"Seat Safety Switch" (seat-safety-switch)
09/18/2015 at 12:48 • Filed to: meyers manx, metalflake gelcoat, all-rodent gay pride parade
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"Seat Safety Switch" (seat-safety-switch)
09/18/2015 at 12:48 • Filed to: meyers manx, metalflake gelcoat, all-rodent gay pride parade | 8
| 6 |
I looked at the rear-view mirror and saw the whip antenna, clad in a bright red dune flag, shaking like a child’s birthday clown burning alive in a nitromethane fire. The comparison was all too apt, I smirked, as I buried the floor-hinged Home Depot gas pedal and really let the anger out of the bottle.
When I first came across this dilapidated Meyers Manx clone in the junkyard, I looked over its glitter-laden thick metalflake gelcoat and frowned at the cracks. I made my offer, and I went home by myself, satisfied that the seller would have a hell of a time trying to get rid of it to someone else. A self-fulfilling prophecy, in a way, and when he called me in the depths of his despair and acceded to my offer, I couldn’t help but take another kick or two at his ribs. Hubris. I grimaced at the memory.
It came home with me, more of a float for an all-rodent gay pride parade than an operable off-road monster. My roommate at the time rolled his eyes, grunted in surrender, and walked back into the house. For months it sat on jackstands until I ran into a composites engineer during a conference during my regular job. He told me over lukewarm carafe coffee about the advances they had made in home carbon fiber. As he reached for his second cup of the morning, I saw the unmistakable telltale burn mark of an EJ251 exhaust manifold on his wrist, exposed as the sleeve of his sport jacket was pulled back.
A few corporate deals made, a bit of accounting fudging, and a few of my personal days, sick days, religious exemption days and charity days consumed later, and something terrible had taken shape. Its final shape, I expected, as I finished my tests of the electrical system and punched the remote starter. Everything since then had been a blur.
I finally came to on a nearby beach, the sound of the bellowing Windsor behind my head, forcing gallons of ocean-fresh air through the mouth and winding internals of the wailing Roots blower atop it. I got on the highway, hoping to get my bearings, to understand where I had gone during my strange fugue state.
I pulled into a small-town gas station and started filling up. The in-pump television set was flashing scenes of unimaginable horror. I had been conditioned to ignore them from a childhood drenched in the worst excesses of the news media, but something gnawed at me. Had I been involved?
Of course not, I thought, returning to my dune buggy and tearing ass to the highway as the screen flashed a picture of my former employer’s parking lot, set afire with burning tread marks in the shape of massive concentric donuts.
Picture by !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! .
With-a-G is back to not having anything written after his username
> Seat Safety Switch
09/18/2015 at 13:16 |
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I very much would like to be that guy in the story. Please.
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Seat Safety Switch
> With-a-G is back to not having anything written after his username
09/18/2015 at 13:34 |
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Which one, the composites engineer or the dune buggy anarchist?
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With-a-G is back to not having anything written after his username
> Seat Safety Switch
09/18/2015 at 14:03 |
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As a child of 1970’s Los Angeles, I have a Manx-shaped hole in my heart.
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Seat Safety Switch
> With-a-G is back to not having anything written after his username
09/18/2015 at 16:20 |
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I’m pretty sure everyone has a Manx-shaped hole in their heart.
A longing for the Meyers Manx is some kind of inherent attribute of the human condition. Ancient civilizations, which had not yet developed the technology to realize the genetic dream of the Meyers Manx, were prone to warfare and squabbling as a result of their ambitions falling short.
It’s a miracle humanity has survived so long, actually. Now we enter the brave post-Manx future.
You can tell a Finn but you can't tell him much
> Seat Safety Switch
09/18/2015 at 16:51 |
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That plot twist came out of nowhere. With no warning we went from EJ251 to Windsor with a supercharger. I’m still trying to catch up.
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Seat Safety Switch
> You can tell a Finn but you can't tell him much
09/18/2015 at 21:08 |
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If it’s worth doing four times, it’s worth doing eight times and then putting a Roots blower on top of it.