This is the kind of post that would normally find a home in my other blog, my non-gaming blog, but it’s Blaugust and I signed up with this blog, and so this is the blog I’m going to blogblogblogblauuug ah never mind.
Anyway: Manchester, Connecticut’s most famous event is the annual Manchester Road Race, a 4.5 mile run over steep hills. It happens every year at Thanksgiving. Somewhat less well known is the Cruisin’ Main Street the first weekend in August.
Which was this weekend.
I used to live in Monterey, California, a place that was just sick with car events. There was the world famous Laguna Seca raceway on Route 68 on the way to Salinas; Pebble Beach and its Concours d’Elegance brought all the millionaires to the yard; you’d see a lot of events through the year where people would bring their most expensive cars out to shine.
That isn’t the kind of car event we have here in Connecticut. There was one car there that looked like nothing I’d ever seen, with a placard that said “Built, not Bought”. It sure looked it. People here in Connecticut don’t have expensive cars; but they are loved and probably sleep inside on cold nights because if you’re cold, they’re cold. It’s definitely a “working man” vibe here.
My first car was a ’63 VW Beetle, which was probably white at some point, but had deep rust-colored accents here and there on it when I had it. I burned out its engine because I was not good at cars. Then I had a Rustoleum-colored VW Squareback, don’t remember the year. It just seized up on me while I was driving to work. Just stopped, wouldn’t move. I replaced that with a ’74 blue semi-automatic Super Beetle. You still had to shift it, but it didn’t have a clutch pedal. Brakes went out on that one, in the snow. Master cylinder just decided it didn’t want to stop the car any more. After that I didn’t drive VWs much until I got an old orange Beetle. I had a Miata; I’d lost the family car in the divorce, and I had two kids and they weren’t fitting in that Miata, so I got a Beetle for the new “family car”. I think I eventually replaced every moving part in that car before I finally just gave it away to a friend’s boyfriend.
So anyway, I liked VW Beetles, but they didn’t like me back much.
Every year, I go down to Cruisin’ Main Street looking for cars that I used to own. There’s always some Beetles there, and some Miatas, but one model that I have never seen there is a car that looked like my old Supra Mk 3.5.
I loved this car, but it gulped fuel. I had the engine rebuilt but it was just at the stage in its life where more and more expensive things were going to keep going wrong. I sold it to a friend of my son’s and bought the VW GTI I currently have. The GTI in the collage above resembles mine, but isn’t. The last time I saw my Supra in town, it had clearly been in an accident. Some people are not meant to be Supra owners.
Miss that car and my Miata and all my old Beetles, but I guess I just decided I wanted to drive a car that would just… keep running.
