In Praise of the Toyota POS

(This is an old writing sample.)

So, you're not a trust fund baby. You've still got 3.5 terms of grad school to finish before you achieve that high paying degree in 13th century Peruvian Art and your student loan was maxed by your last road trip to the Burning Man Festival. On which, your hand-me-down Chevy Celebrity rejected its transmission transplant of a year ago. You've managed to scrape together a thousand bucks with plans to lease one of those oh so shiny Wolkswagon Jettas. STOP!! Back away from the checkbook slowly! I've got some things you should hear before you head to the nearest German auto dealer. Don't get me wrong here, I love that new Jetta body as much as the next guy, but that thing costs almost $20,000! In this day and age of: Nothing down and no payments till Jan. 1, 2000!! It's too easy to make multi-zero decisions without lots of careful thought. 

One of the careful thoughts you should have before you sign away the next three years of car payments is: I wonder if my sister in-law would sell me her old Toyota for $850. I know this is a revolutionary idea and goes against all our consumer urges to have latest and greatest, but it just might be a good idea in your case. The weaknesses of the $850-mobile are often exaggerated to paint the worst possible picture I plan to do the opposite. 

Reliability is one of the first concerns that comes to mind. The trick is to spend so little on the vehicle that you actually smile when it spontaneously combusts. We all need something "reliable" my question is how reliable? Many a rust bucket will survive for another 3 years, happily blowing blue smoke. How long was that lease? Three years wasn't it? At $199/month. That adds up to $7164. You can go through a lot of old Toyotas before you spend anything near $7000. Sure enough it is "unreliable" but for $850 you will laugh your way to the bank if you can live with it. Now I need to make an important distinction. There are two different flavors of "unreliable": The '88 Toyota flavor and '88 Chevy flavor. In both cases you know that a major system failure is due sometime in the next year and a half to three years. However in the with Chevy flavor of unreliability, you will likely experience lots of small failures along the way which must be repaired to make the car drivable. This is not what you want. There are cars out there that will move under their own power for a year or so with out requiring endless repair. The trick is finding one.

Buy your new bucket of bolts privately! Do NOT buy a cheap car from any dealer! A dealer will not know any of the mechanical history of the car. You are looking for a car that has been owned by the same person for the last 5 year. They will be familiar with its quirks and will gladly tell you about them. The car should be able to pass inspection when you buy it. Ask the owner if he has had the timing belt changed. This should be done at about 90,000 miles on most cars. A good place to look is within your family and circle of friends. Odds are that the brother of someone you know personally is looking to get rid of their old dented Toyota since they just leased a new Jetta.

"I want something that looks nice." Clearly you have not yet realized the creative freedom afforded by owning a sub $1000 car. You're in grad-school right? It's supposed to make a statement. You don't have to transport any corporate types yet so enjoy yourself. Sticker the hell out of that thing! Make it a rolling monument to Greenpeace. Answer the question: How many "Girls Kick Ass" stickers will fit on the right rear quarter panel? Better yet explore the your new found creative freedom with spray paint.

There are other freedoms gained by owning Toyota P.O.S. (Piece Of Shit) Have you ever had the urge to run over, or in to something? When your car is worth less than your Bike it takes on a certain toughness not available in shiny leased Jettas. Remember the last time you found yourself not parking next to the rust bucket because you were afraid you might get your door dinged, now you've got the rust bucket! You will never pass up any parking spot out of fear for your paint job.

We all hope to arrive at a level of finincial solvency which would allow us to pay cash for latest Geman Wundermobile. I hope I'll be there someday. In the mean time I'm enjoying the luxuries afforded by owning a 1988, rusty, dented, wonderful, Toyota MR 2.

Priorities

*Life is ironic… I originally wrote this little tear in 1999, now in February of 2003 I find myself driving a leased 2002 Jetta Wagon ($219/mo)  I do miss that beat MR2.

**Life is STILL ironic.  That Jetta Wagon worked out ok.  I wiggled out from under it with $1700 loss, which is about as good as you can expect after driving a "new" car for only 2 years.  I'm back to driving  "paid for" cars.  I don't anticipate that changing anytime soon as my Honda POS is running like a champ. (2007)

Madness Madness Madness! All is Madness.

In my youth, my family used to go camping three or four times per year. I don't remember how long its been since our previous excursion, probably over 15 years. It was fascinating to experience it again as a father, an adult and with ALL my siblings (5!) AND our children (10!)… add few spouses and my parents and our total was solidly north of 20 people. I really don't even know how to begin to describe the texture of chaos that rule the weekend. I'm amazed that only one person required stitches and only 7 stitches at that.

Never turn you back on a fire. The very moment that you do one of the nephews will either:

A: Try to burn something that shouldn't be burned. ants, plastic, wet wood, raw eggs, etc.

B: Try to transport a piece of the fire elsewhere. I distinctly remember turning around to catch a glimpse of one of my nephews pedaling his bicycle around the corner while holding a 7 foot long burning pole set in a classic jousting position.

C. Try to increase the size of the fire by a factor of at least 2. Never mind that its 2 in the afternoon and 85 degrees out.

All this is very amusing to me because I remember doing / wanting to do, ALL the things I was constantly hollering at the boys for doing.

More later...Writing todo list:
Logistics
Biking
Arches
Dirtyness/Rental Showers
Moab
Sounds
Food
SLC

LOVE IS

T-Minus 2.5 hrs: Camping in the desert. Have roughly 6.3 million things to do before I leave including packing and moving 3 pieces of freight. I sense an impending professional lapse.
More for MormonLand next week! I'm off the radar untill then.

-J F S

NOTE: This blog has absolutly nothing to to with love, romance or relationships.

Do these jeans make my butt look big?

Just a little relationship house cleaning... NOBODY is on my preferred list.  Its just a little something that don't want to get lost in sands of time.  I'll pry open it up a year or so from now so mark your calendar if you're really that curious. 

Now on to the business at hand.  I work from home.  I work on the phone.  I NEVER see any of my clients face to face.  Can anyone give me a good reason NOT to dye my hair blue, or red, or some other ridiculous color?  Its really long, I'm probably going to get sick of it and cut it really short soon so even if it looked horrible it would be back to a natural state within a few weeks. 

If you had to be seen *with* me in public and had absolute authority over my hair what would you require?  Or quoted from the my past: "OK. I'm at the bar, which glasses make you more likely to take me home and fuck me?"  Speaking of which, I need to get new glasses this week.

Nobody.

Hi you... 

Be my friend. Know me and let me know you. Don't be afraid but don't "let go" either. Just be. 

I'm a faller-in-lover. Love for me is the easy part. I have a history of loving and caring for people whom I can't make happy in the long run because of who and what I am or because they are unhappy at a basic level. That is one thing that is really attractive about you, you are a "finished" person, you are happy where you are in life, you are "becoming the person you were always supposed to be" Its good, very good. I like it. 

I want to know more of you. I want to know the crazy parts, the ugly parts, the eccentric parts and scared parts.. and you need to know all those parts of me, you need to know that love Mid 80's Toyota MR2's, you need to understand the true depth of my nerdiness, and that I can be selfish bastard and at the same time submerge myself in trying make someone else happy... most of it.. you need to know most of me, not only the bits an pieces the salesman in the nice shoes points out. 

Dont think for a second I don't want more, NOW. I've cast a few little dirty thoughts your way. You easily peg my attract-o-meter. 

I know it would be fun for the moment to dive in headlong, to pursue ruthlessly, but knowing what I pursue will make the pursuit more meaningful and the prize lasting. So... be. 


Be my friend. Know me and let me know you. Don't be afraid but don't "let go" either. Just be. 

-J 

PS- No holding this over my head if I change my mind tomorrow. 

Wookie Racing Inc.

Click here first:

Thank you for your help with this shameless play for an audience.

I need a brain dump.  When did I actually write last?  I don't remember.

 Work:  Blows.  Yah Yah… still love it an all but the head orifice is really pissing me off.  Some new policy that had increased my work by 30% all dedicated to pushing paper.   What do you do?

WOOKIE RACING:  Did mention that Lindorf's Automotive is sponsoring the Wookie Racing entry in the 24 Hours of LeMons?   This is invaluable, as my mechanical abilities are confined to bikes and legos.  Eric, the owner of Lindorf's, also brings about 20 years of experience racing Datsun 510's, which just happens to be the coolest car on the planet.**  Of course running the best import repair shop in down doesn't hurt either.

For the uninitiated, The 24 Hours of LeMons* is an endurance auto race for cars costing less than $500 excluding safety equipment.  My beautiful entry is an 85' Toyota MR 2 which was blowing copious amount of raw oil out the tail pipe when I bought it for $200.   Eric tested compression and did a leak down test as an initial evaluation of the motor, which it  passed as well as can be expected of a motor with no compression.  So this week he pulled the head off and much to my relief found that aside from a holy head gasket, the motor looks fine.  This a huge hurdle.  If the motor were bad we'd be looking for different car at this point.  As it is we're still looking for a few things, mainly people. 

I'm looking for a spokes-model for the team.  Someone to add content to our soon-to-be-born  website & corresponding MySpace profile.  Take photos, star in video of our race preparation efforts, race day heroics, to generally help out and add value for our sponsors.  Its gonna be a blast.  BJ are you listening? (Catholic School Girl uniform is required)

I've got grundles of other stuff to write about but since my writing urge was sated 13 minutes ago it will all have to wait for later...  here's the list to remind myself:

2 week trip to UT see Fam Damnly
Staring roll as "Bruce" in upcoming horror flic. (gotta shout out to Mr. Campbell Here!!)
My status as rock star.
All the hundreds of HOT CHICKS I've been meeting here on MS
My recently hired Music Manager (YO A.M!! )
$500+ in maintenince on a $1300 car??

 Road and track article:

http://www.roadandtrack.com/article.asp?section_id=7&article_id=4692

 
Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMRtu5eh5NM

 
Previous blog entry:

http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&FriendID=3714832&blogMonth=3&blogDay=7&blogYear=2007

Other articles:

http://www.24hoursoflemons.com/articles/

**If you don't agree you can just go sit in the corner and screw yourself.  It flat-out DESTROYED everything in its class until the SCCA changed rules to weaken its advantages, so the legend goes.   You could have factory racing parts installed by the local dealer and your warranty would stay intact.  It was the original "tuner" car back when "tuning"  meant modifing your car for better performance, NOT pop riveting heavy ridiculous wings and "ground effects" on to a half primered front wheel drive honda civic with an automatic tranny and a butt pipe.

http://www.ratdat.com/features/easr510/index.htm