Formula 350

I have a great idea for a Knight Rider episode script. In it, Michael will go head-to-head against of fleet of crotchety old neighbors whose new community ordinances threaten KITT’s very existence! …Aw hell, that’s not a good idea. Although I will say this; what with the time it’s taking them to get anywhere on that new Knight Rider movie, Hasselhoff will be so old by the time they start filming, battling the neighborhood HOA may be the only kind of action he’ll get to see.

But enough of that. It was a banner weekend for our dear friend KITT. The ‘89 Formula hadn’t been exercised in a while—about a month, at a guess—so I decided it was time to give it a workout. Apple was even amenable to letting me drive her to work in it on Saturday, so I took her up on it. Much to my abject astonishment, after a few minutes of driving, the low-speed bogging/stumbling problem KITT’s been experiencing was completely gone.

This has been the most irritating thing about the car since it began cropping up shortly after I purchased it. I did take the car to WOT a couple of times today, which I have not done since I put a new battery in it. Dropping the hammer is like a secret handshake that tells an un-schooled ECM how to behave, so that might have had something to do with it. But at the very least, it seems even more possible now that my suspicions about the computer being the culprit were right. The car has proved to me all weekend long that it can “straighten up and drive right,” so to speak, which makes me think its misbehavior was due to the computer playing some kind of fool game with me. (How appropriate that I call the car KITT—its ECM already has an attitude!)

Okay, but that’s not why you’re reading this. You’re reading this because you’re just dying to know why I entitled this entry “Knight of the Fogey.” I mean, there has to be some reason besides just a stupid joke about a movie script, right? Well, you’re right. This morning, after dropping Apple off at her workplace, I cruised home with the windows down, and KITT”s L98 purring contentedly beneath the black cowl hood. It was all too picture-perfect, really. The weather was as beautiful as the drive, and suddenly it hit me that I really wanted to take some fresh pictures of the car.

So I went home and decided to snap a few quick shots. Nothing over-the-top; just a quick five-minute session would be enough. The T-tops were off, and I realized I’d never taken any pictures of KITT with the roof open to the air. (He looks even cooler that way.) The only problem was, I was sick of taking pictures in a damn driveway, or a stupid parking lot surrounded by pavement and fences and a lot of shadows that uglified the framing. I wanted something a little more playful, like a model bounding along the beach at sunset instead of just sitting in a flippin’ chair by the clubhouse. So I decided to very briefly pull the car just off the road and onto the grass right next to our house, snap a few photos and then clear out.

Hee hee, okay, now I bet you’ve got an inkling of where this is going. I already mentioned “fogey” and “HOA” in this article, so no doubt you’ve made a deduction if you have any grasp of logic whatsoever. Despite the fact that the grass in question is about twelve feet from our front door, it’s not actually our lawn. It’s…oh, what do they call it…”Common Area.” Basically, that means the Association owns it. And you’re not supposed to park anything on it for any sustained length of time. (Actually, the same goes even for the grass that you do own.) But people will commonly pull over onto it with their trucks and vans when they stop by the community’s many lakes to fish. In fact, such a lake is about thirty yards down from the exact spot I chose for my photo session. I’ve also seen (just today, in fact) families park their sedans on similar common areas near our little miniature parks, where they play frisbee with their kids and soforth. So I figured hey, I can take five minutes here to shoot a couple photos and then bug out. KITT’s been treating me so well, I feel like a free spirit today.

I was just about ready to wrap it up—grand total time elapsed, exactly four minutes and one-tenth of a second, according to my EXIF data—when I see a withered old lady coming down the sidewalk, walking a toy poodle. (Just like 90% of the other old people around here who also own toy poodles; it seems to be as much of a “group think” as a Lexus RX or a Cadillac DeVille.) She’s still about fifteen yards away when I hear this Wicked Witch of the West sorta voice crabbing: “WHY IS THE CAR ON THE GRASS?!”

Yeaaaaah. Hello, is that you, Sister Karen-Anne? Gee, I thought I rid my life of you in 1995. Somehow or other, and I’m not quite sure how, I kept a smile on my face and said pleasantly, “Something a little more interesting for a photo shoot than pavement!”

She was still coming closer, her and that damn dog both, and after a few seconds of awkward silence (during which I was hurriedly powering down my camera and getting ready to bolt), she again demands, as if I’d said nothing, “WHY IS THE CAR ON THE GRASS?!”

Still grinning like I’d just been paid a compliment, I responded a bit more loudly, “Well, it won’t be in about thirty seconds.”

I jumped in, started ‘er up and backed off the grass, then headed off down the street toward my parents’ house, where I was planning to store the Formula away again and ride my bike back home. Yeah, I suppose you expected (or even wanted, depending on who you are) me to say that I nailed the throttle, did a huge brakestand, spun KITT around 360° three times all while screaming “EAT SHIT AND DIE, FUCKER! AHAHAHAHAHAHAH!” But I did nothing of the sort, probably because I’m not eighteen anymore.

Unfortunately, in my haste to get away before someone handed me a blue slip and sent me to the office, I realized I left the T-top panels in the garage, and the garage door open—so I had to go back. I circled around a couple of connecting streets, picked up the T-tops and shut the door, then put the Formula away. I didn’t see the old bag again, which is good—although if I’d happened upon her a second time, I was determined to give her a big old smile and wave like I thought she was queen of the world. Hee! Fuck with their minds, jacksonovich.

On the way back to my parents’ place, I saw a variety of cars parked on common areas all over the place, one of which (a BMW X5) had been there for nearly 48 hours straight. But it’s an expensive German automobile, so no one says anything about that, right. Actually, I think it had more to do with the fact that the old lady probably never walks more than fifty paces from her house and, of course, since I attract the world’s worst pickers of nits like flies to a bug lamp, she just happens to live somewhere near me. Oh joy.

Well, next time I want to take pictures, I shall endeavor to actually waste half an hour to drive my car someplace where they have grass that you can put your car on momentarily without drawing the ire of a few overcooked seniors, but now that I think about it, I don’t think any such place actually exists in this town. Oh well.

I was even a dear and went back out to the patch of grass I’d driven on and smoothed it all over so the tamped-down blades wouldn’t dry out. Now ain’t I nice? I doubt the redneck hicks in their F-150s and Ram Vans who park on the grass all day down by the lakes with their fishing poles have ever done that.

Anyway, having come to the conclusion of this earth-shattering tale, I might as well show you all of the pictures I managed to take before I got shooed out of Mr. MacGregor’s garden, so here they are. I’ve taken the liberty of redesigning the new, integrated Oddball Image Gallery so that it flows with the rest of the site’s layout. You’ll notice that if you hit the “gallery” link at the top of the right sidebar, you’ll be taken to the gallery home page. It’s good stuff.

Well, that’s all for tonight. Got a busy day ahead tomorrow—we’re meeting with a local mortgage broker about refinancing our house; I need to call our shit-for-brains existing mortgage company and try to find out how to get some recent statements since they don’t send them to us anymore and their website’s plain broke; and…uh…well, that may actually be all I have on my plate right now, since I finally finished the bikini website modifications I’ve been working on forever and sent over my invoice for $525 (woohoo!).