Display by Label: Carmen

Thursday afternoon I got the call. I didn't recognize the voice. It was female. Southern accent.

"Uh, hi. May I speak to . . . "

"This is him."

"Um . . ." The woman seemed hesitant. Nervous. "Did you lose something?"

Something? I've lost many things, in fact. Where should I begin?

Existentially: "Why yes, I've been unable to find myself for some time now. "

Psychologically: "Indeed, I seem to have lost my mind."

Physically: "I've lost so many things. Maybe a game of twenty questions would help? Is the object small or large? Is the object blue? Does the object play Italian polkas when you wind it up? If you found my little accordion-playing monkey I will be so excited!"

There were so many possibilities. And, posed as it was by this stranger with the tentative, southern voice, her query was ultimately greeted with confused silence on my end.

So the caller tried a different approach: "Do you own a little red Volkswagen?"

And that's how we found her. Carmen. The woman who called worked in a hair salon in the District Heights strip center where Carmen had been left overnight. She had found my phone number on a receipt for some tires that had been left behind. I had anticipated a call for several weeks, but after settling with our insurance company about a week earlier, both C and I had sort of given up hope. The woman on the other end of the phone and her boss, J, were very nice. J gave me instructions on how to get to his place, despite warning me that I wouldn't like what I found. "I don't think you want to see it," said J to me over the phone. He seemed to me to have a Greek accent, though I found out later he was from Israel. "You'll be sad."

C and I were sad when we saw her. But it was necessary. We wanted to see if there were any personal items left behind. But more than that, we wanted to bring closure to the whole bloody thing. We felt like we were going to identify a body.

And that's pretty much all that was left. When we arrived at the location, we saw Carmen immediately. She was sitting alone at one end of the strip center, a ghost of her prior self, small and abandoned in this lonely parking lot. The first thing I noticed was that there was some kind of greasy film covering her, inside and out, and everything reeked of oil. While we weren't able to open the hood, we were pretty sure we wouldn't find an engine there. Or at least we wouldn't find Carmen's engine there. She had tires and wheels, but they were a size too small, and looked strange under her body. The tires that I bought for $175 a piece not very long ago were gone and some mud-splattered, thin-tread rubber circles were left in their place. The only thing left of the dash was the steering column, and it lay sadly on the floor among a jungle of colorful wires and fuses. Oddly, the seats had been left, as well as the passenger side door innards and all the speakers of the 'Monsoon' sound system. In fact, the more we examined her, the more we were surprised by all that had been left behind. It was like the guys that took her had an order to fill and they grabbed what they needed and left the rest.

Photos are here
Warning: not for the faint of heart

After looking Carmen over, taking pictures, and telling her how sorry we were, we walked over to the hair salon and spoke with J and the employee who had called me. They commiserated with us, and told us how their car had been broken into and nearly stolen only a couple of months ago, in broad daylight, right in front of their shop. They gave us the paperwork for the Goodyear tires (which had enabled them to find our number). Also, they passed on a pair of shoes and some other odds and ends which they had removed from Carmen upon my request, in case we weren't able to make it out before the tow-truck arrived.

We drove home quietly, a little stunned by what we had seen, a little pissed that there were people in the world who did this kind of shit. But we were also relieved that Carmen had been found and that we were able to see her one final time before she was sold piece by piece at some auto auction. She was by far our favorite car. Classy. Speedy. She had character. Part of that character was that she was often high-maintenance. But we loved her anyway.

We still haven't purchased a replacement, but we've finally made a decision as to what that replacement will be. Now, we just have to wait for the model we want to get in stock. I won't go into detail right now as to what we're getting, but I will say that we're taking a VW hiatus. Since 1999, C and I have had three different VWs, and while we loved all three, we agree that it's time for a change. We've found something new which we're really excited about. I'll drop another clue and say that it is an import, so right now it's on a boat somewhere making its long journey to the dealer's lot.

So with that, I put Carmen to rest. But not to despair. I'm sure a new chapter of car tales is soon to follow.


link to this | comments (8) | File:  Carmen 

It's really strange to have something like a car stolen. It seems personal, somehow. I've had bouts of paranoia since last Wednesday when Carmen disappeared, like somebody is looking over my shoulder. Following me. (Remember Rockwell?) Like somebody has it in for C and I. Maybe that guy we cut off last week knows a guy with a tow truck. Maybe the mechanic who butchered our car door a few months ago, leading us to reverse our credit card payment to him, decided to get his money back. Maybe 'they' are watching us. Maybe we are . . . not . . . alone.

When something like this happens, my immediate instinct is to try to make sense out of it by trying to find a reason for it. Maybe it's because the reality of the situation is sometimes harder to accept: that sometimes you are just that person who parked in the wrong place at the wrong time. It's just so random. So arbitrary. And that somehow makes it more comforting and more disturbing at the same time.

link to this | comments (3) | File:  Carmen 

I know I've had some gripes about owning a car. I know I've said some pretty harsh words about Carmen's recent break downs and flat tires. But I didn't want this. I swear. I didn't want her to leave us.

This morning, C walked out to where she had parked Carmen last night and she was not there. There was a taxi where she had been. An ugly taxi.

It took a few moments to sink in, but our car was stolen, and we are sad.

I guess it's what we get for living in central DC, the only area of DC where property crimes are up. I suppose it was a matter of time until something like this happened.

I called the police. C called the insurance. Everything is underway. The police are going to look for Carmen ("That's right, Officer, she goes by Carmen. That's with a 'C.'") today and if they don't find anything, an official report will be filed. It seems like there's a good chance she'll turn up somewhere, but who knows what shape she'll be in. I hope whoever has her is being nice to her . . .

Sorry, Carmen. I hope somebody finds you. Keep a stiff upper . . . bumper.


link to this | comments (15) | File:  DC  Carmen 

Everybody has car trouble now and then. It's just part of owning a car, right? But knowing that doesn't make it any less painful when you're having a shitty car day, or in our case, a shitty car couple-of-months.

C and I have a Volkswagen. Her name is Carmen. In general we love her. But occassionally we hate, hate, hate her. (I'm so sorry, Carmen, but you know that sometimes you are a fickle, fickle girl.)

Carmen has a gutsy V6 that gets us from stop to go with a satisfying efficiency, and a seductive growl that takes hold of your heart . . . and your groin. More than just regulating the flow of gas to the engine, her accelerator can even quicken the libido, regulating bloodflow to vital body parts. Even despite the multiple dings and dents from living in a city like DC, Carmen's still a sexy beast.

Driving Carmen, you feel comfortable making that left turn across four lanes of traffic into oncoming traffic. You feel comfortable downshifting while doing 65 out on some two-lane highway west of Tucumcari, and passing that line of eight cars stuck behind the slow-moving RV.

She's got heart. She's got guts. She's got chutzpa, and she's got it where it counts. But in all those smaller, seemingly less important places, she's got a nasty habit of falling apart. She's like a hall-of-fame running back in that way. The breaks don't keep her from scoring touchdowns during the big game. But when the game is over, it leads to more time in the bath, more attention to wounds, more TLC.

And did I mention giving TLC to a VW is an expensive proposition?

For instance, the spark plug wire replacement we had to make earlier this month was a whopping $450. Part of the reason for the high price tag was that spark plug wires, as it turns out, are just plain expensive. But the other reason is the labor. Here is a general law of the VW universe: Any repair on a VW is a time-intensive endeavor. VW seems to pay their engineers to find the least convenient mode of assembly, the apparent goal being to make the proper repair of any given part, no matter how small and insignificant, require the dismantling of the entire car first.

I first discovered this when I casually gave the nod for Alexandria VW to fix the glove compartment door latch a couple of years ago. How expensive could it be? Turns out it could be as expensive as $300. The glove compartment door hinge? A friggin' piece of plastic? What the hell?

When you own a VW, not only are you sure to pay a hefty sum for any cosmetic repair involving broken plastic pieces, but you're also sure to pay that sum to a certified VW dealer, because no other mechanic knows the secret forumula for re-assembly.

Back in February, the automatic window mechanism broke and, due to a set of circumstances out of our control, we could not bring it to a dealer for repair. It was wet, it was late, and you don't leave car windows open in our neighborhood or you wake up the next morning with no car stereo, and a funky smell in your back seat. No, we didn't want to wait until the next day to bring it to the dealer, and besides, the other mechanic, who was open late, said he could fix it. And, well, we were stupid enough to believe him. To make a very long story short, we wound up bringing the car back to this mechanic three times and the window never operated correctly after any of the repairs he made. Not only did he not repair the window, he actually caused physical damage to the door in trying to get to the broken part. Then he tried to simply cover up the damage he caused with duct tape, as if we wouldn't notice or something. Finally, we had to break down and bring it to the dealer to get it repaired correctly. They basically had to re-do all the work the other mechanic did, at the same great price of $400. (We were able to get some of our money back from the other mechanic after filing a contest with our credit card company.)

What really gets me is when you need to make some routine replacement on a VW, like a battery, or a headlight, you will weigh your options and usually decide it's easier and will cause less mental anguish if you just bring it to the dealer, even though these are technially things that you should be able to do yourself under the shade of a tree somewhere. But this rationale all falls apart when you discover the most direct way to achieve either of these tasks is to remove the entire engine first.

We knew we were going to have to replace one of the headlights this weekend, and ignoring every alarm going off in our heads C and I were actually going to attempt it ourselves. We'd done it once before, amazingly. Sure, it took us two hours, but we got a lot of satisfaction out of doing it ourselves instead of paying VW $35 to do it. But this time we had a secret weapon: Al. Al has a way with mechanical things. And he has the remarkable, superhero ability to flatten his hand down to the thickness of a piece of paper. He was able to replace the headlight in under twenty minutes, which I'm pretty sure is a world record.

I could go on about Carmen. And on. But I'm already exhausted just thinking about it. I will mention that the other thing we had to do yesterday (so that we could get out to superhero Al's secret location in the first place) was replace our rear passenger tire, which had a neat little gash in the side of it, either the result of a knife, which would be distressing, or some internal defect, or possibly just from hitting it against the curb one too many times.

Even changing the tire was an epic ordeal because, due to the type of metal used on VW's and Audi's the wheel sometimes gets fused to the axle and doesn't just come off nicely. We discovered this after removing all the bolts and pulling on the wheel only to find it caused Carmen to wobble precariously on the jack. Luckily my brother had AAA and we called a guy out who had a better, more secure jack. He was able to slide under the car and pound on the tire with a hammer without the fear (or with minimal fear, anyway) of the car crushing him. Carmen now has a lovely brown wheel on back. Hopefully we'll get her old wheel back later this week, but we've already spent enough time fixing Carmen this month.

I mean I love her. Our car. Carmen. I really do. But she's definitely high maintenance.

link to this | comments (2) | File:  Carmen 

A painter spilled white paint on 19th street NW just south of Columbia and north of Florida and for some reason did not pick it up. It left a puddle of white paint in the road; a puddle which my poor red VW GTI discovered at approximately 3:00 this afternoon while looking for a parking spot. I felt the car slide and wondered what the hell it was. Then I saw the trail of white left behind by my passenger-side wheels. Then I smelled it. There was loads of empirical evidence before me, and still my brain could not register what had happened. So I pulled over and looked at the right side of my car. That made a believer out of me. Paint. White paint. Splattered against the side of my car like mud. I took my car to the Mr. Wash on 13th street, which was of no help whatsoever. The paint was oil based and resisted the water with a shrug and a laugh. This would call for some elbow grease. With no paint remover handy, I used my finger nail and soapy water to get most of it off. Then this evening C and I got the rest off of the plastic lower paneling using fingernail polish remover and cotton balls. My tires, as well as the plastic liners that house the wheel and keep pebbles and debris from hitting components of the car, are completely white.

To voice my frustration, I thought a haiku was appropriate.


Disclaimer: I'm certain this haiku violates several rules of a 'proper' haiku, so before you say anything please consider for a moment that I do not care.

link to this | comments (2) | File:  Carmen  Ho_Hum