24 Hours of LeMons

John and I went to the Buttonwillow race today to scope out the competition. We fully intend to enter next year, though it is now quite clear that my Ford Focus is actually too good to be entered. Never thought I'd be hearing those sorts of superlatives attached to my Focus, even when it was brand new. Really hoping we can get our hands on a second-hand Dacia Sandero to earn nerd scene points.

The limousine below had to be our overall favorite (particularly as it attempted to drift through corners), though there were also numerous cars depicting various old-school video games (Pac-Man, Super Mario Bros, etc.) in terrifyingly accurate detail. We also saw a few cars catch on fire, which was less fulfilling than I would have hoped.

Hopefully 2011 will finally bring the violently-anticipated debut of Viking Quest Racing.

Anyone Want a Car?

I'm finally getting ready to sell my loyal 2001 Ford Focus. I was hoping to hang onto the car long enough to enter it in the 24 Hours of LeMons Arse Freeze-a-Palooza race at Buttonwillow next month (we even had a racing team domain name set up and everything) but, sadly, that wasn't in the cards. It's been neglected on the streets of Sherman Oaks since September, which has actually yielded a couple of casualties. The driver-side side view mirror went missing rather quickly, and a couple weeks later someone hit my car with a tub of nacho cheese from Taco Bell. Yes, that actually happened.

It's really hard to imagine someone else calling this car their own. I've put over 160,000 miles on it. It's the car that I drove 35 miles each way to my CIA internship, the car that collected over two dozen parking tickets at Virginia Tech (I had a thing for faculty spots), the car whose stereo John, Mike and I rebuilt in the freezing cold in Virginia, the car that made it across the country with John in 2 days, the car I embarrassingly drove off the edge of a ramp at UC Riverside with Bree, the car that's had a spare box of Trivial Pursuit cards in the trunk since 2002, just in case...

The car has a broken windshield, no stereo, a rear window that won't go up, a flat front right tire, bad engine lifters and the AC needs a recharge. It's going to take a superhuman marketing effort to get this thing sold, and hopefully it'll go down in history next to this car.

It's even harder to imagine the next 160,000 miles on my new car. I'm honestly not sure VW's actually last that long anyway, although they ought to given their price. So far, the only memory created with my new car is Casey getting it up to about 125 MPH on the back roads of Carpinteria. Whatever.

I think it's time for a road trip.

A Car Crashed Trying To Turn Left...

...and there was much rejoicing.