tribute.

I've been known to become quite attached to my vehicles. Not this one, however:

The go-kart, in Death Valley.

I can't say exactly why, it just never weasled its way into my heart the way the Saab 900, or even the Toyota wagon did. It was a less sexy, only mildly evil cousin of that rat-bastard Saab 9000 I drove- something was always wrong, but never so wrong I was actually forced to fix it. It smelled of gasoline the entire time I drove it, except for maybe 3 months after a friend patched the wee devilish hole in the filler neck; there were cracks in the windshield; an exhaust pipe got loose after a snowy off-road expedition in Yosemite last spring; the front door frames always leaked when it rained which had recently resulted in a car funk I could only compare to a bad man-smell like hockey socks, or forgotten gym shorts. A little of this, a little of that, but the damn thing started every time, no matter how loud or smelly she happened to be.

Yesterday though, she sputtered out on the outskirts of Santa Barbara, as I was driving to work. I left her there, and went to work, hoping the CHP would be kindly, and leave her there for me. Alas, when I returned in the evening, she was gone, which forced a decision early this morning to let her go, to let her complete this incarnation as a junky-ish go-kart, to be molded and pressed into something far more noble and majestic, like... like... I don't know where old cars go after they've been smooshed into a big square mass with other junky cars.

In any case, take a moment of silencio for the go-kart. She served me well in my last months in MN, on my cross-country journey, all the way through 1.5 years of California residency. She was a good car.