I Don't Want a Mini-Van!

I grew up watching my Dad and brother rebuild cars for fun (and sometimes out of necessity). I became familar with words such as "4 barrel carburetor", "big block", and "454"(ours was a Chevy household). And it was not uncommon for my brother to take me for a ride to test out some new or rebuilt engine component with the hood of the car completey removed. When I was in college, I met my to-be husband. He was an auto mechanic in highschool and college. After we were married we would spend our weekends in the "bone yard" looking for this or that. Or we would scour the papers trying to find a "numbers matching" fixer-upper. We came up with the down payment to our first house by buying, refurbishing, and reselling a 1978 corvette - Indy Pace Car edition. And the first car I bought with my own money was a 1994 Chevy Camaro (manual transmission of course).

You get the idea - I know and appreciate cars, especially those classic American muscle cars that you can feel and hear long before you can see. You know that scene at the end of the movie "Fast and Furious" when Vin Diesel and Paul Walker are drag racing - Paul is in some digitized rice burner and Vin is in the Charger? And then Vin pops a wheelie IN THE CHARGER when they take off from the line? That scene still gives me goosebumps. Nothing beats raw, mechanical, horse power.

So you can imagine my dismay when we got back from scouting the Hill Country 600 bike race and Leary suggested we get a mini van, gut it, and set it up as a support vehicle for RAAM. I was actually OK with that part. What I wasn't OK with was his follow up comment, "And then after RAAM you can drive it around and that can be your vehicle."

Huh?

Yeah, I don't think so. I don't "do" mini-vans. The closest I ever came to that was driving a Chevy Celebrity station wagon for one of my winter beaters when we lived in Minnesota. The definition of a winter beater is: it's a cheap car, front wheel drive, and if you end up sliding on ice and wrapping it around a telephone pole or flipping it into the ditch, no big deal. But what I quickly came to discover is that people TREATED me differently when I drove that station wagon. People would honk at me, cut me off, and pull out in front of me. I never had that problem when I drove my Camaro.

So I can only imagine what I would experience driving a mini-van. And quite frankly, I don't want to find out.

But something tells me that my goal of completing RAAM is bigger than my vehicular vanity. So don't be surprised if you read a future blog entitled "I am a Mini-Van Owner". Of course, I may change my tune if I ever see Vin Diesel pop a wheelie while driving a big block mini-van ;-)