I washed my car today- it was pretty dirty plus it had some bird poo on it. I've always enjoyed washing my car, but it gets harder the older my car gets- I have to acknowledge the little bit of rust by the rear fender, and all the paint chips on the hood. I used to say that some day I would paint my little green jellybean with the colors of the General Lee, but I doubt that will ever happen now. Last year I briefly got to enjoy having to get in and out Duke Boys-style, when Cory and I went canoeing and we tied the canoe to the roof of my car, which also tied the doors shut, so we had to get in via the window. I also caught a little air, in fine General Lee fashion, last summer when I was driving perhaps a little too fast on the Alaska highway and hit a very nasty pothole/crater.
Back when I was a coal miner, the trucks we drove were all numbered, starting with unit 5501 and going up to 5534. Units 01 to 26 were 170 or 190 ton trucks, while 30-34 were 260 tons. 01 truck (say zero one) was referred to as the General, 02 the Roach, since it was once infested with bugs. 03 got smashed up when it went over the dump, 05 broke in half one day, 09 flipped over and sadly killed the driver, so it was retired along with 07 and 08. There never was a 13 truck- I guess they thought no one would drive it.
Let's see, my buddy Al was driving Truck 14 when a tire blew and it flipped over on its side. Pretty much every truck in the fleet must have flipped over or caught fire at least once in its career. I never had any major mishaps while driving, but lots of minor little adventures. It's always startling to be driving down a grade when all of a sudden sparks start shooting from your gridbox, which is the heat radiator for the dynamic retarders (a form of brake, your most important one)- this is especially dramatic on nightshift when the sparks light up the sky. My last truck was 31 truck, and I kind of miss her. Yeah, I call it a her. When you spend 12 hours at a time with something, you develop a relationship with it. Strangely, though, my own car is a neuter to me, its only nickname being little green jellybean, which my even-littler friend Rayne gave it when she was about 4.