clutchdust
Millionaire Playboy
A lot of you have a fair idea of my current situation. As you might imagine with me not working right now, things are, shall we say, a bit tight.
So a few weeks ago my truck broke down. I think I even documented that saga here for your enjoyment. Until that happened, that truck was my "reliable transportation". I haven't yet fixed the truck for a couple of reasons, mainly money. That and my general lack of give-a-shit right now. My fall-back ride is the c3, or the project car from hell, as I am now learning.
Anyway, today a friend came in town to visit, just as the pacific storms seem to have done this week. We decided to meet up at the casino he's staying at and grab some lunch. I jump in the vette and with a heavy sign look at the ominous clouds to the west. It wasn't raining yet so I was hopeful this would be like so many other promising storms that roll through Vegas and leave nary a drop.
Oh how wrong I was.
On the trip over there it was almost boring. I got a lot of really fine mist but very little in the way of actual rain. It probably bears mentioning that my wipers haven't worked in about six years. Not generally a problem in Vegas, especially with a car that is 1) a project car, and 2) a "fair weather" car to boot. So I make it to the hotel with little trouble although I did notice some severe scraping noise as I pulled into the parking lot. I took a look and found that my home-made air dam under the front had broken a couple rivets and was hanging unsupported in the middle. The result was it was even lower than normal by about 2 inches. "Well I'll have to fix that tomorrow".
I go and meet my friend and we have lunch, a very good lunch buffet at MGM, by the way (Thanks Jeff) and we talked for a couple hours.
It was getting late and time to head home, just in time for.... rush hour traffic!
In the rain.
At night.
In Vegas.
So I get the car on the street and figure the best way to handle this is take the freeway since I should have fewer problems with headlight glare on my rain streaked windshield. Good thought. In theory. Problem was, everybody was on the freeway, and, just in case you don't know this, NOBODY in Vegas knows how to drive in the rain. And to top it off the Wurst shifter on my Richmond 5 speed has finally told me to go fuck myself if I ever think of putting the car in first gear again. Now paint this picture in your mind, here I am stuck on the freeway, in the rain, with no wipers, in stop and go traffic and no first gear. Let the good times roll.
Traffic was such a cluster I ended up missing my exit, kind of intentionally anyway and decided to try my luck with the surface streets. The lights were just interminably long and the rain and general panic and chaos of these inexperienced drivers backed the streets up for miles. The result was more 2-3-2-3-2-3 shifting than I've done in an entire season of autocross. Finally some forty five minutes (and only about 12 miles) later, I'm almost within eyeshot of my house. I'm finally in my neighborhood and traffic lightens up. That's when it happened.
I should probably stop at this point and tell you that a few years back I took the car out to Buttonwillow for a track day. I generally had a great time as usual but I had one eensy weensy teeny tiny problem. I put the car off at "space mountain". At least that's what I call it, I forget what they actually call it there. But at any rate, "space mountain" is really just a hill that's probably at total of 50 feet higher than the average for the rest of the track. I went in way too fast and got air. I mean "like Mike" air. When the car came down, off track I might add, it folded the original front air dam under the car (hence the aforementioned home made air dam) and (but wait! There's more!) compacted dirt under the car to such a degree and so violently it literally broke the floorboard. I'm reasonably sure I've even posted pictures of the damage in my gallery if you're really interested to see how badly one person can fuck up a Corvette. I still haven't fixed that damage. And today I paid for it.
Back to the story.
So traffic has finally cleared and for the first time in close to an hour of driving I have the car in fourth(!) gear. I can almost see home from here, I'm ready. I blow through this intersection, an intersection I've gone through more times than I can count, but apparently I have never noticed that there is a fairly significant drainage channel in this particular intersection. I never even saw it coming, what with the rain streaked windshield and all. I just felt that terrible slowing we all know so well when a car with 4" of ground clearance hits 5" of water. But the real surprise was the bucket load of water that blew back the carpet and soaked me in my seat!
Here I am driving along and all of a sudden I can see, almost in slow motion, this wall of water coming right at me. It was just like someone took a bucket and from point blank range threw it right in my face.
So now I'm driving down the road wiping water off my face, my shirt is soaked, I'm sitting in about an inch of water and there's more sloshing around my feet, with no wipers, no defroster and a rain streaked windshield.
Fortunately, at that point I was only about three miles from home. The rest of the trip was relatively uninteresting, aside from my pants and shirt clinging to my wet skin.
I got home, went inside and took a very long, very hot shower.
Man, I could use a little boring in my life.
So a few weeks ago my truck broke down. I think I even documented that saga here for your enjoyment. Until that happened, that truck was my "reliable transportation". I haven't yet fixed the truck for a couple of reasons, mainly money. That and my general lack of give-a-shit right now. My fall-back ride is the c3, or the project car from hell, as I am now learning.
Anyway, today a friend came in town to visit, just as the pacific storms seem to have done this week. We decided to meet up at the casino he's staying at and grab some lunch. I jump in the vette and with a heavy sign look at the ominous clouds to the west. It wasn't raining yet so I was hopeful this would be like so many other promising storms that roll through Vegas and leave nary a drop.
Oh how wrong I was.
On the trip over there it was almost boring. I got a lot of really fine mist but very little in the way of actual rain. It probably bears mentioning that my wipers haven't worked in about six years. Not generally a problem in Vegas, especially with a car that is 1) a project car, and 2) a "fair weather" car to boot. So I make it to the hotel with little trouble although I did notice some severe scraping noise as I pulled into the parking lot. I took a look and found that my home-made air dam under the front had broken a couple rivets and was hanging unsupported in the middle. The result was it was even lower than normal by about 2 inches. "Well I'll have to fix that tomorrow".
I go and meet my friend and we have lunch, a very good lunch buffet at MGM, by the way (Thanks Jeff) and we talked for a couple hours.
It was getting late and time to head home, just in time for.... rush hour traffic!
In the rain.
At night.
In Vegas.
So I get the car on the street and figure the best way to handle this is take the freeway since I should have fewer problems with headlight glare on my rain streaked windshield. Good thought. In theory. Problem was, everybody was on the freeway, and, just in case you don't know this, NOBODY in Vegas knows how to drive in the rain. And to top it off the Wurst shifter on my Richmond 5 speed has finally told me to go fuck myself if I ever think of putting the car in first gear again. Now paint this picture in your mind, here I am stuck on the freeway, in the rain, with no wipers, in stop and go traffic and no first gear. Let the good times roll.
Traffic was such a cluster I ended up missing my exit, kind of intentionally anyway and decided to try my luck with the surface streets. The lights were just interminably long and the rain and general panic and chaos of these inexperienced drivers backed the streets up for miles. The result was more 2-3-2-3-2-3 shifting than I've done in an entire season of autocross. Finally some forty five minutes (and only about 12 miles) later, I'm almost within eyeshot of my house. I'm finally in my neighborhood and traffic lightens up. That's when it happened.
I should probably stop at this point and tell you that a few years back I took the car out to Buttonwillow for a track day. I generally had a great time as usual but I had one eensy weensy teeny tiny problem. I put the car off at "space mountain". At least that's what I call it, I forget what they actually call it there. But at any rate, "space mountain" is really just a hill that's probably at total of 50 feet higher than the average for the rest of the track. I went in way too fast and got air. I mean "like Mike" air. When the car came down, off track I might add, it folded the original front air dam under the car (hence the aforementioned home made air dam) and (but wait! There's more!) compacted dirt under the car to such a degree and so violently it literally broke the floorboard. I'm reasonably sure I've even posted pictures of the damage in my gallery if you're really interested to see how badly one person can fuck up a Corvette. I still haven't fixed that damage. And today I paid for it.
Back to the story.
So traffic has finally cleared and for the first time in close to an hour of driving I have the car in fourth(!) gear. I can almost see home from here, I'm ready. I blow through this intersection, an intersection I've gone through more times than I can count, but apparently I have never noticed that there is a fairly significant drainage channel in this particular intersection. I never even saw it coming, what with the rain streaked windshield and all. I just felt that terrible slowing we all know so well when a car with 4" of ground clearance hits 5" of water. But the real surprise was the bucket load of water that blew back the carpet and soaked me in my seat!
Here I am driving along and all of a sudden I can see, almost in slow motion, this wall of water coming right at me. It was just like someone took a bucket and from point blank range threw it right in my face.
So now I'm driving down the road wiping water off my face, my shirt is soaked, I'm sitting in about an inch of water and there's more sloshing around my feet, with no wipers, no defroster and a rain streaked windshield.
Fortunately, at that point I was only about three miles from home. The rest of the trip was relatively uninteresting, aside from my pants and shirt clinging to my wet skin.
I got home, went inside and took a very long, very hot shower.
Man, I could use a little boring in my life.
