Category: 01: Cars Are Cars
By Paco
Last week Jaime came by my place to pick up my bro Marco and I to go see a nearby waterfall. Jamie has a new found passion for waterfalls… Why? I don’t know… waterfalls are great for hiking too, photographing, etc… but this is not just a passion, it is borderline obsession for Mr. Nacho.
Anyways… once Jaime arrived, he came in and checked out my new place, and after a little while, we headed out to get on the road.
Jaime had offered to drive, and when we approached the car, I was completely blown away by what I saw.
JAIMENACHO’S CAR IS FILTHY!
Filthy is actually a bit of an understatement. Now… I am not a clean freak, and I have been known to let my car, or home to get on the dirty side. But what greeted us in Jaime’s car was a mini landfill.
It took us at least 5 minutes just to clear space for the three of us to sit. Part of that had to do with baby seats, a lot of had to do with the random crap strewn all over. Here are a few of the things we noticed…
Tons of random papers.
Toys
Crumbs EVERYWHERE (someone commented about how Jaime’s family would at least have a couple days of food if they were ever stranded.)
Basketball Cards
A Trashy Romance Novel
Dozens of Brocken or Cracked CD Cases
Dozens of CDs
Basically, about 80% of the “items” belong in a trash can. And I wonder when the last time Jaime really cleaned his car. We are probably talking years here folks… not days.
I think when Mr. and Mrs. Nacho take out their trash, they dump it in the RAV4.
This doesn’t quite do it justice, this is during the “cleanup”.
Sorry Jaime… but I couldn’t resist!
By Paco
Well, the green S10 has been retired. I have moved up to a Jeep Wrangler.
I have been trying to think of some good stories from the green truck, but I haven’t been able to think of many. This is the only one of interest that comes to mind…
Back in 2002 when the truck was still pretty new to me, I was invited to this party up in Trinity Alp by my friend Yeti. Yeti was raving about how beautiful it was up at this cabin, and how the party was really fun. Yeti also mentioned that Jaime and Pecos could join me up there if they wanted.
So… I discussed it with my amigos. I wanted to go, but it was looking dicey for us. My 10 year high school reunion was that weekend, plus, Jaime and Pecos had already made plans to go to the coast for camping that weekend too.
After a bit of debate, we decided that we would head up for at least one night for this party, Friday night. It would work perfectly, I could head back for my reunion on Saturday afternoon, and Jaime and Pecos could cruise over to the coast for their camping trip on Saturday morning.
Cool, so come Friday afternoon, we decided to head over to the Trinities for the party. I was in the green truck, Jaime and Pecos followed in Jaime’s RAV.
The drive was loooooong. 2 1/2 hours, and much further than we thought. The total distance from home to the cabin was only about 85 miles, but little did we know that about 1/2 of the drive is on dirt roads. No bother… we just kept cruising assuming we were going the right way.
Eventually we reached a locked gate, a good sign. We knew we were heading the right way, because we had been told about the gate, and given the combo a few days earlier by the Yeti.
Ahead of me in the road just in front of the gate was a guy with a tye dye bandana (what a nut I was thinking…) who was messing around with the gate.
So I got out of the truck and approached him…
Paco – “How’s it going? Are you heading up to the party?”
Tye Dye – “Yeah, but I have a flat tire.”
Paco – “Do you need some help putting on the spare?”
Tye Dye – “Well… the tire that is flat is the spare. This is my second flat.”
(About this time Pecos walks up…)
Paco – “Well… I can give you a ride up there if you’d like.”
Tye Dye – “That would be great!”
So Pecos helped Tye Dye move his car down to the small campground near the gate, while I cleaned up space for Tye Dye to sit in my truck. (a common thing, the truck was constantly full of stuff/crap)
Tye Dye and Pecos returned, Tye Dye hopping in with his camping stuff, and away we went to the cabin.
On the way up I talked to Tye Dye, turned out we went to the same high school, he worked in the same industry as me, etc… etc… we hit it off.
Once we made it to the cabin, the four of us had a BLAST.
And Tye Dye and I are still friends to this day. (ahhhhhhhhhhhh…. how touching!)
Side Note : On two more occasions Tye Dye has ran into me during times of car trouble…
Once a couple of years later when Pecos, Guillermo, and myself when were heading to the cabin again. Pecos was having overheating problems with his Pathfinder.
Second time this summer when The Gambler and I were returning from a backpacking trip and broke down on I5.
Odd…
Anyone else have any memories to share of the uninteresting S10?
By Paco
From January 30th, 2004 (the EARLY days of Mis Amigos Locos…)
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Paco’s 6th & Current Car – 1997 Chevy S10
Just a boring American truck. But it works.
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This will be changing in just a few days… I guess it will soon be time to give the old S10 it’s proper final respects.
By Pecos
I just sold a car, and I thought I ought to post a story to remember it by.
Some time ago, the wife and I decided we were tired of two-seaters that couldn’t haul anybody else. First we ditched the 280Z. The Z technically had back seats, but nobody would sit in them since they were built for Japanese midgets. (Did you know that the average height of a Japanese midget is 4.2 inches shorter than an American midget?) Next, we ditched the Fiero, then her Honda CRX. She picked up a Nissan Pathfinder, and it was my turn. I looked at a bunch of crazy things, including an actual Thing. She finally convinced me to get something more reasonable, and we settled on a Jeep. Just a plain, no frills Jeep. We were in Eugene, Oreon, and called a guy about an ad in the paper, and the dude said: “If you can pay for it this weekend (it was Saturday), we’ll knock $1000 off the asking price.” Turns out, dude needed the bucks to make the payment on his very nice, very big, very expensive looking pickup. We drove out to his place, and were surprised to see that this particular Jeep had been pimped in the exact opposite manner that Eduardo’s Jetta had been. The thing had been lifted up to the stratosphere, and had giant tires on it. We were NOT looking for a serious 4×4, just a car, really. But, the price was too good to pass up, and we bought it on the spot. I drove it all the way home, with no top, by myself. (I got seriously sunburned.) The whole way, stupid 4-wheelin’ dreams played out in my head. Me and the guys were gonna take this Jeep out and tear some stuff up, you know?
Fast forward 4 years (5?), and how many times did we 4-wheel that thing? Zero. But I did have some fun with it. Jaimenacho and I drove all the way to freaking Cotati in it one Autumn evening, still with no top. We were so freaking cold, we actually pulled sleeping bags out of the back and wrapped ourselves up in them. (No, we did not cuddle. Yes, Jaime wanted to.) Senor Bob and I drove it AROUND the big French Gulch fire, through the forest from I-5 just South of Castella to the top end of Trinity Lake, on our way to the big cabin party. We were passing fire refugees going the other way the whole time, and asking ourselves if we were crazy.
Well, the time finally came to let this one go. We put it on the side of the road with a sign, and this one guy takes a look at it, and says he’ll have the money together in a few days. Dude showed up with a fistful of dollars the other night, a bunch of hundreds and twenties, and I waved goodbye to my monster truck.
By Paco
It is kinda sad to see the old gold Jetta go. Back in it’s early days it had so much kinky style. The low profile tires, lowered body, stylin’ wheels, etc…
I remember the bumpy rides down 101 towards SF when it felt like the underside of the car was bouncing off the pavement.
If you can Eduardo, can you please give us a quick recap of the time that you “Un-kinky’d” the Jetta?
By Eduardo
I recently sold my ’96 Jetta after six years of driving bliss. The wife and I recently bought another car, so the Jetta was no longer a necessity.
The last year or so had been kind of rough anyway, considering that it finally reached that point in a car’s lifespan when a million little things suddenly go wrong. The driver’s side door lock broke, which set off the alarm every time I opened up the door. I had to get in and out Duke Boys style for a while, which got old really fast. The emergency brake mechanism also broke, which ruled out any trips into San Francisco. In reality, there were three or four things that could have easily been fixed – but I didn’t want to waste the effort and money fixing them since we were planning on getting a replacement car anyway.
Still, it was in decent shape, and I’d been driving it to work every day up until we got the new car. Once that happened, it was time to turn the Jetta loose to a new owner who would take care of her.
A gentleman at my church heard that I was looking to get rid of it, and told me that his son would probably be interested. He had him drive up from San Jose that weekend, and they came over on Saturday to check it out. I gave him a long printed list of the car’s known problems, which didn’t faze him. I’d been pretty thorough, because I didn’t want to feel like I’d ripped anybody off.
After a test drive and a close inspection of the engine compartment, he and his dad discovered that the water pump was on its way out. Feeling dumb for not noticing it myself before then, I shaved a few hundred bucks off the price. After thinking about it for a couple of days, he eventually went for it.
I signed the title over to him, he gave me the dough, and that was that.
He drove away, and a sentimental twinge of sadness gripped me for a moment as my little golden friend slowly disappeared from sight. It was sad to see it go, but a few minutes later I was glad to have one less vehicle to worry about.
At church several days later, the guy’s dad came up to me as my wife and I walked in the door.
“Hey, Eduardo – remember that car you sold my son last week?”
“Sure… But what do you mean ‘remember’?”
“Well, a funny thing happened on his way home that day.”
“What?”
“Just a few hours after he left your place, he had it parked on a street somewhere – and a lady plowed into it going 55 miles an hour.”
“!!!”
“Yeah… Nobody’s hurt, but the car’s completely totaled. I guess she was on the phone, or trying to reach down and get something out of her purse while she was driving. That’s what the police report said, anyway.”
And so, the Jetta’s life story unfortunately ends on a tragic note. What was an amazingly dependable and resilient car is now little more than a sad, mangled pile of scrap metal.
By Guillermo
Not a very outstanding car. Got it from the car dealer I was working for at the time, a good deal! Only thing that sticks out is the trip some of my friends made to see me during new years… we drove around a lot and “someone” was kissing every damn girl in sight! There was this other time I was moving on Halloween so it was full of crap, this car could really pack it in! I had like six guys in the front two seats and we went to a party! That was pretty cool. I also know that a 6’1″ guy can sleep, prolly two ppl, in the back very nicely with the back seat folded down while someone else drives. Took a road trip to LA where the 3 of us rotated thru and we basically camped in the back… very nice… that was a good trip but some things broke on the car and we almost got stuck in LA it cost us like 1400 bucks to get it running again! A big chunk of our travel budget! After that I used to sleep in the back of the car all the time, stealthy, while I was *working* as a security guard in the city! There were car break-ins all the dang time… never my car… never while I was sleeping, heh. Go figure. My bosses never really caught on to that little thing. This was the last car I ever owned and drove. I sold it when the cost to benefit ratio was exceeded. I never had to drive in the city, plus I enjoyed walking so much! A few five-dollar cab rides filled in the gaps.
