197,907,654,787,740.889.2, Give Or Take

 That is the number of car crash videos I'll be watching this weekend.

Life with a Biker is sometimes a trial.  Life with a confirmed Biker motorhead - planes, cars, motorcycles, trucks and variations on those themes - can be a LIVING FUCKING NIGHTMARE at times.

  Now over the course of our 32 years together I have learned to tolerate his compulsive interest in all things combustion related.  But until recently, that interest was restricted to magazines, car shows (which you actually attended in person; remember events like that? People all in a group? They were fun!) and the garage. Hence toleration.  Keep it out of my face, we're cool. 

Now, we have YouTube on our television!

I understand that he gets to watch what he wants when he comes home from work.  My busted up old ass is sitting here while he goes out and deals with shit all day, so here, sweetheart, have the remote; and then it's nothing but:

1. Supercar crashes.  

Now I have to admit, I do love to see someone who has way too much money crash their expensive, overpowered toy.  I do like that.  I also like to see those expensive, ridiculous cars spontaneously combust - they do!  Just going down the road, for no reason!  

Go out in a blaze of glory.  An expensive blaze of glory.  Just, go out.  

No, what I don't like is a solid fucking hour of Supercar crashes.  There are more idiots per square foot in a supercar video than in any other form of gearhead video, and they're all young and dressed in expensive clothes, and they mill around like the undead, just dead flat 'Whuuuoh huh. I think it crashed, whu happened, izzat burning...uh...'  This is not entertaining after awhile.  This is just angering.  "Look at all those wealthy little pricks.  She's wearing shoes that cost more than my car and she's walking in the grass with them. Bitch." And then you get all grouchy which is not a good look.

2. Car crashes.  Shit, I've been in a lot of close calls.  I find nothing entertaining about having those emotional memories re-stimulated by watching 1683554 videos of them. 

 I live in a part of the world where there is a lot of big truck traffic and general large machinery of various types headed down the road very rapidly, too.  Did you know that if you live on a farm you can drive a large and deadly farm machine and be eight years old?  And it's legal?  These little pricks out here know the cops are on their side, and they'll be driving THIS goddamn thing here:

This machine is the size and height of a semi tractor!  See those things on front?  They twirl around.  This is some Mad Max bullshit right here. 

 

on the public two-lane, in town, doing 35 mph in a 20mph zone.  An eight year old kid, driving a zombie killers' dream vehicle!  And they're all up your tailpipe and you check your mirror and there's an EIGHT YEAR OLD KID DRIVING THIS THING and you're the one worried about getting a ticket!  That's my life right there! 

 Not to mention all the times I've seen what happens to a car full of shavetails trying to get back to base in time for roll call after a late night of drinking.  I've seen cars suddenly head toward the sky for no apparent reason and then go cartwheeling in flames off into the roadside brush and disappear.  Like Nascar on the freeway,  man.  I've driven past the fiery remains of four guys' lives and careers way too many times.  It is not entertaining.

3. UNLESS IT'S RUSSIA.  Ever since Russia pulled it's head out, stopped being the CCCP and started being 'hey, money is good!' this once former Workers' Paradise has turned into Alabama.  

There is so much highway WTF going on in Russia right now I want to set up a lawn chair and an umbrella in downtown Moscow and just watch stupid shit happen all day long.  People losing tires and tying logs onto the hub, just going down the road on three tires and a log, scraaaaaaaaape.  All four wheels suddenly falling off a vehicle all at once!  Boom!  Car falls flat on the ground, in the middle of an eight lane freeway! and the driver is still trying to rev the engine as his tires are bounding down the road ahead of him! "This is a big pothole!" is what I imagine they're thinking.  Cars actually driving up and over other cars - and both cars just drive away.  Just 'gosh, that was weird, huh?'  And the loads - imagine a Lada carrying a whole pallet's worth of ten by's tied to the top of the car with men's belts, touching the road ahead of the car and also behind it - on the freeway, tootling along.  Kid lying in the back package try waving.  Goat hanging out the passengers side window.

4. Junkyard crawls.  Now I love junkyards.  I do.  I love digging through those places and seeing all the stuff.  What I don't like is watching other people do it while I sit at home.  They're not even good junk yards, they're just huge plots owned by car hoarders, automobiles rusted to the door handles with trees and shit growing up through them. The narrator is in ecstasies of automotive archeology. "Oooh, lookit this! Hey, get a shot of this. There now.  That's a 1975 Ford Donkeymax  three litre.  That's raaaare! Boy.  Someone is gonna want this!  Look here, wow, the interior, that floor is rusted out.  Someone is gonna want this!  Windows are all broken out... Oooh look, the trim ring on the steering wheel!  I need one a' those!  I have me a 1968 Ford Donkeymax three litre point eight in the yard I been meaning to work on and that trim ring broke on it.  I wonder if this guy'll sell it to me.  I'd sure like to have that.  That's a rare piece, boy!"  *old codger voice in the background* 'Not for sale!  I toldja I'm not sellin. None a this is for sale!  Now lookit here, I got an old milk truck, it's a Divco...'  *chorus of 'Ooooooo's* 'Yeah, she's a beauty, that one, my dad used to carry his victims heads in the back there...'

And so forth.

5. Third world WTF.  Here I am put into the position of looking at the product of someone elses' misfortune and efforts to cope with a broken system, and sometimes, it's hilarious.  I am not sitting in my own home to experience moral dilemmas like that.  But there are some points where you just have to say "Buddy, a sewing machine is not gonna do that."

6. First World WTF.  This is when a group of building contractors and real estate salesmen pool their egos and attempt to add inches and girth to their penises by taking a perfectly good car and cutting it up so that it not only looks worse, it runs worse - ON PURPOSE.  See, they're making a Rat Rod.  Its 'cool.'

No.  No, what it is, is you fucked up a perfectly good car, so now you're using P12 grit sandpaper adding 'patina', and installing capped truck exhaust stacks, and running barbed wire to your spark plugs.  Not even hipsters think that shit is cool anymore.  Or the Tiki/Rockabilly crowd (who are aging at an alarming rate) and certainly not the Nametags.  No.  What the Nametags want are

7. Really lame stupid cars, weenie motorcycles and dorkus vehicles.  Austin Americas! (I actually owned and drove one of these back in the 1980's!  It SUCKED.)  Honda Trail 90's!  Scooters!  Like, vintage, optioned-out Vespa stock scooters! IT'S A VESPA! YOUR SOUL IS DEAD!  Soviet cars-really? No.  Canadian models like the Mayfair, the Frontenac, the Fargo, the Laurentian - listen.  It's an American car, people, with a few minor body tweaks and different badges.  The Frontenac is a mid-range FORD, y'all.  Just uglier.  

But here I am at home, and I've got the Biker sitting beside me, and he knows AND WILL TELL YOU, whether or not you're reading a book or online or even in the room, the names and dates of EVERY FUCKING THING THAT COMES ONSCREEN and which one had a modified transmission and what colors it came in and I DON'T CARE AND I'M NOT GOING TO REMEMBER ANY OF THIS. 

 

You'd think after 32 years this man would realize that I am not a motorhead.  No.  I do not remember  that car that was on the cover of Hot Rod magazine last month, and how it looked just like that car we saw for sale three years ago in Centralia.  I DO NOT.  I know, right?  Even though the magazine was in the bathroom (where I went to take a whiz, not read.)  Even though we drove past the car in Centralia three years ago, and it was on a distant hill, and we were going 75 mph, and I saw as much of it as it took you to say "Look, there's a" and then it was gone, and I was still turning my head.  I suck.  I don't remember it.

People, I am not even exaggerating.  He does this to me!  He does this to me at least twice a week!

"Remember that Pontiac we owned?" he'll ask.

Folks, we've owned us some Pontiacs.  Buying old cars and motorcycle, fixing them up and selling them is his side hustle and always has been, since before I knew him.  We'll drive what we own, get all the bugs out of it, sell it a few months later, time for a new car.  WE HAVE OWNED PONTIACS.  

This means that if I want to keep peace in my house I have to engage in this conversation, so I have to say "Which one?" in a reasonable tone of voice.

"You know, the one we owned while we still had the Buick."

Folks, we have OWNED SOME BUICKS.  

"Which Buick?"  asks Ms. Reasonable.

"The one we had when we had the Pontiac."  And he'll be getting exasperated at this point!

"Well, honey, fuck off and jam your Buick up your ass," I'll say.

 - nah.  I won't really say that.  

But I'll be thinking it.