I have this job that I fell into a year and almost a half ago. Along with learning things like Excel, ad campaign management and setting boundaries for someone with the emotional maturity of rotten cabbage, I have had the rare pleasure of driving a different car just about every week.
I work for a small automotive website and work out of the house of an automotive journalist. Since he needs to drive new cars and report back to the masses, he has a constant stream of cars flowing in and out of his driveway that are loaned to him from the car companies. He drives them, writes about them and gets paid for it. Not a crappy job.
One of my many duties at my job is to schedule the cars. I know what's coming today, what's leaving tomorrow, and what he is to drop off or pick up from the airport when he travels. Since my truck is in need of some expensive repairs and I have spent the money that would go towards that on slimming my bulge of debt, I have taken advantage of the random cars that lay about the driveway and put them to good use driving around, tending to my life in the Motor City. What's there that week is what I drive.
Since I am now in the market for a new car, this has been the year of ultimate test drives.
I have driven everything from the Suzuki Reno to a Bentley Continental GT. It's fun to slip into my flavor of the week and start rummaging for satellite radio stations and free pens. Once, Goat found a $20 dollar bill under one of the rear floor mats, with which he took me to the movies.
Since I use these cars for my day-to-day use, I get to find out which holds the most purchases, which doors stay open when you are grabbing items from the back seat and which ones hungrily pinch your legs in the frame. Most of all, I get to learn all the stuff about the cars that a 15 minute test drive won't let you in on.
Goat has had a great time too. When we first started dating last year, I was driving a VW Phaeton. I came ripping up to his apartment in my $100,000 VW and took him out for ice cream. For Valentine's Day, I slid sideways into his driveway in a BMW 750i upon which some dummy forgot to replace the performance tires with snow tires. The car may have been built on technical ingenuity and sound engineering, but all of that meant exactly squat as I slipped from side to side on 22 inch tires meant only for dry pavement. I'm so glad we didn't die and the car didn't side swipe a dumpster.
It's been funny to see that different cars bring out different attitudes in me and have made me see drivers and driving in a different light. I will write more on this in future entries and I'll even include pictures!
In an act of protest against the growing gap between rich and poor, my dog Lula only throws up in the cars that cost $80,000 or more. Take that Halliburton.
