Thursday, December 31, 2009
 | Did I ever tell you my Sailboat Story? Well, it was 2004 or 2005, I forget which. I was riding high on the crest of a tsunami of Ebay success, and I was lovin’ it! Those were the days, I tell you. Tax free income. I was exceptionally successful buying and selling Porsches and Porsche parts, as the venue was not yet over-saturated with others. I was in a unique position: I knew what I was doing, I had some money, and I did not have a wife, girlfriend, mother or family to tell me I could not part out cars in my driveway under a canopy of blue tarps. I don’t know if you people know it or not, but women HATE blue tarps in the front yard. I do not understand why. That is another mater altogether though, I know. So. I was flying high, one of the few members on Ebay ready and willing to purchase any ‘good deal’ of a car or part, and flip it for a handsome profit. This was working out very nicely for me too, I must add. I had accumulated a very handsome shoebox full of twenty, fifty and hundred dollar bills in my closet. It was like a ChangeJar some people have, but mine was a Box full of foldable. I would usually not know how much was in it, it would be a surprise to count it only every so often, and then rubber-band off $500 chunks at a time. I averaged about ten thousand bucks in that thing every month or two, I shit you not. As a result of my cache of cash, I could impulsively buy most material items I would want to buy. This was usually limited to the occasional non-op Porsche Product or stainless steel commercial restaurant gadget. Or, popcorn machine. Or, unusual cars I had never owned before. I love machines! I truly do. I understand them. I love to learn about new machines. I love to see them for the first time, scrub them, make them work properly, operate them, gaze adoringly upon them. I am very fond of machines, vehicles in particular. One day, quite by accident, I came upon an advertisement for a sailboat. The reason was the ad must have had a term I usually search for in the body of the ad, you know – ‘Porsche’ , ‘Citroen’, ‘Sweden’, ‘Russ Meyer’ , one of those things, I forget which now. The point is : A sailboat! It too could be considered a vehicle, if ‘only’ a vehicle of the sea. They have engines too, I was surprised to discover. They can also cross seas. I had heard that rumor before regarding sailboats. This rumor was supported by the ad copy I read that day. Unfortunately, this particular sailboat was seventy thousand dollars, which was more than I had in my shoebox at that, or any, time. But, the important development here was, I discovered there were ‘sailboats’ out there, and they had engines in addition to sails, and you could sleep in them. Some of them you can even poop in. I was hooked. A thing to know about me is, and those who ‘know me’ will attest to this : When I want something, I get it. I make it happen. Throwing caution to the wind, risk-taking, or slow and steady, I do it. I DO IT. Once I decided I wanted a sailboat, it was after a very brief online courtship I found that vessel I was to love, and love dearly. Although, for the life of me, I can not remember ‘her’ name right now. (In case you don’t know, boats have names, and those names tend to be ‘girl names’, or ‘effeminate names’). About four days into my researching of watercraft on eBay, I found my boat, to be sure! And what a bargain it was – 55 feet of ferro-cement engineering for only twelve thousand dollars! Never ye mind that the diesel engine was seized and it ‘needed some work’ and was four thousand miles away, it was to be mine. I examined the seven tiny low-resolution pictures of what was to be my first foray into watercraft. A hull (that is the word for ‘body’ of the boat) painted red! Three mighty masts! (The things that the sails are strung up from) The engine, albeit ‘seized’ , or ‘broken’ , or ‘fucked’, whatever adjective you choose to describe it, was the least of my concerns. I am a master of those things mechanical. I was bringing my toolbox, and was certain I could fix it. What is a 6-cylinder Caterpillar industrial diesel engine when compared to the technologically-superior engine of the evergreen Porsche 911? Child’s play, I was confident on this point more than any other. So, bid I did, and as usual, I was the victor in the battle of the bids. Oddly enough, there WERE no other bids. I found this a tiny bit concerning, but chalked it up to the seller marketing the thing with misspellings in his ad and lack of good pictures. I was shrewd enough to ask for additional photos, which although equally tiny and grainy, there were in fact more. I felt good about this. I soon owned a boat. Very Very soon after, in mid-April, I was on my way with a brand spanking-new white ‘captain’s hat’ aperch my globe and fantasies of getting an anchor tattoo on my left bicep, just to be ironic in the whole business. I was on my way! I loaded my duffle bag, shoebox somewhat depleted of cash (I had already sent a wire transfer for half the purchase price already) , My Heckler & Koch .45 caliber handgun, my laptop, seventeen protein bars (I was on a diet) into my 1995 black Range Rover, and butterflies in my stomach, yanked the transmission lever into ‘Drive’ and stabbed at the gas pedal with the newly-purchased flip-flop on my right foot. Fuck, YEAH. I don’t know how much you know about Geography, but Eugene, Oregon is a very very far distance from Key West. I thought it may be - what?- three thousand miles? Isn’t that what people say about ‘coast-to-coast’? Right? Three thousand miles? Well, I suppose it is. The thing is, that dangling phallus of Florida is about another nine hundred miles from ‘The East Coast’ - AND – If, let’s say, the computer-controlled air suspension on your Range Rover fails in, I don’t know, MISSISSIPPI, that is a very long way to drive with no buffer between road imperfection and your spine. I can still remember every single expansion joint in the freeway from Biloxi to Marathon. Hurtling along the freeway at eighty-five miles an hour, even the tiniest of imperfections in the surface of the road with actually cause your vehicle to leave the terra firma entirely, and return with a teeth-rattling landing. These imperfections are engineered every two hundred feet. That is 26 times in every 5200 foot mile. That is once every second and a half at eighty miles an hour. I can tell you, from a perspective of experience, it is not entirely pleasant, and you never get completely desensitized to it, like someone shooting at you with an assault rifle. I need to move this story along, I need to get you ‘on the boat’, I know this, so I will spare you the part of the story where I pull off of the freeway somewhere in Mississippi to investigate why my vehicle is suddenly shaking violently and collapsed to within three inches of the actual road itself. I will not tell you the part about how, immediately off of the freeway, the pavement ended and turned into sand, and even though on my map it showed the Gulf of Mexico RIGHT THERE, I could not find it. I will not tell you there was water, sure, but no ‘beach’, but only chain link fence and mammoth, stern and somehow unpleasant grey gigantic warships floating menacingly just beyond these fences of galvanized steel. This is superfluous to my original story. I will also not share with you the part where I, who considers himself very ‘urban’ and has lived in Los Angeles, and can take care of himself, and has seen it all, gets a bit nervous when he finally finds a convenience store where he thinks perhaps he can pull over and raise the hood of his vehicle and investigate what the problem is. I will not tell you how, when he finds what appears to be a convenience store, but all of the windows are made out of plywood, and there is a (literally) BURNING 1985 Honda Accord in the parking lot, he begins to worry a tiny bit. I will also, in the interest of moving this story along, not tell you how as soon as I got out of my Shiny Range Rover, a gaggle of Negroes dressed in football jerseys and with afropicks sticking out of their mushroom clouds of nappy locks began to march directly at me. I will also not tell you how I, for once, found myself actually, truly, frightened by the completely foreign Mandingo scene before me turned around, jumped back in my car, and quickly pressed the door lock button, and frantically began to try to stab the ignition key into it’s home, missing it maybe seven times, and then, in a panic, forced life into my wretched vehicle, and then flooring the accelerator pedal, got straight back on the freeway, and did not get off again until I absolutely had to, as the low fuel warning light had been illuminated for the last half hour. I will not tell you any of this. I do not want to bore you with ‘the little stuff’ Let’s just get to Florida, shall we? .. I wish it had been that easy in reality. |
No comments:
Post a Comment