BoldUlysses.com

I wish it didn’t take me so agonizingly long to finish books. I’ve been working on my library copy of The Silmarillion for ages now… I’ll read a few pages once every couple of days, and I’m only just now about halfway though. I used to read much faster. Maybe I had more time in high school, or maybe, because the activity was encouraged or required then, time was made for me. In an event, I remember the first book it took me longer to read through: Dickens’ Great Expectations. I loved the book; it just took me forever to read for some reason, and it’s been like that ever since.

Both cars continue to hum along without a hitch. They both need cleaning, inside and out, though; they’re filthy. Between the mist that’s been hanging in the air the past few days, not washing away anything, but just causing grime to be stuck to the cars, and the bird population explosion in our yard over the past month or so (they seem to consider the cars worthy targets), the cars have just been in a bad way. I feel for the Minkevan particularly; it doesn’t live in the garage at the moment, so it just seems to stare longingly at the E34 in the garage every night, wishing it could be inside too. Needs some love. Thankfully, both cars engines are in good shape—they both recently had oil changes, the Minkevan with some good ol’ dino 5W-30, and the E34 got a new formula: I’m trying Castrol Syntec 5W-50 instead of the usual Mobil 1. The lifter tick at idle drives me up a wall, and it’s still present (albeit softer) after the oil change. I’m going to have to try some MMO, I do believe.

A few little things to update you with:

1. Home improvement continues apace. Diane and I (mostly Diane, whilst I tended the kids) completely painted the family room downstairs, and she’s been painting other things like the TV cabinet, doorknobs, picture frames, decorations, etc. I installed stick-down vinyl tile flooring in the main bathroom upstairs, and it looks surprisingly good considering what it is. We think we might actually install stick-down vinyl “hardwood-look” flooring in the kitchen as a cheaper, lower-maintenance alternative.
2. There have been a few car repair successes to report. The ripped PCV hose on the Minkevan (causing a check engine light and very rough running) was repaired by using a copper pipe, heater hose and hose clamp pliers to remove the old unit. The E34’s ICV hoses, throttle body gasket and intake boot have all been replaced, along with its fuel pump and filter (after it failed to start on me last Monday morning). So things are good on the car front. If only I could get a longer hose so I could give them a proper bath…
3. Luke continues to be obsessed with stars and planets, but particularly stars these days. I want him to learn the constellations before I pull out the telescope, and I plan to use the H.A. Rey kids book to teach him, the same book I used when I was only a little older than he is. There’s a local astronomy club I want to take him to as well. I think he’d like that.

Drove the kids in the E34 back to my parents house for our annual New Year’s visit. My car’s original owner is a lady who lives on their cul-de-sac. She replaced the E34 with a new-ish E90 325i, but still misses her old car a good deal.

Parked by the curb on Friday afternoon, she saw her old car for the first time since selling it last spring. She had to run to an appointment, but the incident reminded me to ask her something I’d been wondering about for a while. So I sent her an e-mail later that weekend asking for her story of the car’s purchase.

Here’s her reply. It made me really happy.

I would love to tell you the story:

In about 1994 or sometime around there, I was in Germany on business and rented a car for business purposes, as I was traveling to another city for a second meeting. The car they offered me was a BMW 328i, and I drove it from Frankfurt far into the countryside (I can’t remember the town), on the Autobahn. OMG, that just took me right out re: BMW’s. It was a manual shift.

I had driven a manual shift earlier in my life (school bus in high school, old Volkswagens, Mazda 626, which I had at the time)), so a manual shift was very much at home to me, and frankly, what I consider…shall we say…driving.

Back in the US, I started thinking about how nice it would be to have a BMW, but what a dream that would be. I went to the Performance dealership, and thought they were snotty and arrogant, but I did connect with a sales person there who took me for a test drive in a white 525 with black interior. It was pouring rain and we’d stopped on a dime in the rain on a back road, so that was impressive to me.

But black interior? High price? Arrogant dealership? Automatic? That was 4 votes for NO.

Sometime later I was having dinner with my then insurance agent, Peggy, and her husband Ed. Over the course of dinner I learned that Ed loves BMWs and is always on the lookout for good deals. In fact, Ed loved hanging out at Leith in Raleigh and knew the guys there. He’d be on the lookout, but you know how people say those things, so I didn’t think much of it.

And then…about 4 or 5 months later, out of the blue, it was December, and Ed called and said that Leith had a 525i with manual shift in house, at the price of $34,000. It had 4,000 miles on it because it had been driven by an Executive at the recently opened BMW plant in South Carolina, so it had been really packaged nicely for the Executive (hence the burl dash, which was new at the time). He talked to the sales person and they would hold it for me if I was interested.

I went to Leith, drove the car, and (remember this was December, 1995, and car salesmen were not as equalitarian or enlightened in the awareness of Women as Legitimate Customers). The sales men (I emphasize the men word here) were commenting with some shock that I could drive a manual shift. (Huh?) They couldn’t imagine that I would want a manual shift.

OK, but I did and yes, I bought the car. I had incorporated my business, so bought it with profits from my business. I paid cash for the car. That same unenlightened salesman said, (brace yourself for what’s coming) “So, little lady, who’s going to be paying for your car?” I replied, “I am.” “Well, I know that you will be making the transaction today, but who holds the loan, or who is giving you the money?”

I looked him square in the eye and said, “I own a business. I earned money in my business to buy this car. There is no loan. There is no one else. I am paying cash for this car. T O D A Y. If you have a problem with that, I can speak with someone else.”

He sputtered and said something about little ladies today, blah blah blah, and we proceeded with the transaction.

I only mention that as laughter as to how times have changed. I noticed that salesman was not there very long afterwards.

For the entire time I owned that car, I had all service done at Leith, as you can see from the records. I never had one lick of trouble with it (except for a water pump that went out 3 years ago in 100 degree heat, and Chapel Hill Tire replaced that in an emergency).

All service was performed by the same mechanic, Conrad, their top mechanic, until he moved to Virginia. Then I interviewed Conrad’s recommended replacement, who I think was William.

The service manager at Leith in Raleigh, Kelly, knows me and this car like his own child. They were always good to me.

And that car represented my business ownership, my success beyond my dreams as a small business owner, and a real sense of pride for me. It also drove like a dream. I “fit’ in the bucket seat (no small feat for a 5′ 1” tall woman with short legs)

I had grown up in a large family where we were always limping along with second hand cars and Dad doing the repair, and we crossed our fingers on big trips, so it was important to me to be religious about preventative maintenance.

Mostly that car represented to me Dreams Realized, and I’m not just talking owning a BMW (I was always a little embarrassed about that, I don’t like the Ego stories that people make up. It was always less to me about having a BMW as having a nice car that I had didn’t have to worry about, that I could be proud to drive up in, that I paid for from my business and that I loved loved loved to drive…It was so much about the way that car drives).

Thank you for taking such good care of this car, and for understanding that sometimes a car is more than a car.

And thank you for asking….

Happy New Year,

Bailey

Finally sold the E24 a few weeks ago. I’d been on the fence about selling it for a while, and gone back and forth more than enough times to make Diane uncomfortable about the stability of my intentions with respect to the car, but finally, firmly decided to sell it.

Why? For the reasons enumerated here, along with a few extras:

• Diane’s always hated the car’s color (white), and even I would concede it didn’t flatter the car’s lines,
• Something with four doors is vastly easier to get the kids into (the 6er had two),
• The E24 would have been very difficult to teach Diane how to drive, being a particularly finicky manual,
• I was absolutely paranoid all winter every time I had to drive the car through the salty slush–the BMW rustproofing of that era was notoriously bad, and
• It required too much cash to be brought up to a level where I felt like it looked acceptable visually. It was the kind of car that was so good-looking that you were doubly motivated to spend money to get it “all the way there,” so to speak. Less attractive cars can “stop” in a less demanding visual state.

I was all set to trade it for an Audi 200, but the would-be seller lost interest. After a few weeks of poking around, the net result of the car wrangling is detailed here. It’s a perfect car for us–stickshift and RWD to satisfy my “needs” as an enthusiast, much better rustproofing, four doors, less tempting to “improve” mechanically and cosmetically, and Diane loves the color and the shape. It worked out really well, and I’m grateful to my parents for setting us up with the opportunity to get it.

However, my enthusiasm for the car is tempered by the fact that it’s not quite as classic, not quite as “interesting” as the E24. I think this is a good thing–my time spent thinking about the older car was approaching excessive levels in those last few months. I’ve been a car buff for years and years; I know how my emotions respond to these things, and I should have known better–I should have known how wrapped up I would get in the car and staved things off from the beginning by getting a different car or, heaven forbid, keeping the one we had at the time. I made a bad decision, and I own that. Doesn’t lessen my gratitude for how well things turned out. I certainly didn’t deserve for them to.

A side effect of all this, combined with my “rediscovery” of my journal and rereading past entries, is that my emotional desire to pursue a specific interest has been blown wide open again. During the past nine months (the span of ownership of the E24), my emotional focus was “dialed in” to the car and my attention to other spheres of interest faded proportionally. But now I’m all over the map again as far as my feelings as concerned. The funny thing is, I don’t feel unstable or unpredictable. The insecurity I used to feel when I thought about how strongly I felt about so many interests that often seemed to pull me in mutually-exclusive directions is gone. I just feel liberated. I feel like my life has been greatly simplified, and if you know me at all you know that I love the scope of my life in any given moment to be simple–even though it rarely is.

Where to go from here? The Lord knows. We’ve got a plan to purchase a house early next year, send the kids to school and invest in our church and community. What happens in the periphery only time will tell.