donger need food.

Target Fixation

Hello. My name is Ernie and I have a serious problem with target fixation.

For the past week, my days and nights have been filled with the sounds of Death Cab For Cutie (what a great name for a band). I know, "you're slow"... "they're an old band"... whatever. I just happened to be browsing through my files and forgot they were sitting on there. So I'm on this full-on binge trip, and I'm really digging their sound. And it's all I've been listening to. Just like Coldplay all last week. And Modest Mouse for the three or so straight weeks before that.

But it's not just music. Call it obsession, call it being a geek, call it whatever you like...when it comes to materialistic things, I'll get into a "mode"...lock onto something, and it'll take weeks for me to either convince myself out of it or take the plunge and acquire it. And during that whole time, I have the proverbial "blinders" on, oblivious to options, to alternatives. It's pretty bad. And what's worse is the inevitable buyer's remorse that takes place the millisecond after you've closed the deal on something.

In a way, it's anticlimactic...

For a couple of hours in Alamo last weekend, I finally consummated my eight year long obsession with a certain motor vehicle, the last of the hand-built four door super sedans out of BMW Motorsport's tiny assembly line at Garching. As the owner and I walked up to the black four door, I felt my heart beat quicken with excitement. He gets in and twists the key. With a bark, the 3.6L inline six fired up and settled into a low rumbling high idle that pierced the crisp Saturday morning air. Ah, what a wonderful sound...you can almost hear the years of racing heritage behind that 24-valve high compression motor, a jewel from an era long gone. The aural pleasure was dampened, though, as the owner reviewed the service history...a grand here, another grand there, thousands more to come. Then he walked me through the interior bits... drooping headliner, delaminating door panels, warped dashboard, electric under-thigh bolsters that refuse to retract. Looking over the paint, I notice a severely faded hood, trunk, roof, with several particularly bad wear spots.

Undeterred, I take the marvel out for a spin. Hell, was I so naive to expect a garage queen from a $10K asking price? Easing out the heavy clutch, those Car & Driver criticisms become evident. Balky, long-throw shifter. Stiff throttle. Numb steering off center. And in this particular car, totally blown shocks reducing the ride to some incredibly bouncy rendition of a Civic with cut springs. Regardless, I was able to quickly acclimate myself to the controls and smooth it out a bit. A few minutes down the road, and the red oil temperature needle comes off its resting point. Time to lean into it...a left turn onto the 680S onramp, and crack open those six throttle bodies.

Hm. Not the whiplash inducing torque monster that I had envisioned. In fact, it didn't feel any faster than your typical garden variety E36 M3. Hrmph. But then... on an open stretch of freeway, I slow to 60 and drop into that magical and highly touted third gear. WOW.... That sound. And that tach....After about 4500RPM, it just screams for the redline and never runs out of steam, all the while making some of the most glorious music I've heard. Quite unlike that stump puller S50 sitting in my brother's black 2 door. Looking up, I realize I'm instantly at the back bumper of the car in front of me. I can definitely get used to this.

So, years of what most would consider an unhealthy and irrational fixation on a silly inanimate object have come down to this. No awe-inspiring, jaw-dropping, life-changing experience. Just a simple "neat-o".

...But I still want one. :)

And so, just like so many other things in my life, the search continues... This time with more realistic expectations and a clearer definition of what I really want. And faith that one day I'll find my very own death cab for cutie.

posted by VirtualErn @ 12:02 AM

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]