1/7/09

Let me start this story by saying that the odds of this happening are getting slimmer and slimmer. Ok, having said that, I'm considering yet another change of transportation. While driving Fifi the other day, I was thinking that I could probably live with a pickup as my daily driver as long as it had a manual transmission. With that thought in mind, I began to realize that having Fifi makes Ms. Clio sort of superfluous. I was then reminded that Dodge is introducing a new body style on the Ram pickups for 2009 so dealers are really anxious to get the 2008s off the lot. I've been told that they are making deals like one half sticker price. If that is the case, and I could get a 2008 Ram with a manual transmission for around $10,000.00 or less, I could trade in Fifi and Ms. Clio. I'd drop one car from my insurance load, I'd go from an $18,000.00 to a $10,000.00 car loan, and theoretically have more money in my pocket every month. Gregg has a friend who is the general manager of a Dodge dealer and he was going to check on a manual transmission Ram for me. Since I haven’t heard back from him in the last few days, I'm assuming either they don’t have one or he forgot. Either way, I'm easy because all I had to do was drive Ms. Clio once to remind me how much I like having a car. Granted, once Barbecue Bob is up and running, he could fill the role of “backup daily driver.” I told the plan to mom and John and neither one shot it down. I'm not sure just how excited about it either one is, but neither one tried to talk me out of it. I'm pretty sure I've already done that myself so the point is kind of moo. Actually, and I probably ought to keep this fact to myself for a while, but what I'm seriously considering is slapping Barbecue Bob back together and selling him. Oh, I'll ask stupid money for it because I think I can! It sure would be nice to get a pile of money for it. Then again, it is such a badass looking and rare car I'd like to keep it around. We’ll see what happens when we have it going I guess. Well, John and I are supposed to go to the shop tonight. I think we’re just about ready to put the flywheel and clutch on the Z-20 engine and bolt up a transmission to it. Hell, we could probably have the engine in the car tonight! I guess I really need to get off my ass and clean up the engine bay before then though. I want to remove all of that superfluous wiring Barbecue Bob installed back in the seventies. For those who don’t remember, this car was originally owned by a dude known as “Bulletproof Bob.” He was called that because he was known for building über reliable cars by adding all sorts of wacky circuitry. Yeah, I've never had much trouble with the K.I.S.S. method of wiring a car. Keep It Simple Stupid! I bought a 610 factory service manual so I can go through and see what’s supposed to be there and what I can remove. I took a cursory glance at the wiring diagram for the car the other day. Yikes! 1974 was the beginning of the end for simple wiring I guess. I guess if John has a specific project on his Bluebird he wants to work on, I will get cracking on sorting out Bob’s wiring tonight. Yeah, it is more satisfying to combine a bunch of metal chunks into a more complete whole, but the wiring is a necessary evil. Well, we’ll see what happens tonight I guess. Oh, one of the administrative assistants gave me a Dean Martin CD the other day. I've burned it to the hard drive of this laptop and I'm listening to it now. I think he’s by far the coolest member of the Rat Pack. Frank Sinatra was way too full of himself, Sammy Davis Jr. never really did anything for me, and the other dudes, well… Who even remembers who they were besides Wikipœdia? By the way, it was Joey Bishop and Peter Lawford if you don’t feel like looking it up yourself. Ok, I'm bored with this. I think I'm going to call it a rant and go play solitaire.