Rescue Corvette

The engine replacement process has begun, and I find myself pacing through the day like a nervous new parent awaiting bad news. It's been a long three weeks since all this went down by the side of the road in a puff of white smoke. I remember seeing that cracked engine for the first time and crying the whole drive home. Not because my fun was (albeit temporarily) over, but because I felt so bad that this happened to such a great car. A car that is so much more than that--which brings me pure, honest joy each and every time I take a ride. Like a malnourished and abused dog is rescued from a life of neglect and cruelty, I feel like this Vette has been rescued. Adopted and swept away to a better home, Stella's still in her recovery period.

She will know love like she hasn't known it ever before. :)

Reindeer Games

My husband and I have had bad luck with cars lately. A series of unfortunate events took place so close together recently that I've begun to feel a little apprehensive about leaving my car(s) unattended or being around other moving vehicles in general. It seems like each time I venture out it's like asking for some new tragedy to happen.

The first such event happened to my car. My 'everyday' car is a '08 Chevy Malibu, which I pretty much use just to drive to work and to run errands if Mike is working. I work as a pharmacist in a department store and therefore park my car close to the back of the lot. In part I do this because I have to, but I also like to keep it far enough away so that I might avoid unattended shopping carts scratching it up. Well, after a 10-hour shift one week I leave to get into my car (which is parked all by itself in the back of the lot, as usual) and see that a note has been left on the windshield. It basically is apologizing because somebody's daughter, a new driver, pulled too far into the parking spot directly behind me and dented my rear fender. Fantastic! My once flawless Malibu now has a suspicious-looking dent right by the license plate. I considered myself lucky in this day and age that someone was courteous enough to even leave a note, because as you're about to find out, most people don't.

The second incident happened to Mike's everyday car, a 2011 KIA Sorento. I'm a huge fan of this car, and we bought it brand new in April of 2011. He takes meticulous care of it, so he noticed right away when a mysterious dent appeared above the passenger rear tire. Mind you, this tire is tall enough to reach my mid-thigh, so this dent is several feet off the ground. No note was left behind to explain it, and it could have only happened when the car was (again) left unattended in a parking lot. To get it fixed involved removing several of the exterior panels, including the rear panel, part of the roof, and the passenger side rear door.

Unfortunately, the remaining incidents involve my beautiful Corvette. As much as I hate to have anything happen to any of the cars, I'd much rather they happen to the KIA or the Malibu, as they are much easier and less costly to have repaired. But if I didn't have bad luck I wouldn't have any at all, so as Fate would have it, tragedy seems to strike the Vette most often.

Most incidents have come from close-calls on the road. We live in an area that is undergoing heavy road construction, and it is my firm believe that even the best drivers act like complete jack-asses in construction zones. People don't read signs, don't pay attention, don't check their mirrors, and in general seem unaware that they are not alone on the road. We were cruising along down a road which had been reduced to a one-way street one day and we were in the far left lane, about to pass a car on our right. Suddenly, without warning (and of course without a turn signal) the car in the right hand lane made an abrupt, 90-degree left-hand turn right in front of us! We slammed on the brakes and the tires screamed. I remember the whole thing like it was in slow motion, seeing us coming at that car and truly believing that we weren't going to be able to stop in time. I could smell rubber, the tires were smoking against the pavement, and I thought in my head of how I would run this guy down and beat his ass if he crunched up my Stella-baby (and this was only a few short weeks after purchasing her). Luckily, the dumbass completed his turn into the parking lot on our left just in time and we missed him by a narrow margin.

Mostly impressively, the following week I was coming home from work when Mike called me to warn me that a 'minor accident' had occurred with the Corvette. This was after all the above had happened, so I was immediately freaked out and demanded to know what had gone down. Apparently Mike had been driving the Vette down some backstreets (because he thought that would be 'safer,' heh) when a deer jumping over the car. Did you catch that? In broad daylight, a deer jumped over my Corvette! And I don't just mean it jumped over the edge of the fender or something, I mean it honest-to-God leaped over the top like a damn reindeer. The antennae on the rear fender caught its under-belly as Stella passed underneath, and of course pulled it out of the fiberglass enough to leave a few small hair-line cracks in an otherwise flawless body.

And then of course the engine broke down. >_<

Up In Smoke

Thirty-five years of wear and tear, deterioration, and lack of proper maintenance have taken their toll on one tough engine. We took Stella out on the highway a couple of weeks back and started puffing white smoke from beneath the hood. We killed the motor immediately, but the damage had been done, as you can see from these pictures. The engine cracked impressively in three separate places, two of which you can see in the first and second picture and a third time in the bottom picture. It looks like we might have slipped a rod... maybe blown a head gasket first which put too much stress on the engine. Whatever the cause, "catastrophic internal failure" is what followed. We got her safely to the side of the road and watched helplessly as all her vital fluids flowed in a steady stream onto the pavement below. I was scared and sad, and I felt my heart in my throat while the tow man attached heavy, rusty chains to her tires and pulled her slowly up onto the flatbed and off the road.

We considered cutting our losses, but after almost four decades, I couldn't let myself be the one to put this beautiful machine into the grave. I will admit this--Stella makes me do crazy things. The fact that I spent "house money" to buy her is enough proof of that, so there's no point in denying it. So a brand new engine is en route to us even as I type this. It's due to arrive on Monday, and we found a great mechanic who ensured us that three days later we'd have our girl back and better than ever. I can't wait to hear that engine grumble back to life!

Passion Project

This picture captures the moment I first glimpsed the old vintage Corvette that would soon become mine. In purchasing it, I fulfilled a dream of mine that had grown hazy and impractical in my mind, as the daydreams of my childhood matured into the goals of my adult life. Some of those dreams lived on--made the "cut" if you will--and some didn't. In high school, while my girl friends were plastering the inside of their lockers with magazine cut-out pictures of hot young men, I was cutting out pictures of hot, fast cars. I guess some things never change.

Mike and I took a plunge and spent what few dollars we had to buy a neglected old Vette that needed serious love and attention. It was parked in my driveway before the ink had time to dry on my college degree. I consider myself lucky to have found it, but I also consider it lucky to have found us. A more passionate, dedicated duo it could have waited another 30 years for and never found. I love it, and I confess that love with enormous sincerity.

Since then, we've begun the restoration process in the haphazard, uneducated way of two people learning a trade for the first time. Every single time I commit myself to getting my hands dirty, I learn something new about this little slice of history. Each worn and deteriorated part we replace seems like a glimpse into the future, when we'll someday transform her back into the mean machine of her younger days. It is not a commitment I take lightly, and since the day I signed up for it, I have shed blood, sweat and tears in making those first few tremulous steps forward. I've laid on my back underneath her, chipping away at decades worth of grime and grease, not caring if it covered my arms or my face. I've sat in her worn leather seats and driven fast enough to peal the laughter from my lips. I've stood on the side of the road in a plum of white smoke, realizing that I might be the first person to love this poor Vette in a long, long time.

Full restoration will probably take years, if not decades of my life. So here's to all the firsts, the lasts, and the milestones along the way! Here's to Stella: the Vette that stole my heart.

Stella 1976

The first time I ever saw her was on a beautiful early summer afternoon, not a cloud in the sky, the way it seems so many fateful days are. We were driving down a busy street in the country, one we had never driven down before, wistfully jumping between peaceful neighborhoods looking at houses. We weren't exactly close to the point when we could purchase a house, but it was fun nevertheless to dream. I had the day off of work and not a care in the world. We had gone to a delicious Mom 'n Pop breakfast joint that morning and then we just drove--me with my flip flops kicked off--not caring how much gas we were wasting. I loved doing that. Just driving around the way we were. There was something soothing about that constant feeling of motion and staring out at the rolling landscapes that enticed me so much and so often.

I remember I'd been looking out my husband's side window when he suddenly asked, "Amanda, did you just see that car?" His voice was excited and a little shocked. Of course, I'd been looking the wrong direction and told him I hadn't."We have to go back then. You have to see this car." He said this absolutely, as if there was simply no other choice.

He did a quick turn around and we passed it going the other way. I only got a quick glimpse, but one glance was all it took. I recognized it immediately as an old Corvette Stingray, definitely 1970's, for the Stingray era produced some of the most radical, outrageous looking body types I can ever remember seeing, Corvettes or otherwise. It was the look European cars might have but you'd pay a lot more money for.

We turned around again so that we were facing our original direction and I wistfully requested that he pull over so that I could 'take a picture.' Mike pulled our car onto the gravel shoulder of the road without complaint. He immediately hopped out on his side, startling me, for I had planned on simply rolling down my window, snapping a picture with my phone, and then taking back off again. But fate had a firm hold on this particular moment in my life, I know that now, and I was meant to get out of the car. I was meant to get out and look closer.

She was parked in the tall, uncut and weedy grass of what appeared to be an abandoned house-turned small junkyard. Mike would tell me later that there were many oddities scattered across the property, but I honestly remember none of them except the car. It was captivating. Perhaps the only case of that mythical love at first sight that I had (or would) ever experienced.

Close up she was small and aggressive-looking. Sitting low to the ground, she seemed almost to be stalking prey in that un kept grass. Her body was free of blemishes and the color of a bright red apple, complete with a black racing stripe starting at her pointed nose, following down her hood, and ending over her license plate. A shockingly low price was written in white across her windshield and O.B.O. across her driver's side window. Less than 60K miles. Her tires were those ass-kicking chrome jobs so popular for sports cars of her era. They looked mean and huge, a focal point on a car that was meant to go real fast real fast. The body seemed to be melted around them.

I walked around her in circles, taking in the mint exterior and the 'Stingray' emblem displayed boldly just in front of each door. She had a 1976 historic license plate decorating the nose, leading me to believe that '76 was the year she rolled off onto her first road. Thirty-five years ago--ten years before I was even born. My father hadn't yet met my mother or even graduated from college. Her interior was worn and in need of refurbishing from decades of butts sitting in her leather seats. As I stared in at her dusty dashboard and dirty steering wheel (adorned with the crossed double flags of the Corvette), I could envision what she had once looked like. What she could look like again with love and attention.

Her body was in amazing condition for her age and her mileage was impossibly low. I stared at a the asking price scribbled across her windshield. We have the money, a whispery voice said from somewhere deep inside me. Certainly not in any 'Old Corvette Savings Fund,' for I meticulously planned a future for every dollar I made, but we had the money nevertheless. In a house fund.

My husband stood somewhere nearby, grinning at me stupidly and taunting me with phrases such as, "Imagine what it would be like to pull into the driveway inthis!" As if all the things I could do with this car, and all the fun I could have in her, hadn't already flown across my mind a million times. He knew this was my dream car, far more than any brand new, shiny sports car could be. This was the experience I always wanted to have but always believed was truly out of my reach.

I gave her another appreciative, longing look before resigning myself to returning to our own car. A car that was nice, that we loved, but was only a car. Something to get us around, to move our things from one place to another, and to get us to work and back. I realized in that moment the true difference between a vehicle and a car like that Corvette. A difference that I'd never really thought of before.

We drove away. Inside our car was quieter than before, lacking the earlier chattiness of an afternoon drive. I stared out the window and day dreamed, the same way I had about becoming a pharmacist or the way I would look in my wedding dress. I thought about the car.

I had learned over my young life to listen to my heart. You see, my heart doesn't speak to me very often, but I know right away when it does. It spoke to me when I met my husband, and for years after that regarding him, as we struggled through years of vast change and growing together. It spoke to me one sunny day on my college campus when it told me to give up my childhood dream of becoming a veterinarian and pursue pharmacy instead. It spoke to me the day I walked across the stage and held in my hand my Doctorate degree for the very first time.

It spoke to me now. As we drove away from that little Corvette I felt as if I had left part of my soul with it. Little did I realize that exactly one week later I would be driving around in it.