Dedication

On a bike ride home a couple weeks ago, I rode past some woman getting her birthday present. It was a nice shiny red Beetle (a real one, not a "New" "Beetle") that, from the looks of it anyway, had received the works. I watched  her husband and kids lead her out the door with her hands over her eyes, and down the path a ways shout, "open them!" It was just like a TV commercial; she screamed, hugged the husband, jumped up and down, the whole schmeer.

Naturally I'm happy when the keys to an ACVW (or any classic car really) are placed in a loving hand, so I felt no small amount of warmness toward the scene. But of course I'm a pessimist at heart, and I couldn't help but think glumly, "Melissa will never be that woman."

For her part, Melissa is stuck driving one of two ancient and, let's face it, nearly decrepit old cars for her foreseeable future. Ludwig and Gertie are slowly becoming more dependable cars, but the process is (clearly) of the "three steps forward, two and-a-half steps back" variety, entailing a good deal of temporal, mental, and monetary sacrifice.

Online ACVW forums are littered with stories of the "I love our camper but my wife hates it and won't ride in it" variety. Many classified ads writers bemoan the fact that "the wife says it's junk and has to go". Melissa on the other hand happily drove Ludwig most of the way from Death Valley to Goleta (CA) in second gear. She willingly hopped into a vehicle with no heat on January 1st, eight months pregnant, to go camping at a frozen lake. She's run the jack both (both!) times we've taken out Ludwig's engine. And whenever I wonder aloud why we don't just forget it and buy a 2002 Subaru (or whatever), it's Melissa who pulls me back from the brink of despair (or the light of sanity, depending on how you look at it).


Melissa will never be that woman. Thanks for being okay with that, Melissa.