my
poor feet were quite numb ... this wasn't nearly as bad as how they
felt when they began to "feel" again. I was married at 17, and I never even got my drivers license till I was about 25 I think... so these were
all the cars that I had between the ages of 25 and 32.
Now, after I FINALLY did graduate and bought a brand new car - what a RELIEF! It ALWAYS started...it never left me stranded anywhere like my dear old beetles had many a time. The girls still talk about Betsy... and
it has been about 25 years since Betsy and I slid in a rainstorm and did
a 360 spin around on an entrance ramp to a freeway. It was my good fortune that it happened BEFORE I hit the highway, otherwise I may not have been here today to tell the tale. That was the end of Betsy - but
I was about to graduate so I just took the trolley and the bus the rest
of the time left. Once I had my first REAL job (other than working as
a pharmacist intern in the hospital while going to school ) and my first
REAL car - wow - did I ever feel like I had accomplished something.
And I guess I did.
Dlowan, YOU - driving without a license, I can hardly believe it - it seems so out of character for your wee wittle bunny nature. My one and only big car accident happened when I was
driving my older sister's brand new (ugly orange) car, picking her
up from work... got pretzeled between two cars in the front and
totalled it... lucky me, if it had been impacted about 6 inches after
the point of impact, me and my baby brother would not be alive
today. I sure did feel terrible about killing her poor car though.
women drivers, sheeeeesh.........
We Bunnies - being, as it were, at the bottom of the food chain and with every man's and predator's and germ's hand against us, have to be extraordinarily feisty and ornery just to survive. No soft and furry bunny natures out here, in the big world....
I done LOTS of things that would surprise you ... and I'm gonna do another now.....kill Pueo - where's me bazookas?
A Chevette!
Oh, the good times had in the car.
