Carpe Diem! An abnormally warm day in March.

With temperatures climbing into the 60s this Sunday it was time to wake the sleeping beasties from their long winter hibernation. Abby, the VW Type 3, and Gabrielle's E30 BMW have been hiding all winter, stuffed in the shop along with all our lawn furniture, and anything else that I didn't want to leave out in the snow. It was like an archaeological excavation to get down to the cars. I had to pull out bags of returnable bottles, roll the battery charger out of the way, move the brake drum lathe out, jack, jack-stands, air hose, baby stroller, cans of used oil, stack of LP records all had to find new homes. Now came the moment of truth. Was anything going to start? NO battery tenders, no sta-bil in the ethanol-laced fuel, and no air in the right rear tire of the BMW! But when I got in both cars they cranked and came to life, just as if I had parked them yesterday! Ahhhhhhh...
All tires pumped up, fluids checked, it was time to get the gears  moving. First  up was Abby. We took a tour around town with the window down (It's little things like that that makes us New Yorkers happy this time of year) and stopped off to say "hi" to my buddy, Jim. Jim is an old school body guy who is an excellent pin-striper and airbrush artist. I'll be doing a post on him sometime soon. After I got home, I took the BMW out for a blast up the highway and back.

Driveway full of Germans

Good, all toys exercised. Now some cleanup. I was sweeping out the shop when Jim pulled in  the drive with the "dirty 30", his 86 BMW E30. He was missing a few lights, so we got out the necessary tools: shop manual, logic probe, and some Genesee Bock, and traced out the problem to a corroded fuse. Soon it was all functional again and we were well on the way to solving all the world's problems.

tools of the trade

After Jimmy headed out, I figured I wasn't going to get any more cleaning done, so I took Abby for one more spin  before everything had to go back in the garage.(Winter ain't over yet!) During my drive, I  stopped by some weird fly-by-night- parking-lot-auto-sale that was going on across the highway, because I had seen a Fiat 600 in the front row earlier in the day. Of course, it was out on a test  drive when I got there. Right on cue, a well-dressed salesman spots me, hurried over, and askd if I wanted to wait until it got back so I could see it. "Nah," I said,  through the window of my rattling, rusty, leaky, bomber of a VW, " I just wanted to check it out. I don't need a new car." The salesman didn't skip a beat. He scanned my junker from front to back and replied, "Yes, you do."
We both cracked up. 
I never did get to see the Fiat, but I've been laughing about that encounter ever since....