Would This Happen If I Were Driving A Mini-Van?

Someday I'm going to man-up and buy a new car-- most likely a mini-van-- and although it will be convenient and wonderful to have sliding doors, a cup-holder, heat, A/C, doors that lock, and other modern features, I'll miss the things you can't buy in a car: case in point, the other day I was walking out of the public library with my new books, and I was thinking about a million things and not paying very close attention to my surroundings and when I pulled on the door handle of my Jeep, I was surprised to find it locked-- and I rarely lock it because I don't have power locks-- so I pulled a bit harder, and then I was even more surprised when a face appeared in the window; after a moment it dawned on me-- this wasn't my Jeep! it was an identical 1993 forest green Jeep Cherokee with the same rust marks and peeling plastic trim, and so I shrugged my shoulders and gave my best "I'm not a lunatic smile" and pointed to my Jeep, which was parked next to the doppelganger Jeep and the guy inside, an older African American gent, followed my muted logic and laughed as well . . . two days later, I parked next to him again, and he rolled down his window and introduced himself to me-- his name is Bill and his Jeep has 187,000 miles on it and his wife had one that got 380,000 miles before she got into an accident on Industrial Avenue and since the mistaken identity incident we've talked several times as he's always reading in his car in the library parking lot (which is a bit odd, but maybe he's so attached to his Jeep that he prefers to sit inside his car rather than sit inside the library) and I doubt that anything like this will happen once I purchase a Toyota Sienna.

A Good Trade

Last Saturday morning-- like clockwork-- the cold weather worked its black magic on the driver-side door of my Jeep, and so once again-- if you want to drive-- you have to get into the car through the passenger side and then crawl across the center console to the driver's side (and, of course, Saturday morning, was the rare occasion when my wife was driving the Jeep because she had a work-shop for school and I had to cart the kids around all day to their various activities, but even though I offered the Subaru-- which has four working doors-- she gamely agreed to crawl across the console and drive the Jeep, because she didn't want me doing that nonsense all day with the kids in the car) and then-- miraculously-- ten minutes after she gamely got into the Jeep on the passenger side and crawled across the center console and drove away, she called me and yelled "Listen!" over the sound of music-- music!-- from the Jeep stereo! . . . which hadn't worked since before the summer, but I guess the cold weather taketh and the cold weather giveth, and I'll trade a driver side door for music any day of the week (and the fact of the matter is that Catherine might have actually fixed the stereo, because she took the face off the receiver and then put it back on, which I never did, and then it started working again).

Red Rocks and High End Shops

Sedona is a weird place-- it's incredibly beautiful, a town set within red rock buttes, mesas, and spires, with a clear shady stream running down the Oak Creek Canyon and then right under Route 179 . . . it's essentially like placing a bunch of houses and restaurants and shops inside Arches National Park, but there's more vegetation and the weather isn't as severe . . . check out the pics at Captions of Cat if you need some visuals . . . so you've got a super-touristy and rather cheesy "uptown" and then high-end galleries and the Tlaquepaque Arts and Crafts Village, which is essentially a giant outdoor sculpture in the form of a ritzy shopping mall-- I've never seen anything like it-- and there are houses in the hills owned by celebrities-- our guide mentioned Nicholas Cage (who was in a film called Red Rock West) and Walt Disney and Al Pacino and Lucille Ball . . . but then there are umpteen miles of hiking and biking trails, so you've got all the outdoors people wandering around, and then there are the vortex people and the hippies and the psychics and the folks living in a van in the hotel parking lot and the dude sleeping in the botanical garden . . . it is a wacky mix of high end resort, low-end tourist trap, retirement community, and outdoor wonderland . . . we did a few hikes, into Fay Canyon, which was shady and had some excellent rock climbing at the end, and around the Airport Mesa, which offers the best views, but we also rested our legs one morning and took a Jeep Tour to Soldiers Pass . . . our guides name was Dan and here are a few things we learned on the trip:

1) Dan wears a cowboy hat, carries a .41 caliber pistol, a rare size which he claims shoots flat and straight, hails from Connecticut, and-- like Andy Bernard-- went to Cornell . . . this totally amused me, but he's been out West since 1991 and has lost all traces of East Coast accent and mannerisms;

2) Dan is very proud of the fact that his Jeep Tour Company-- Red Rock Western Jeep Tours-- has the exclusive rights to the Soldiers Pass route, which features the Devil's Kitchen Sinkhole . . . and he pointed out that this sinkhole is seven times bigger than the Pink Jeep Tours sinkhole on the Broken Arrow tour . . . my sinkhole is bigger than your sinkhole kind of stuff;

3) my wife believes Dan is legally blind-- which is a bit scary, considering some of the steep slickrock trails he navigated-- but she might be right, his sunglasses we extraordinarily thick and he couldn't see the large Cooper's hawk perched on a tree in the middle of the trail until we pointed it out to him . . . despite this possible disability, he did a fantastic job not driving off any cliffs;

4) we saw the Seven Sacred Pools, high in the red rocks, and learned that in the desert, dirty water is clean and clean water is probably contaminated with arsenic and/or mercury . . . and these dirty little pools were full of tadpoles and frogs;

5) Dan knows a great deal about botany and zoology, and we all listened intently when he told us about the thirteen species of rattlesnakes and the deal with Mormon tea (it's stronger than coffee, a Mormon loophole!) and about the shaggy barked juniper that Walt Disney used as a model, and he also knows a great deal about geology, but we usually zoned out when he talked about sediment and erosion and tectonic plates . . . although I did like the fact that the Devil's Kitchen Sinkhole increased in size in 1989, a consequence of the Bay Area earthquake that cancelled the World Series and I now know the correct definition of a butte (it's not a rock formation shaped like a butt).

I Had My Reasons (They Just Don't Make Sense)

I was nervous all day Tuesday, my mind turning over the possibility that my 1993 Jeep Cherokee would not pass inspection and I would finally have to spring for a new car, and so on the way to the inspection station, I alternately drove really fast, in order to blow out the catalytic converter, and very slow-- to test the brakes-- which might be a bit suspect, and I occasionally beeped my horn, which has been known to stick, and only beeps if you punch the upper lip of the device-- and I'm sure I was an odd sight, accelerating and braking down Fresh Ponds Road, occasionally tooting my horn, but luckily I didn't pass any police, and then when I got to the inspection station I learned that-- possibly due to budget cuts-- they don't employ very many people there . . . it's a ghost town and the only thing they inspect now are emissions (most cars have a chip, so they just plug a cord into the chip, but my car is so old that they had to hook up all these EKG monitor type devices to the outside and inside of the engine) and the gas cap for leaking fumes . . . they don't test the brakes or the doors or the blinkers and they don't even beep the horn,  and so the positive thing is that I can legally drive the Jeep until 2013 but the negative thing is that I can legally drive the Jeep until 2013 (and God knows what other barely serviceable vehicles are passing inspection with flying colors, so be careful out there!)

Hard Habit to Break

I commuted to work twice today; Catherine actually made me recite "take the Jeep, take the Jeep" because she needed to clean and pack the Subaru for out trip, but still, I took the Subaru . . . and I didn't realize it until I was half-way down Route 18, playing with the satellite radio (that's what clued me in, I remembered that the Jeep doesn't have satellite radio)-- so I had to turn around and do it again.

Yikes

Last Wednesday, I drove all the way from New Brunswick to Highland Park with my car door open . . . this is partly because my Jeep is so loud and porous that it doesn't sound any different if the door is open or closed, and partly because whenever I get any time alone, I recede deeply into my thoughts . . . and I must have noticed something odd, but when I looked over my left shoulder to see if the window was open on the driver side passenger door, because I didn't see a half-open window, I assumed that it was closed, but in reality, I was actually looking at air and thinking it was a closed window, and so I drove right across the Albany Street Bridge with my door jutting out at a 45 degree angle-- as Jeep doors lock into place at this angle-- and it's something of a miracle that the door didn't strike another car, as the bridge is narrow (although I guess people were giving me a wide berth as they thought I was insane, and now I know why that guy beeped at me . . . I thought he was an asshole).

It's Hot

Stacey gave me a ride home in her jeep from our college writing workshop today (we got so much work done! I actually did some work in the summertime!) and riding in the jeep with the top down is generally a treat: the sun on my head, the breeze blowing through my (lack of) hair . . . but it was so hot today that it felt like we were driving in a pizza oven.

Cross Country Again: Jersey to Pittsburgh to Topeka

I have driven out West five times now; once with my buddy John-- we made it all the way to Montana before I blew four of the engine rods of his Jeep Wagoneer-- and once with Catherine, we took the Jeep all the way to the Grand Canyon, and once with Whitney-- we lost our minds in Kansas but finally did make it to Boulder-- and once with the entire family, again to Montana, and now this time-- alone-- and I've made it Topeka (the family is flying in to Denver on Thursday morning) and I'm not doing this again until we have self-driving cars . . . but while it was a long way, I had a great pit stop at John's place in Pittsburgh and watched the NBA finals and I had far more to listen to than on the previous trips; I don't remember what John and I listened to in the Wagoneer, but I had to take the bus home (John and Ryan abandoned me and flew, but I didn't want to spend the money) and all I had were two cassettes -- Dead Letter Office by R.E.M. and The Velvet Underground & Nico-- and a yellow walkman, so I listened to those over and over . . . with Catherine I guess we listened to CD's and talked (this was the mid '90's) and I don't remember what Whitney and I listened to because we mainly played stupid games, including drafting bizarre "Olympic" teams from among our fraternity brothers-- the events were darts and pool and such-- and these teams offended a lot of people once we arrived in Colorado (plus we were very very hungover, so if we listened to anything it was at a low volume) and our family trip two years ago we were stocked digitally and listened to plenty of podcasts, including Professor Blastoff and This American Life . . . for this trip I have a smartphone loaded with stuff, and so here is an incomplete list, for posterity, of how I killed twenty hours alone, driving from Jersey to Topeka:

1) Squarepusher Go Plastic-- yikes, like being inside a broken computer;

2) Slate Money;

3) Paul F Tompkins Impersonal;

4) Norm Macdonald Me Doing Standup;

5) Wilco Summerteeth;

6) Beck Odelay;

7) The Grateful Dead Live/ Dead;

8) Jimmy Smith All the Way;

9) Shut Up You Fucking Baby David Cross;

10) Maria Bamford Ask Me About My New God;

11) The Replacements Tim;

12) Chris Rock Never Scared;

13) Christopher Titus Norman Rockwell is Burning;

14) several episodes of Planet Money;

15) several episodes of Vox's The Weeds;

16) an episode of Invisibilia;

17) some Rush Limbaugh . . . when discussing the Orlando alligator incident, he claimed that "animals don't think" and "alligators don't think" and "your dog doesn't think," which flies in the face of all current research, and then he ranted about how there is no gun show loophole and that the Obama administration is redacting the fact that the Orlando shooting was connected to Islamic terrorism because the administration doesn't want to offend Muslims;

18) Husker Du New Day Rising;

19) a fantastic episode of This American Life: Tell Me I'm Fat;

in other notes, I did NOT stop at "The World's Largest Wind Chime" and I had a delicious burger and two local pints of beer at Henry T's in Topeka.

Ben and Dan: Guides of the Southwest

The differences between the Jeep tour we took in Sedona and the "open air vehicle" tour we took in the Canyon de Chelly were perfectly appropriate for each place; Sedona is a well-run tourist machine and Chinle is an off the map little town in the Navajo Nation, and our tour guides embodied these characteristics in an archetypal manner;

1) though they both have three letters in their name, Ben and Dan couldn't be more different as guides-- Dan was born in Connecticut but lived in Maine and also did some time overseas, as an itinerant musician and guide, and he kept up a steady stream of conversation, anecdotes, trivia, corny jokes, and interaction-- if you mention you're from New Jersey, he knows somebody in West Caldwell, if you mention you coach soccer, he played on his high school and coaches his kids team-- while Ben grew up and still lived in Canyon de Chelly and is a recognized Navajo guide, storyteller, and keeper of Navajo cultural history, but his style is just the facts (aside from occasional griping about the National Park Service and how they don't maintain the road and some of the sites as well as he'd like . . . he thinks there's some money somewhere, and he's been repeatedly asking them to trim the cottonwood trees that are blocking the beautiful colored antelope petroglyphs near the Antelope House Ruins);

2) Dan's Jeep is a dependable, well-oiled machine that conquered slickrock peaks, but Ben's "open air vehicle," which my wife wisely requested (because who wants to be cooped up in an SUV) is an old Dodge Ram Power 350 with a modified bed of bench seats, and while it's the greatest way to see the canyon, Ben had some trouble navigating the sandy riverbed and the truck stalled out several times, and the engine overheated twice-- luckily, we were in an incredibly scenic area, so it was no trouble to wait while he fixed the engine, but we really wondered if we would make it out of the canyon before sunset . . . and though his daughter had a brand new Polaris four-seater dune buggy, there was no way she was letting us use it-- she was headed out on the town (Denny's?) with some friends;

3) Dan's tour was definitely organized and built up to a great view, and he was well-practiced at his schtick, while Ben's tour ended at his house, where we got to play some two-on-two basketball with his grandkids . . . on the ride back, all the cotton-pods from the cottonwood trees were floating around in the canyon, and though it was 90 degrees, it looked like it was snowing; we really didn't know if we would make it through the sand-- but we did, and he dropped us at our hotel and then spent several hours fixing his vehicle in the hotel parking lot . . . while Dan dropped us off right on time, we took a picture with him and off he went . . . I think the kids will remember both tours, but I especially liked the trip through Canyon de Chelly, it reminded me of the time Cat and I spent in the Middle East, we were always a couple of clueless white folks being guided out to the ruins by the natives who still lived amongst remnants of ancient civilization, but were trying to maintain their own civilization on top of these relics . . . once again, for pictures, head to Captions of Cat.

If You're Dave, You Need to Know This Shit

Just in case there's some kind of Freaky Friday type incident, and your mind suddenly inhabits my body, here is my mnemonic for remembering which side of each car the fuel tank valve is on: Subaru has an "R" in it and the tank valve is on the right (which also has an "R" in it) and JEEP is spelled with four letters and so is the word "left," and this mnemonic also works with the nautical direction "port," which also has four letters and also means left (so if my JEEP were an amphibious vehicle when it was in the water and I was pulling up to a dockside gas station, I would pull up with the port-side facing the dock).

My Big Chance To Earn A Darwin Award!

I can't wait for the cold weather to arrive-- and not just for my usual reasons-- I also have some evidence there might be a wasp's nest in my Jeep because 1) my son Ian found a wasp hiding in the floor trash and 2) while I was driving to work on Monday, in silence because my stereo no longer works, I distinctly heard buzzing coming from the back of the car . . . and the back of the car is full of coaching equipment, trash, and-- most significantly-- debris from when I ripped out a rotting wood fence and used my Jeep to transport load after load of wood and ivy and brush to the park dumpster (so lots of sticks and leaves and organic material like that) and there certainly could have been a few wasp eggs in that mess and now it's covered by coolers, a med-kit, cones, balls, and other soccer related stuff, and there's no way I'm cleaning all this out, so my only hope is that we get an early frost that kills them before they decide to swarm me . . . otherwise, you might read about my horrific wasp induced car wreck on this site.

Do You Drive Your Car, or Does It Drive You?

I drive my Toyota minivan like a 1993 Jeep Cherokee Sport (because that's what I drove for the twenty years before I got the van) but I saw a lady in the high school parking lot with a brand new sporty Jeep with a jacked up frame and removable doors, gingerly poking in and out of her parking spot to avoid rolling one of her giant tires over a low concrete lip (not even a curb).

It's Happening Again

I am rapidly turning my newish (2008) Toyota Sienna minivan into my beloved and but heavily abused 1993 Jeep Cherokee . . . three years ago, when I bought the van, it was in perfect shape, but now it is missing a hubcap, there's a big scratch on the side from when I scraped my friend's car in the school lot, and the back latch is broken so you can't open the hatch, so I have to get all my soccer stuff out through the sliding doors . . . I'm worried that soon enough I'll be crawling in through the passenger side and using a boot as a cup-holder.

Kids Trick You Into Thinking They Are Civilized

After a productive morning of podcasting, Stacey, Cunningham, my wife, Alex, Ian and I went out for Mexican food-- and Stacey treated the boys to a ride to the restaurant in her new Jeep (with the top down) and the ladies were very impressed with our boys' behavior at the restaurant . . . and when Alex and Ian were finished with lunch, they asked if they could walk home, which they occasionally do instead of sitting and waiting for the check-- it's four or five blocks, so if Cat and I have driven, we usually arrive at home around the same time-- and after the kids left, Stacey said, "they're just like regular people!" and we agreed and we were very happy with our children . . . BUT . . . and this is the update for Stacey and Cunningham-- they are NOT like real people, even though they occasionally fool us into thinking they are . . . when we arrived home, we heard screaming and a loud banging noise coming from the backyard, and quickly surmised that it was Alex, banging on the giant glass sliding door-- I raced around the side of the house and told him to stop and he explained that Ian had locked him out of the house (and chained the front door) and then taunted him from the comfort of the air-conditioning and Alex totally lost his mind and came close to shattering a very very expensive window and probably hospitalizing himself . . . moments later, Ian's friend showed up and Ian had the awkward task of sending him home, since he was in so much trouble, and then we sent Alex over to Ian's friend's house to explain what happened, and Ian had to stay home, miserable and alone, and face the consequences of his actions.

iPod, I Name Thee Lazarus

One of the perks of writing a trivial blog filled with drivel is that I can fact-check extremely mundane details from my life; for example, I know for certain that I bought my iPod Nano in April of 2008 and I made a habit of swimming with this iPod in November of 2008 (which didn't last long, as my supposedly waterproof Otterbox case leaked, resulting in a waterlogged and broken iPod . . . but one of my well-connected students set me up with an "appointment" with her ex-boyfriend at the Apple Store and he gave me a new one, despite the fact that water damage is NOT covered by the limited warranty) and then I used the new iPod-- an exact clone of the old iPod-- without incident for many years, until I lost it for several months in the winter of 2013, and now I am realizing that this particular iPod (which I have conflated with the original water-damaged iPod in a philosophical leap reminiscent of the Ship of Theseus dilemma) is imbued with miraculous qualities, because my wife's iPod -- a newer, sleeker model-- doesn't hold a charge and gives her loads of problems, but this model (like my Jeep) is built to last, possibly to infinity and beyond; to make a long story short, Tuesday morning, when I got in my car to go to work, I saw my iPod lying prostrate in the road . . . it must have fallen out of my gym bag, and so it spent the night on the pavement, getting soaked by several rainstorms and quite possibly run over by cars, and so I assumed this was finally the end -- R.I.P iPod-- but when I pressed the "play" symbol, the screen popped right up, and so I put it in a bowl of dry rice and it is now in good working order-- and this tempts me to to try other more extreme experiments on the device: fire, acid, ice, my digestive system . . . but perhaps I shouldn't tempt fate, as I'm sure I will place it in peril some time soon, without forcing the issue.

2/8/2009

Whenever it's under fifteen degrees, the driver side door of my 1994 Jeep Cherokee Sport freezes, and everyone in the school parking lot is treated to the sight of me sliding my butt onto the glove compartment, spinning my torso, and then ejecting myself out the passenger side door.

Road Trip Day 17: Riparian Reunion

We floated a beautiful stretch of the Yellowstone yesterday-- and though the trout weren't biting, the time passed quickly-- as our river guides were my old friend Darren and his wife Pam; I hadn't talked to them in fourteen years, so we had a lot of catching up to do (the last time I was out to visit them, I blew four rods in my friend John's Jeep Wagoneer and we ended up living on Pam and Darren's apartment floor until Pam got so annoyed with us that she left town . . . John had to sell his car in Billings) and because the river was so high and fast, our trip only took a few hours, so we spent the rest of the afternoon at Chico Hot Springs, an idyllic spot under the shadow of Emigrant Mountain . . . and Catherine and I had a great time chatting with Darren and Pam, but the real surprise of the afternoon was that Alex and Ian had a great time hanging out with Annabell and Larkin-- in other words, Alex and Ian had a great time hanging out with a couple of girls . . . Montana girls who raise their own sheep and sell their own eggs, but still, actual females, which is impressive for my boys (this might be explained by the fact that they were starved for socialization with kids their own age, after spending so much time with their parents, and so even girls would suffice-- but Ian did ask if we would ever see those kids again, so I think they actually liked them).

Sometimes It Pays Not To Put Your Balls Back in Their Proper Place

Stacy needed my crate of assorted balls for a philosophy class activity, and she came to my classroom to remind me (but she could not bring herself to say "I need your balls" in front of my senior composition class, instead she said: "I need that box of sports equipment") and though she also called me over the weekend to remind me, I still forgot to put them in my car; so, on Monday morning, when she asked me for my balls, the only solution that came to mind was that I had a couple of flat soccer balls she could use in my Jeep (which is STUFFED with soccer equipment: cones, bags of balls, pug goals, discs, bags of pinneys, etc.) but when we went out to get the ersatz balls, we found what I was supposed to bring in the first place . . . the crate of assorted balls . . . it had been in my car since the last time she needed them: last year . . . and so the moral of the story is that sometimes it is best NOT to put your balls back where they belong.

An Unexpected (And Possibly Rude) Request

While I was handing cash to the gas station attendant at Raceway, he made a strange request . . . he said, "Do you have any extra?" and I was confused-- it was very early in the morning-- until I saw that he was looking into the back of my Jeep, where I still had a bag of soccer balls from the fall season, and it took me a second to realize he was asking if I could spare a ball for him, because obviously I had too many balls for one man (despite the fact that a cheap soccer ball costs one quarter the price of a tank of gas) and once I understood his request, I answered: "They're not mine, they're the school's soccer balls," and this seemed to satisfy him . . . but I think this a breach of etiquette . . . when you are paying money for something, the person you are paying shouldn't ask you for some of your stuff, right?

One Tiny Step For Dave . . . and Zero Significance for Mankind.

I'm seriously thinking about thinking seriously about purchasing a mini-van . . . no that's not true: I am thinking seriously about seriously thinking about the purchase of a mini-van (but not in the near future-- I was going to try to buy a van before Spring Break, but since we're only headed to the Catskills, I've figured out a way to stall the purchase-- we're going to drive both the Subaru and the Jeep to the cabin so we can bring everything and the kitchen sink . . . I've been shopping for a new car for over five years, and so I don't want to rush the process at the end . . . and now I'm far more excited about buying a new bike, anyway . . . especially since I could buy thirty new bikes for the price of one used Toyota mini-van).