Learning how to drive.

Speaking about cars on my last post I started remembering when I learned how to drive. It all started out one summer when I was 14 and went to visit my sister in Palm Springs for a while. Boy was that an awesome and educational time. Parties like I had never seen before.

My sister hated to drive and decided one night to start teaching me. Well, I wasn't gonna pass that opportunity up. I did pretty well and had a ball there. When I went home I never told my parents about that part of the vacation.

Fast forward to when I was getting my learners permit. Because I was held back when I was younger I was already going to be 16 starting my sophmore year. They didn't offer Drivers Ed for freshmen so my parents had to teach me and sent me to of all places "Sears Driving School". Yep, it was embarrassing driving in that car. I was in a class with a bunch of offenders who were there to get their tickets written off. Anybody watch the old 50's classic blood/guts movie about driving dangers. Car's crashed, bodies, etc. I got the joy of watching that one.

"DA BOAT"

My dad took me out to teach me how to drive for the first time in "Da Boat" at night in the parking lot of a grocery store. Now mind you he didn't know that I already did so I had to fake it. Guess I didn't do too well faking it because he said about 15 min. later "You have driven before haven't you?" Classic freeze moment: do I tell or not? Well I fessed up and he started laughing. He said that he figured it out right away and didn't care.

When we bought my first car it was a stick shift. That was a huge learning curve. Lots of stalls and my little brother in the back-seat laughing but I finally got it. We were in that same grocery store lot and my dad said I did good. He then told me to go around back. The back of the lot which I didn't realize has a hill down and then back up. Going back up the hill dad suddenly yells STOP! I slam the brakes (little bro got a bit smashed up on that one. Hehehehe) Heart pounding I look at him and was scared what I did wrong. He said Ok, go ahead now. I start to go and instead of forward I was going backwards. Brakes slam again. (little bro quiet now after 2nd head butt Hehehehe) Again after several false starts, rolling backwards more than forward, stalls, I finally got it and was done and now had freedom....

I didn't use that skill much because we were living in Phoenix, AZ at the time and it does not have hills. A year later the memories come screaming back when I was living in the San Francisco area and decided one night to venture out to SF city with friends. The hills there are nothing compared to normal stuff.

I was lost but having fun discovering all kinds of stuff and then found myself on a huge hill with a stop sign in the middle of it. And of course with my wonderful luck I had a truck stop behind me right on my butt. No room for error. I raced the engine a bit before letting that clutch go and flew out burning rubber. At least I didn't hit that darned truck behind me. I did not want to explain to my parents what I was doing in the city in the first place.

My whole world opened up once I had the freedom to go places without having to beg for rides. Granted the begging still had to do with gas money but it went quite a bit further then now.

My first car

While I was in Texas talking with an old friend we got started talking about our first car. It was a pretty funny conversation. He had just recently bought a car that was the same year and model camaro that he had for his first car. I told him about mine and one thing led us to another and we were wondering how we were able to execute some of the acrobatic acts that young frisky teenagers do. Now days, if I even tried to execute some of the things I had done I would be in traction for a month not to mention have a lifetime prescription for the chiropractor.

"Da Boat" This was the car that my sister and I learned how to drive with. It was an embarrassing monstrosity but that engine had some incredible power. We would drive that boat around with a baseball cap pulled down low so no-one would see us. We did everything to avoid driving it but it sure came in handy hauling Kegs for a party. Shhhhh, I don't think my parents know about that one.

My first baby was a Metallic Blue Datsun 310. I fell in love with it the first time I saw it because I love the color blue and it was blue outside and royal blue inside. Even better was the fact that it was in the price range that my dear old dad was willing to pay. Pic gives you an idea of what it looked like except blue. Lots of crazy memories in that one. I actually wish I still had her because no matter what I did to her she kept on going faithfully. I sold her to buy my next car.

Next car I got was purchased from my mom, a 79 Camaro. I was on cloud nine with that baby. It was fast, cool, and got the guys attention. I did the whole nine yards to it. Pinstriping, louvers on the rear windows (before we had window tinting for you young folks), and the required roach feather and crystal hanging from the rear view mirror. Sadly it was totaled in a car accident. I will have to write about it someday. I shed a few tears over her loss.

My replacement car was an 85 Camaro, getting the theme here yet guys???? I actually didn't like this one very much. Probably because I was still missing my other baby. It served it's purpose until I had to sell it to my baby brother for a bigger car. He totaled it 6 months later. That was the 2nd of 3 cars that he totaled.

86 Ford Taurus. The next car was bought strictly because of need. We needed a bigger car in order to carry all of Max's medical equipment around. After the first time he was discharged it was evident that the camaro wasn't going to work. The next time I was in the hospital with Max I sent my ex-husband and Evil Mother-in-Law out to go shopping and get back to me with what they found. We hadn't had time to find anything yet but I told them what I liked and didn't like and what we needed. Of course Evil Mother-in-Law bought the exact car that I put on the No-Way-Jose-Will-I-Ever-Drive-That-Piece-Of-Crap list. I hated that car the entire time I was stuck with it and was happy when it was sold off.

79 GMC Suburban. This car was purchased because of growing family and the transmission on the stupid Taurus was dying. Was OK and did it's job well. It had a weird paint job. Red/White on the outside and Forest Green on the inside. Joke was that it was like a Christmas tree.

This car was an Oldsmobile Achieva/2 door. I needed a car fast after the divorce and it was cheap. Done. That car was like a weird little alien and had a mind of its own. Even my brother-in-law thought that it was a wacky alien thingy. It would lock its doors by itself whether I wanted it to or not. Now we are not talking about automatic locks that lock after several minutes. It would lock at all different times. Even when I had the door open, keys in the ignition, and radio playing when I was working on it. Also I could only turn off the headlights if I put on the emergency brakes. That made it fun when I had to drive on to a military base. Huh! Like I said "Alien Car"

Now my second baby was the 98 Firebird. Now we were getting back towards the cars I love. Sleek, fine looking, and FAST!!!!!! It had T-Top and a banging stereo system with 2 amps, huge sub-woofer in the trunk and 7 speakers around the car. I rocked till my hair vibrated from the noise.  I had it for several years before mechanical problems came up. Went to several mechanics and they never could figure it all out. Each one quoted a different source of problems and each estimate was in the range of $1500-3600. Plus there was no guarantee from each one that it would fix the problem. Well I wanted to keep the bucks in my pocket more than in the mechanics pocket. So sadly off she went.

My current car is a 2008 Pt. Cruiser. It was my very first car purchased BRAND SPANKIN NEW. It was a super good deal that couldn't be passed up. Little did I know that they would claim bankruptcy right after I bought it. Still, it is a cute little thing and gets me to where I need to go. The only thing that I really don't care for is that the seats are uncomfortable. I am looking for options on that one and use a $3 back wedgie from Walgreen's for now.

What was your first car? Did ya love it or hate it? I would love to hear your stories on yours.

Have a great day.

Toilet Papered Cop Car Caper

Nellie, of Diary of a Midlife Cruiser posted a blog a while back asking us to list 7 things our blogging buddies didn't know about us. One of the things that I listed was that I had toilet papered a police car. I had several comments asking me details about that and have decided to let you know what happened. NOTE: For obvious reasons I have changed the names of the individuals involved.

Many moons ago I lived in a very tiny town. My best friend Missy and I were young, single, and living la vida loca every day. I was living next to a huge military base with tons of cute, sexy, single guys and had the beach right in front of my place. What better place can you think of for a single gals playground.

Over time we met and became friends with several police officers in town. One of the officers, John, had been giving us a hard time because of an earlier joke and even pulled me over while I was on a date for no reason other than to razz me and see who my date was. We decided it was time for some payback.

Now Missy and I were notorious for pulling pranks and practical jokes and knew we could come up with something good. One night Missy and I decided for payback that we would toilet-paper(TP) John's car.

I don't remember exactly which one of us came up with it because we were playing quarters, a drinking game, pretty much all night. We decided to do it the next weekend because there was a big cop party at a guys house and we could use that as our alibi.


So with TP stored in the car we went to the party and spent a while mingling. John was on duty that night and stopped by to say hi, then left to take his lunch at the station. He had a crush on a certain dispatcher and had been eating lunch there. After he left we went to get Joe. For alibi purposes we only had 1 officer, Joe, there to help us with diversion while we were gone. We split up, started wandering around the party, and then casually wandered into the backyard. After a bit we made a quick exit and drove over to the police station. I parked a block over and we slowly made our way through the bushes and trees. We froze every time a car drove by and hoped nobody was walking by on the street. That is all we needed, to get caught sneaking around the police station in the bushes in the middle of the night.

John was parked on the street in front of the police station. After checking the time to make sure we were OK and looking for car lights we quickly did our TP business. It was so hard to keep from laughing out loud.


I can say that it was the fastest TP job done on a car and it looked mighty funny with the light bar sticking up out of all the stuff.

After that we ran back to my car and got back to the party. We could hardly breathe because we were laughing so hard. Once we got back there we had to quickly compose ourselves and look normal. That included picking leaves and twigs out of our hair and clothes. Once done we entered the party via the backyard and casually strolled into the party.

About 30 min. later a very angry John stormed the party and came right to Missy and I. He pointed at us and yelled "WTF did you do to my car!?!" Well the whole party stopped and it was dead silent. John was so mad that he didn't even notice that everyone was looking at him.


We, looking oh so innocent, said "What are you talking about?" John blurted "You toilet papered my police car didn't you?" Next thing you hear is a huge roar of laughter coming from the crowd.

That is when John realized his mistake of yelling. We told him that we were at the party the whole time but wished we had thought of that and could have seen that. Everyone there said "Yep, they were here the whole time. We never saw them leave." John left furious and still not believing we didn't do it. The entire dept. was razzing him about it for ages and they never did find out who did it.

The only regret that I have is that I don't have any pictures of it. As you can understand, we needed to make a quick get-away before being caught and the last thing we were thinking of was a picture.