Memento mori

 I mentioned previously that the red Spider was obtained under depressing circumstances. As the rally date approaches, I wanted to remember a friend of mine who taught me a few things about cars, and especially the lesson of diligence when a task gets difficult. 

I moved to a new city when I was a teenager, out of a small town into one of the largest cities in the nation. I met a gregarious kid at a gathering to which my parents (hoping to instantly socialize me) had sent me. Really lost, and just standing around, I ran into this guy who became a fast friend. Through our young years, our adventures with cars were pretty legendary in hindsight. I think our skins were only saved by having extremely slow machines - I had a 1980 Toyota Celica with a clogged carb and a three-speed automatic, which would do 70 or 80 wide open and almost redlined. He had a 80 or 81 VW Dasher diesel wagon (which I would absolutely love to have these days) that made a whopping 48 horsepower. We were never in any danger, but by gosh we had fun!

There was a road we were often on which had a nice little hill up to a railroad track and a perfect drop on the other side for launching a car at speed. One evening, up to no good, we spent ten minutes in my Celica jumping the car over the railroad track, at a whopping speed of probably 40 or 50 mph.  I noticed this did not improve my car's handling, but it was still pretty memorable.

Time passed, we grew up. I moved away and we were not in as much contact as we used to be. I visited once in a while, and looked at our cars, but the wild times of our youth were gone, and we commiserated over these facts. 

I bought the Spider from a guy on Craigslist which happened to be not far from my friend's house. I drove up on a rainy Saturday, did the deal, and had the car on the trailer when I realized it was only a few minutes out of my way to go visit, and so I did. We chatted, looked at home improvements, but I had an eye on the weather radar and a big fat thunderstorm was rolling in. There I was with a Fiat on a trailer with no top and no windshield, and the issues of moisture in inconvenient orifices was weighing on my mind. I said goodbye, and drove off into the lowering clouds.

This was the last time I saw my friend. He had bought a house about half a mile down the road from where we jumped railroad tracks as kids, and a few months after my drive-by visit as he rolled out his garbage cans to the verge, a driver on their phone speeding along the two-lane road struck him and hurled him into the bushes. He survived as a vegetable for another year or so before his family pulled the plug and he starved to death. I visited him shortly before the end, and, not knowing what else to say, talked to him about our multitudinous automotive adventures, some of which make really excellent stories to this day. 

I am saddened by the nature of his passing, and the red Spider continually reminds me of my last visit to his adult life where we as kids went thrill-seeking by jumping slow cars over railroad tracks. I'll be thinking about him on this rally, the jolly kid with the engineering knack who taught me that just keeping at it is usually all it takes to solve a problem.