Baby's Got a Fast Car

Hello lovelies. This edition of b Honest is brought to you by Laughing Planet Café, where I am drinking iced coffee and resisting the urge to sleep another day away. Have you noticed it’s been a million degrees outside? I will be sweaty always. 

As some of you know I am madly in love with my car, the Biscuit. Like most everything I love, I have officially run him into the ground. Back in May, I had my oil changed right before a trip to the coast. Like a responsible car owner. While I was there, the manager informed me there was oil leaking into my coolant reserve, which likely meant head gasket problems. I don’t know much/anything about mechanics, but I recognize “head gasket” is code for “death sentence”.

His advice: minimal driving until I got into a mechanic. My solution: ignore the problem and assume it will go away.

Three months later I’m writing to inform you Biscuit is officially on hospice. I’m

restricting him to a 5 mile radius, because I’m convinced he’ll explode any day now.

The trouble started Friday night when I was headed to Them’s Fightin’ Words after work. There is nothing even remotely pleasant about commuting to St. John’s at 6pm on a Friday. I learned this lesson the hard way. He overheated three times before I found my way to St. John’s Bookstore and a safe side street.

After the show I limped him 1.3 miles to the nearest 711 where I purchased coolant, oil, and a bottle of bottom shelf red wine because stress. You know what shouldn’t happen when you poor coolant into your vehicle? It shouldn’t come out the bottom of your chassis. It sounded like a pregnant woman’s water breaking in a bad movie. Whoosh, splat.

We made it home without further incident, but shit guys. If he’d broken down in NoPo I would have been helpless. Like, take off my license plates and walk away, surrender. In honor of the Biscuit, I’d like to share my favorite memories. You should probably queue up a medley of emotional 80s rock ballads, if you haven’t already.

Chronological countdown of Biscuit’s best moments:

1. The day I drove him home from Kalispell. On our way out of town, Lucy and I stopped at Border’s going out of business sale. When we hit the road I was fully equipped with Pat Benatar, the Spice Girls, and Eminem. The weather was perfect; two and a half hours of sunshine and windows down and driving too fast through too small towns.

2. My first road trip: Missoula to Portland. Lucy rode down with me for a weekend-long rugby clinic. That was also 1) my first time driving in any traffic, and 2) the weekend Biscuit’s right blinker went out. I like to live on the edge.

3. The winter it snowed four feet overnight and Biscuit was buried until the world thawed. The snow came up over his hood because Biscuit is tiny and adorable, not practical. I eventually used Mo’s tiny, collapsible shovel to dig him out once the roads weren’t a treacherous icy death trap. Lo, E, and a stranger walking her dog helped me push him back into action. Winter’s in Montana are rife with opportunities to accrue good karma. That strange woman was on her game.

4. Tamarack Christmas party, circa 2012. I wasn’t actually at the party, but I did get the opportunity to chauffer my friends (and their ugly sweaters) home from the Rhino. Unfortunately, the majority of my things were already packed into the backseat of my car so I made multiple trips with two people lapped up in the front seat for each ride. There was just so much drunk happening, I don’t even know.

5. The time Lo spent hours tediously arranging and rearranging until everything I own fit into the backseat of a 1999 Dodge Neon. Three concepts that are foreign to me: organization, spatial awareness, planning ahead. I would have shoved everything into garbage bags and stuffed things in until I ran out of space. But Lo is a magician. I have never met a human being so single-handedly capable of thwarting my poor-space-management impulses.

Me: We have to leave room for my little sister [as I set my plant in the front seat]

Lo:[…silence] Is that plant your sister? Should I call it Bobbi? No? Get it out of there. 

6. First trip to the coast: the weekend before I started work. There was still snow in the mountains and a tsunami warning when I got to Seaside. I hydroplaned most of the drive because Biscuit weighs approximately 5 lbs. But I was free and it was raining and I ate a sandwich and drank shitty coffee and felt like myself for a little while

7. My first time driving after riding the bus for two months. I thought I’d killed Biscuit back in December, but really he just needed a new battery. Here is an important thing: having a friend who cared enough to drive 15 miles across the city to jump my car. She sat with me while the CarQuest employee installed my new battery, even though it was dark and cold and late.

8. That night after Blow Pony when everything changed.

9. Night of Kink, round two. C and I sat in my car with the seats reclined and drank box wine and sang at the top of our lungs, dancing across harmonies and melodies until people started trickling out and finding their way home. Sometimes the best outing is staying in.

10. Every morning I cried on my way to work. Seriously you guys, this was like three months of my life. I can’t even imagine if I’d been on a bus or trying to bike. Biscuit is like the therapist I never had.

So, for the time being I’m a bicyclist again. Fact: a woman named Sylvia once talked me into buying life insurance after discussing bike-related fatalities. Because who is going to pay to ship your body home when you cross paths with a semi? Note the use of “when” not “if”. Sylvia knew her game and played it well. Moral of the story, buy American. R.I.P. Biscuit.  

All my love.

-b