Ghoti spells fish

I am now the embarrassed owner of a 1978 Olds Ninety-eight, the silliest boat of a car ever, and I mean that literally. Seriously, try it, get a clear image in your mind when I say “biggest silliest boat of a car ever,” it’s grey, then click on ‘my pics’ at the bottom of the ‘Friends’ list at right. Go a head do it now, I'll wait.

Right! I'm reminded of the line about Rainier Wolfcastle's Humvee mileage on the Simpson's "one highway, zero city." It’s the type of car 87-year-olds drive 42 km/h to a dinner buffet at 3pm in Boca Raton.

Now that I got my boat I can go fishing, or ghoti’ing. That’s the "gh" from cough, the "o" from women and the "ti" from nation.

Ode to Pepé

So I walked out my front door the other day only to discover an empty street where Pepé the Wondercar should have been. I was a bit confused. I’d never park it anywhere else, for a second I wondered if I’d gotten drunk and forgotten it somewhere. Nope.

I looked up and down the street and around the corner to be sure. Nothing. I wracked my brain about when I'd last seen it and drew a blank. I hadn’t left the house all day and it's often obscured by a bush so I don’t know if I’d have noticed if it’d been gone first thing in the morning.

I hadn’t driven it all weekend but I’d gone out on foot a couple times and would certainly have noticed it missing the last time I came in. After pondering for several minutes to make sure there wasn’t an obvious answer, I called the cops. They took a missing car report.

Ten minutes later the cop called back to say it had been towed because the insurance expired, no warning, no knock on the door, they just came and took it which means I’ll never see it again.

Normally I’d be able to renew the insurance, pay the $80 tow charge and that’d be that, but to insure an out of province car I’d have to have it inspected, which I know it won’t pass, so that’s the end of the story—time to speed up the new (used) car search. I knew the insurance was running out, so I was looking, I just didn’t expect it to happen so abruptly. Luckily I could walk to most interviews around this small, busless town for a few days.

I’ve said this a thousand times, but that car was about THE best purchase I’ve ever made. I bought it for my Chilliwack job, just hoping it’d last the summer, after which I’d happily trash it knowing I’d gotten good value. I had a strict no-spending policy, I’d drive it till it died, period.

Over the summer I put 10,000 km on it racing around Chilliwack and Vancouver city traffic and back and forth over the Coquihalla almost weekly, it still ran great, felt great at top highways speeds, got great mileage and never cost a cent (other than one highway tire blow-out).

At the end of the summer I thought about putting some money into it but a mechanic said it was on the verge of falling apart and no mechanic would work on it. After that I took it easy and avoided highway trips, but ended up driving it to school all winter, then hauling a shit load of crap 900 km out here.

Despite endless and growing eccentricities it still hummed, I’d still never put a cent into it and it had only cost me $400. I’ll miss it.