The joys of having a clean car...

I have a car, and one I am very fond of. It's my first and only car, and been with me since before I even got my license. I can still remember the day I drove it home (or rather, my brother drove, the same brother I can thank for having a car altogether, he was the one who found it for me), and the day I sat down in it with my license in one hand and the keys in the other, overjoyed and terrified at the same time (had someone actually signed off on me being allowed to drive all alone?). Thanks to the car I've been more mobile than most of my friends, taking me to school or back home again, to my friends, to festivals, to cabins and other holiday sites, to work, or just for a drive if I felt like it, and consequently getting me out of a lot of boring bus and train rides over the years. A couple of gay friends of mine even gave her a name about four years ago, a silly Norwegian one that I rarely use, but I still think of it as a "her". If by this point you're wondering what sort of car I have, it's a 91' BMW 316i. Nothing fancy to brag about, I know: it's heavy, it's german, it's rear wheel driven and I'm quite aware of BMW's tendency to set off the cock-o-meter, but I don't care, because she's mine, she's my first and I love her.

One would think that with this amount of affection for a car, it'd be spic and span all the time, that I'd be lying on my back polishing dust off her wheel arches every Sunday. But I don't. And I don't have any good excuses for it, just bad ones; lack of time, lack of motivation, lack of suitable place to wash it, lack of place to keep it mid-winter so it doesn't all freeze up, the list goes on and on. MAny of these excuses doesn't even hold water, seeing as my dad and brother owns a garage where I can wash it for free, it's stocked with all sorts of washing supplies and I can keep it there to dry during winter. What? I said they were bad excuses!

Finally, a couple of weeks ago, I got around to it, after a rather long period of feeling guilty and being hassled by my brother and father to do it. "Isn't it nicer with a car that's clean and tidy?" My dad always says with a smirk when I'm done polishing the windows. Well, that depends. When I first got the car, I used to love it, the feeling of having a car that was gleaming on the outside, tidy and smelling of window polish on the inside. But as time went by, the feeling sort of lessened and eventually disappeared, and now I remember why... Rust. Because, as the degreasing and soap washed away weeks and months of asphalt dust, mud, salt, dead bugs and whatever else that can accumulate on a car, the bubbles in the paint that are the tell tale sign of advancing corrosion became more and more evident. The doors, the wheel arches, the bonnet, the grille... I am well aware that corrosion is inevitable in a car that's 18 years old, especially one that's rolling on Norwegian roads that are mostly covered in salt the 11 months we have winter over here, but I still hate seeing it. Because I know I can't stop it, I can't afford to fix it, and that it will, in the end, result in some vital part or other rusting through, and before I know it I'll be looking down on bare asphalt through a hole in the floor. And when that day comes, I have to let her go.

So that's why I don't clean my car often. Because the dust and dirt conceals the corrosion too well. Basic denial 101.

Technology these days ...

Posting from my "mobile device". Have to try everything. I'm such a
kid...

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