Autoweak

Last year around this time I went to a little shindig called "Mazda Rev It Up." I love Mazda, I really do. It's a damn shame that as of the 2004 model year, to my limited knowledge, none of the cars they sell here in the states are actually made in Japan. I had lots of fun in it. I plan to attend this year again.

The funniest moment of the event last year was when we were in a tent and the speaker said "and, with your paid admission, you get a FREE year of Autoweek." And there were groans coming from the audience. Heh heh. This household gets two copies of Autoweek per week, one for me, one for my brother. That particular magazine? I consider it a DTG subscription release: Direct To Garbage.

Anyway, my little car is one tight bitch, let me tell you. I love her. I love the way she accellerates and brakes and turns and signals. I love the wipers and the radio and the nooks and crannies. I... don't so much like cleaning her, though. I used to be hard core with it but now I'm just lazy about it. She don't shine like she used to.

Mostly it's because of the arms race required to keep her clean. The inside windows are just evil and I can never clean them without streaking. Well, no, not true, I was able to do it with about half a bottle of Windex and a beach towel and about an hour. Then there's dust. No matter how well I vacuum there's always dust that finds its way. Plus it gets dirty all the time since it's parked out on the street instead of a nice fansy-pants garage, or, car-hole.

I drove a car before her, but it wasn't really mine. I didn't buy it, I didn't make payments on it. My father owned it and abused it. It was a big wide heavy 1989 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme coupe, 6-cyl with an all digital display. It ran without transmission fluid for about a year, too. Drake, his name was. He got to about 120K miles before he just gave up and the tranny started dying. I spent about $200 a repair once every three months, and I just couldn't keep up with it.

My current car, 2002 Mazda Protege: Green Bean Machine, is my baby. So I don't abuse it. I keep it in wonderful mechanical order, actually. And I know more about that car than Drake. Of course, downloading the service manual and printing it at work (about 1200 pages over the course of two months) helped. But I've successfully changed oil + filter, rotated tires, changed wiper blades, and replaced air filters. No big whoop? Well, I've ALSO done my own brake job, changed the transmission fluid and it's filter, changed plugs. I've even replaced the wiper stalk with one from a european 626 so I can have VARIABLE intermittant wipers. I'm not the kind of guy who is into car mods, but mods that you can't see are just fine by me. I like the notion of a sleeper. Future plans include a stealth satellite radio mod. I know I could do it very easily, but I'm not keen on drilling to put a satellite antenna, and I like my head unit so I'm going to have to be clever.

I could pay it off in one clean sweep, right now. But I'm just mailing off another payment. I got 0% interest on this chick for 5 years, so why pay early? There's no point to it. This, folks, in itself is an incentive to maintain PERFECT credit. Deals like this just fall in your lap.

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Yes, I'm purposefully avoiding talking about something. How could you tell?

(oh, and, you are clicking that little kabob frequently, correct? If you read above, you'll know I like subtle changes that aren't necessarily obvious)