Cruisin'

On Friday we headed up to Bloomfield so that Cathleen could run in a Run for the Cure 5K (re breast cancer) with some high school friends in Hartford on Saturday morning. Cathleen and the kids drove up to my office school and arrived at around 4:30. There was some trouble with the car, Cathleen informed me, that had developed in the latter part of her drive to the Bronx; there was a bad bumping noise coming from around the front passenger side tire.

Oh. That's right. A few days earlier, while driving home from summer league, I encountered a horrendous patch of newly-scratched up under-construction roadway on the BQE that had not been so scratched up the week before. The car had gone bang and bop, and then I seemed to be feeling every bump from every piece of gravel on the road. By the time I awoke the next morning, however, I had forgotten about it, and Cathleen had not noticed anything driving either to or from school in the ensuing days.

Now we were in the Bronx, with all of our stuff, shortly before dinner time. We took the car to the local Midas guy near my office, whom I've used before and trust. At 15 minutes before closing time, he put the car up on the rack and showed me where the right-front spring was shattered. Well, that would explain that. No spring in stock; he could get one and repair it Saturday. When I told him we were actually en route to CT for the weekend, he recommended we go to the Enterprise rental place half a block away. So we did.

I never know what to expect from the service sector in the Bronx. Rude? Shoddy? Perfectly fine? It can be a gamble of sorts. The Enterprise on East Fordham Road was interesting: there were six guys in suits walking around, only two of whom appeared to be actually servicing any rental customer at any given time. The other four would take turns asking you what you were there for, and if you had signed in yet. Everyone was nice and friendly and seemed to be accommodating, but it didn't look like anything was getting done. And the place was packed with customers. My wife and I, with our two young kids, and our two small dogs, spent an hour there. To all of my small creatures' credit, they all did quite well given the circumstances: the dogs were under control the entire time; Max was incredibly well-behaved, but for periodic whining about how bored he was because it was taking so long (neither of which I minded, because it gave me an opportunity to audibilize patient, yet needling responses, that the men in the office were working as fast as they could to get us a car); Eliza became antsy after a while, so Cathleen took her outside for a walk. It could have been a lot worse.

When it was time for me to pick out a car, I was led into an adjoining garage. I told the guy I just wanted the cheapest rental they had available. Well, he told me, the cheapest they normally have is a Ford Focus sedan, but he'd give me a PT Cruiser for the same rate.

The PT Cruiser has been around for, what, a decade or so? Let me tell you something about that car: I have never liked it. A car that looks like a miniature hearse? Who the hell came up with that design idea? I have been so convinced of the absurdity of the Cruiser's appearance that to this day I cannot believe that there is anyone who takes that car seriously. One year I played at the Poultrydays ultimate tourney in rural, western Ohio on a combo Haverford-Swarthmore graduates team. One of the Swat grads, whom I of course did not know, had rented a PT Cruiser as his car for the weekend. I eventually learned that he was very excited about this rental, and had paid a lot in order to get it. Indeed, while everyone else camped at the fields in tents that weekend, he slept in the Cruiser (like a cadaver?). Not even giving a moment's consideration that someone might actually think that the Hearsemobile was cool, I started making fun of it from the get-go, and quickly alienated this complete stranger. I have a talent for that kind of thing. All was made up when, early in our first game, I cut deep and laid out to catch a swilly, overthrown huck that the guy had put up (most interpersonal conflict, I have learned, can be resolved if you simply catch someone's crappy throws).

So, standing there in the Enterprise car rental facility at 6 pm, I grabbed the Cruiser. I am all about maximizing the irony in my life.

The PT Cruiser is pretty much as ridiculous on the inside as it is on the outside. We were in a 2008 model, and yet the dashboard display was in old-fashioned dial readout form. The only digital display was a function where you could observe what kind of gas mileage you were getting, a piece of information that you'd think Chrysler would not want to make readily available given that this car was topping off at 20 mpg on the highway. Although the car handled the road quite well, it had the turning radius of a large elephant.

Eliza spent much of the drive up to CT, and much of the ride home yesterday, asking about and discussing why we were in this car.
"Why are we in this car?"
"Our car is broken."
"Our car is broken?"
"Yes, a man is going to fix our car, and then we'll get it back."
"Man going to fix our car?"
"Yes."
Pause. "Why are we in this car?"
At first I thought it was just her two-year-old brain processing the entire experience, but then I realized this is Eliza, my brilliant daughter. She is not asking why are we in a car that is not our car; she understood that the PT Cruiser was an absurd vehicle. "Why, Daddy," she was basically asking, "are you driving me around in this asinine joke?" Geez, I do love that little girl.

The balance of the weekend was great: Cathleen had a great run on Saturday (did the 5K in about 30 minutes flat), the kids road on the local carousel, we took a long hike in the sweltering afternoon up a nearby mountain (at Max's insistence; he is really into hiking and did not waiver once in his enthusiasm for the experience), took a cool dip in the neighbor's pool, had a terrific dinner and then drove home at night. This morning I went out for a 4-mile run and nearly died in the heat, and then we went to Max's classmate's birthday party in Prospect Park, before coming home, installing the AC in the livingroom window (mercifully!), grilling and bedtime.