The Guilty Love of My Life

I took my car in for service today, it was loooong overdue - oh, by maybe a few miles give or take 10k. I love that false sense of security one feels driving away from the service station. It's this nice and clean feeling like your car and you just saw the dental hygienist or something - and clean teeth makes one invincible. Prior to taking the car in, I felt like I was driving this ticking time bomb, like at any given moment, my poor baby will choke on some sludgey oil, hack a few times and just explode.

I never thought I could get attached to some stupid material thing like a car, but I've found that I'm oddly attached to my car. It's a 2001 Land Cruiser that I bought back in October 2000. I remember when I first drove it, it just purred all over the road and to this day, it's still purring all over the place. It's such a gas guzzler that I sometimes feel so guilty and terrible about it, but most days I love it. There had been numerous occasions when I'm looking for a trail all alone in some crazy rough dirt road that makes me feel so grateful that my car is so reliable in that terrain. Over the weekend, the trail leading up to Hester Lake was partly a trail for off-roading vehicles, I saw all these different Jeeps roaring by with snorkel attachments...it made me hug my baby for not croaking. Then I looked at the odometer, it has clocked nearly 125k miles, I thought about my car getting old and me having to put it under, it nearly made me cry. The amount of crap my car and I have gotten into together has far outnumbered anything anyone has weathered with a loner like me in recent years.

One that instantly came to mind when I thought about recent solo trip was during Super Bowl Sunday this year, I thought I ought to drive up to Whistler because NO ONE would be there except ME! I mentioned this to my snowboarding buddies and they said, they didn't want to pay an arm and a leg for last minute lodging, I told them the idea was to drive there at night and crash in the parking lot and get Princess Parking when the park opens. The one buddy that ended up wanting to go whined about how hard driving up there would be and how much harder it would be to drive back...so I banned him. Sorry, I can drive 8 hours without blinking alone, but if I have someone whining in the passenger seat, I would have to push him out of the vehicle moving at 80mph at some point.

The day ended up even more beautiful than I could hope for. I got the best space in the lot when I rolled in at 7a.m. Folded down the chairs and took a nap in spacious luxury until the place opened at 9. The day was beautiful with a slight snow dusting, taking the highest lift "The Peak" on Whistler will take you above the cloud line. All you can see is snow, and where the snow ends, the clouds take over, off in the distance you can see other peak tops, the sun is shining brightly...it's like sitting in heaven.

(Picture taken with my shoddy camera phone.)

Around 3:30 I snowboarded right up to the lodge, clicked off my bindings and strode right in, they were just doing the coin toss. The game was playing on 3-4 big screen TV and 3 projectors and many smaller TVs. The bar was packed to the teeth, but a single girl in a bar will eventually find a damned awesome seat. I took off at the beginning of the last quarter because the out-come was predictable by then. I drove back to a very depressed Seattle, but my car and I had an awesome time.

I'm just happy my car got its teeth cleaned.