Come on, you know you want to play with my knob. Admit it!

I’m still filtering ideas about a full custom shift knob; there are too many great ideas, and I don’t wanna rush because then I’ll have a better idea the day my first one arrives, and need another. I found Bruce at Koolknobs can make ’em out of printed material also so I can use original artwork emailed as well as physical objects.

I’ve also considered using a MacRae clan badge, or even a piece of tartan fabric (I have a kilt sample in MacRae Red).

Too many ideas. Hence, I’m getting the above rattle-snake knob, because you know what I am?

B-b-b-Bad!

(sing it with me now)

How this happened is rather a long story. Let’s just say there was a lamp-post, and a concrete garbage can. Was, because they suffered sudden, catastrophic failure when introduced rather rudely to my truck.

“Hello lamp-post,
What cha knowin’?”

This is the aftermath vis-à-vis y truck. The other parties faired less well and are now more or less expensive land fill, but alas I seem to have no photographic evidence.

There was absolutely no intoxicant involved in this. I swear. Unless you count Hunnid Racks.

I pulled the trigger.

That ain’t mine – mine’s an 06 and it’s a darker color (they call it granite, I call it gun-metal gray). But it’s close enough.

Pix of the real one to be posted as soon as I get time.

Edit: I found a better pic that’s closer in color. Still not mine but you get the idea.

I have not fully escaped the tenacious grip of toadian motor madness.

I try. Stop thinking about it i tell myself. Spend thee no money on wheels.

But they call, the motor vehicles. Take me home they say, in a hellish chorus of steel and rubber and internal combustion. Take me home, temptresses with shiny paint and gleaming chrome.

I can resist anything but temptation, as they say.

After the modern muscle car that recently held my fancy (and from which I reluctantly turn aside, high price and un-proven mechanical merit gradually drowning out the take-me-home-tonight siren song of the word hemi), I’ve turned back in time to a former love.

Trucks, I say. That’s what I’m all about.

While my first car, and my second, were boat-sized american iron from the third quarter of last century, the first two vehicles I ever bought with my own hard-earned dough, and the first and only new car I ever bought myself (and i say that again, for emphasis, one, and only one, in near thirty years as a driver. I’ve bought myself only one new, shiny vehicle) were both trucks.

I’ve owned a lot of vehicles over the years. Five or six different motorcycles, two jeeps, an impala, three mini-vans, two trucks, three or four SUVs, a datsun 200sx, a chevy nova, and I’m sure a couple more I can’t quite recall. And of all these, when I run them through my head, four stand out out (not counting the motorcycles). The Jeeps (one inherited from my father, one bought used as a replacement for Dad’s under-powered wrangler), and the trucks (both blue, both toyota). Those were me.

I have a bit of ego invested in what I drive. I’ve come to that conclusion of late, while pondering practical solutions to a practical vehicle problem. I look at a wide range on non-descript, affordable, practical, fuel-efficient options. And I cannot even imagine owning them.

I try to think practical. Utilitarian. Solve the problem – Form Follows Function, as my friend Stephen, the founder of Utilikilts, like to say.

I can’t do it. Car as Ego.

I hate driving a mini-van. Yet I can see driving a seventies party van. I hate driving a sedan; yet I would love to drive a cadillac (an old one, not the more recent, soulless ones). I can imagine driving a rolling oddity like a Scion xB, yet I can’t imagine driving it’s less odd brother, the xA

My car needs to say here’s who i am to me.

And so I return to that old love, the truck.

Of course the very first thing I do is to start thinking in size-queen terms. I shop up the ladder; big, bigger, and then on to fuckin’ huge. Trucks so big I’d need two garages to park them.

I wouldn’t have something like that if you gave it to me; yet I am shopping for it. I can’t stop. I’m almost to Monster Truck territory with this.

I’m picturing riding high in some stupid-huge truck with my tattooed arm out the window; Hey baby. And they wonder what I’m compensating for.

And then I wind it back; what do I need, actually? And I step back through Dodge Rams and Toyota Tundras and Nissan Titans (which I think of as the Nissan Titanic, and that makes me want one), and wind up back down at a level that’s just close enough to sane that I can think about it, which is where the danger in. Trucks with names like Frontier and Tacoma.

I sat down the other day and calculated trade-in values and car payments, and thought about selling my Peets stock to make up the difference.

And I fear, when I finish this, I may go test drive.

Someone stop me. I don’t need a truck.

I’m in the grips of full-on motor madness, à la Mister Toad.

This all started because of my kids (really). See, I drive a jeep wrangler. And that’s a great vehicle, if impractical; it can take the beating, it goes forever with only minimal maintenance, it looks great dirty or scratched or dented. And in the summer, i can take off the top and doors, so getting into and out of the back is easy.

But in the winter, the hard top is on. And if you’ve ever gotten in and out of the back of a small car, you know how this is. Jeeps are small; really small.

When my kids were small, this was nothing. They could scramble in through the back like hamsters in a habitrail, and they loved getting in and out of a car this way. Only, they’re no longer small. The big one, just turned 13, is as tall as I am, with longer legs, and she has my build (mile wide shoulders). The little one (eight and a half) is almost a foot taller than most of her class mates, and while not built as much like a linebacker as I am, is still a burly kid.

So gettin’ em in and out of the back is starting to be a pain. They fight over who has to ride in back all winter, when we have four in the jeep.

So that’s where it started. I started making a list of reasons I needed to think about a more practical vehicle. It started with the wrangler unlimited, Jeep’s new version of the cj8 Scrambler, a longer wheelbase jeep. This is a great vehical and it was smart of Jeep to re-release it, but it has some big trade-offs (longer wheelbase means you lose some of the handling qualities that make a wrangler so brilliant to drive). Then Jeep released the four-door wrangler unlimited. I was working up some serious lust for that, until i actually saw them in hawaii. And it turns out they’re really pretty ugly, like someone mated a wrangler with a hummer and got the worst of each.

Meanwhile, some time back I was talking to CG about cars, and she pointed out the new Dodge Charger.

I didn’t really notice it at the time. Sure, a new sedan with the old name. Whatever. But i looked at it and noticed a key word.

HEMI

Read more “Put on ‘yer Daisy Dukes”