Carz

Well, this took a lot longer to get on the blog than it really should have, but if you hadn't heard already, I have had a little car drama recently. If you have heard, well, we'll record it anyway for posterity's sake.

It all started this January, when I parked my faithful S10 pickup (Kermit) at Red Rocks Community College, and went inside to attend my classes. We had just come out of a bit of a strange bit of nice weather for the time of year, and the rain that had been drizzling all afternoon was just turning into snow. The parking spot that I found, happened to be at the corner of the parking lot where people turn to head toward the exit. When I came back outside after classes, there was a couple inches of snow on the ground, and the rain that had come before it existed as a sheet of ice under the snow.

The scene that I found when I returned to my parking spot is documented in exhibit A:

The back end had also been moved a few feet from where I had parked it, shown in exhibit B:

After clearing off some of the snow, I found a water soaked note under my windshield with a phone number on it. I then went to the campus police office on the off chance that they might file a report before I moved the truck, but I got the usual parking lot accident line: "Well, it was on private property, so we can't do a report" I'm still trying to figure out how a government run community college is considered "private property"...

It's a little hard to see in the pictures, but it turns out that the extent of the damage was a bit more involved than just the bumper. Upon further inspection, it turns out that the guy hit the drivers side quarter panel, and the energy that wasn't absorbed by the bumper continued to crunch out the opposite quarter panel, pop the tailgate out of it's hinges, and bend the frame where the trailer hitch attached to it. Oh, and move the back end about 3 feet from where it was originally parked.

When I got home, I called the number that was left on my windshield. The story from the horses mouth is that he had just backed out of his parking spot, went a few feet, and then slid into the back of my poor, unsuspecting, unmanned vehicle. The car he was driving was a 1990 honda civic. In case you're not familiar with the 1990 honda civic, it is a little matchbox car that weighs just over 2100 lbs. A 96 S10 weighs around 3600 lbs including the toolbox I had mounted in the back. I could be wrong, but I somehow doubt that a civic going 5 mph after backing out of a parking spot would be able to do the kind of carnage that was inflicted on poor Kermit. I have a revised version of his story based the evidence I observed at the scene: The driver of the civic backed out of his parking spot approximately 50 yards away from where Kermit sat. Seeing the snow on the ground, and being of the crowd that has delusions about the civic being a sports car, he decided to be cool and expertly drift around the corner at unnecessary speeds, and wow all bystanders with his James Bond style driving. Unfortunately, reality has a tendency to manifest itself at the most inconvenient moments, and rather than drifting around the corner at unnecessary speeds, the civic instead continued on it's original trajectory at unnecessary speeds and met the back of my truck. Before the civic and Kermit's butt could exchange hellos, a certain law of physics that states something about two objects occupying the same space at once (or rather the lack of any such state), also decided to make an appearance. The result, as you've probably figured out by now, was lots of reorganized molecules.

To make a long story short, I had a couple of different estimates done on poor Kermit, including one by Mr Civic's insurance company, and my truck was pronounced to be totaled. As most of you probably know, I was quite attached to this truck, and had intended to put a V8 into it for racing at Bandimere Speedway. In fact, I already had an engine sitting in storage, awaiting the collection of other needed swap parts. For a while, I considered keeping the truck, plus insurance money (minus the "salvage value"), and fixing it with junk yard parts. I probably would have done that had the frame not been bent, which made the price for repairs jump several hundred dollars.

It became increasingly apparent that I would have to say goodbye to my faithful S10 and find another vehicle. After several days of searching ebay, craigslist, autotrader, and others for a replacement, I started to get a little discouraged about when and where I was going to be able to find another car that I could turn into the hot rod that Kermit was planned to be. Then, one evening I did the same ebay motors search for Chevy S10 that I had been doing for the past few days to see if anything new had shown up, and I came across something right at the edge of my area search, in Casper WY.

It was a 2001 Chevy S10 Blazer, with a "buy it now" price right at amount the insurance company offered me for Kermit. The thing that made this Blazer unique though, is that someone had already put the same V8 I had planned for Kermit into it, plus some nice upgrades! I grabbed my dad and said "hey, what do you think of this?" His response was something along the lines of "What? Whoh!... You better snag that one..." So I did.

A couple days later, we drove to WY to pick it up. Refer to exhibit C:

and under the hood in exhibit D:

So, to make a short story long, I have a new vehicle. His name is Gandalf the White.

While I'm sad to see Kermit go, it's nice to have a rather nice replacement.

Here's to you Kermit. You were a good truck, taken out of the game before your time