It Was Going Too Well

It appears that Team Huey Newis and the Lose want their working garage back for stupid things like working on their 24 Hours of LeMons car. Selfish bastards. A temporary cease fire was negotiated by all parties and the garage was deemed a DMZ at least until we can get there and move our bitchin' IROC away from their Mustang. Some unconfirmed reports were coming in that vandalism and looting was going on in the absence of hostilities. Undeterred from our mission, there appeared to be several problems that we needed to overcome in order to accomplish this task:

1. Get the car running without having to push start. We all know that Sanka was the pushcart king of Jamaica, but dammit this is 'Merrica
   
2. Locate the keys to the vehicle.
   
3. Determine the new location for our car.
4. Find a way to transport this heap without drawing to ourselves and our obviously illegal activity.

Getting the car running was easy. I had to check out the battery by taking it down to the local Kragen auto parts store for a test. Out of 660 cold cranking amps (CCA) that a typical battery contains, ours was bringing 40 A to the fight. I'm pretty sure that the $8.50 per hour tech was silently judging me. Whatever. My second task was finding the keys. Apparently Eric did not leave them with the car. While I at first mocked my teammate for this, in hindsight I can only conclude that the decision to not leave the keys was an act of genius on his part. Who knows what those shysters on The Lose would have done had they been able to move the car. Finding a new home for the bitchin' IROC was just as simple of a fix as the first couple of problems. Of course I did have to clear it with the High Command, but I was given the GO for moving the camaro from Alameda to Tracy and specifically to our garage. Nice.

Now we get to the interesting part of our little story - how to move the camaro without drawing attention to ourselves. As with most 24 Hours of LeMons vehicles, aside from being held together by copious amounts of JB Weld, registration isn't exactly high on the priority list. This presents you with certain challenges when you need to move the car over public roads and the Highway Patrol are sticklers for silly things like proper tags or valid licence plates. It really is their own fault that they force people like us to break the law. In any event, our devious solution to this conundrum was to use the cover of darkness to hide our illicit activity and hope that Smoky wouldn't mind that we were East Bound and Down. Wait, most illicit activities happen at night? Damn, we thought we were original.

With our plan of attack now, well, planned all we needed to do was pick which one of us would be the unfortunate soul to strap our ass to this Acme deathmobile and risk injury and significant legal and personal humiliation should we be caught. Eric has a new car so the obvious choice was me. Oh goodie. Before embarking on our journey of certain peril we did a quick systems check.

• Lights = working
• Electric fan = working when we hardwired it to the battery
• Turn signal = non functional
• Mirrors = fine if you like driving by kaleidoscope
• Brake fluid = can diarrhea be considered an accurate description of color?
  
• Seat and seat belt = not affixed securely and non-existent (in that order)
  
• Firewall and general structural integrity = I'm feeling less confident on my chances of survival. I reassure myself by telling myself that chicks dig burns.

Without time to rethink this plan we set off into the night. The car is running. Strong. I might make it through this thing afterall. The good thing is that the white smoke described by Eric as "copious" has pleasantly subsided. On to 880, 238, and finally 580 and the car hasn't exploded or flames come shooting through the several gaping holes in the firewall and floorboard so things are looking up. With Eric running rear blocker confidence is high that we will not be discovered and the IROC impounded. Then suddenly there is a jolt. The car sputters then roars back to life. I instantly begin to plead with my newly named vehicle that she needs to hold on just a little longer. I know that she hasn't been driven on a freeway in a while and I apologize, profusely. She bucks again; she's not buying my commitment to my apologies. Shit, well now I guess I should try and cross several lanes of traffic without causing a pile up and eventually make it to an off ramp. She is not happy with me, not one bit. We had made it 30 of the 45 miles we needed to go before she called it quits.

Better call AAA I suppose to help us close this one. After reassuring the operator that I am not in mortal danger (now that I'm out of the vehicle) she drops this little gem, "It appears that your AAA account is inactive. I can give you the name of a tow company and you can pay them directly." "Hold on," I reply, "Let me get you on the line with a current AAA member - here Eric it's for you." The tow truck arrives and we cruise the last 15 miles to new home base. On the way over I tell the driver about our awesome plan and the only thing he has to say in response is, "You're driving an unregistered vehicle down 580 on Saturday night? Damn, that's ballsy."

Sorry The Lose, no eunuchs here.