Destiny

[Scott Fisher <sefisher@xxxxxxxxx>]

And here's the third posting I alluded to when I said "how one posting
turns into three..."

As a few of you know, I decided to tempt fate and got a new house and a
new job within a period of about a week.  Kept my wife, kids, and Alfa,
but changed pretty much everything else.

While we were packing up the old house, sorting through all our things,
I came across boxes packed with old photographs, mostly of race car
events, most of those from the Monterey Historics.

I found one that was easy to date: on a low wall behind a beautiful
Ferrari 250 GT "Lusso," there sat my beautiful several-months-pregnant
wife, shortly before the birth of our first child.  Since our daughter
was born in 1987, that picture must have been taken in August, 1987
(featured marque: Chevrolet; we drove our very sharp 1965 Chevelle Super
Sport to the event and camped at the track, and if you think THAT
indicates what a good sport Kim is, to go camping a few months before
giving birth, ask me about the time she helped me bleed the clutch
hydraulics in my M.G. Midget, using her crutch to press the pedal...).  

Anyway, so here's the picture of the woman I love sitting behind the car
I've always felt was The Most Beautiful etc.  As I got ready to put the
picture back in the envelope, I said, "Oh!  And look, there's *another*
of the cars I've always thought were The Most Beautiful -- a 105 Alfa
coupe!"

I looked a little more closely at it.

"Hey," I said, "it's even a step-front.  But who'd paint it that weird
color?  It looks like..."

And then I stopped.

"Kim," I said, my hand starting to shake as I held the photograph out to
her, "*that's my car, ten years before I bought her.*"

"No!" Kim said, as amazed as I was.  

"It has to be," I said.  "See the paint, it's the right color and it's
all peeled off above the belt line, like Bella's when I first got her. 
And look in the back window -- there's that decal that I've never
completely removed."  (I've been able to remove most of it, but it's a
series of incomplete vertical pieces of sun-baked, indistinguishable
*somethings* at this point.)

"My god, you're right.  It's your car, before she was your car."

Speaking of the Historics, I was reminded of a couple of photographs I
scanned and put up on line.  They're great backgrounds/wallpaper, for
Alfisti in particular and for anyone who's interested in the Monterey
Historics as well.

The first one is here (warning -- it's 250kbytes, click and then go get
a cup of coffee):

http://www.living-history.org/classics/maestro.jpg

That's Juan Manuel Fangio with the intense look in his eyes, exactly the
way he looks in the Klementaski photo that graces the cover of Denis
Jenkinson's "The Racing Driver," sitting in a Tipo 159 Alfetta in the
paddock at the Historics in 1985, Alfa's year.  There's what looks like
a P3 visible just behind him as well.  This was an example of what's so
incredible about the Historics -- I was walking through the paddock and
just happened to stumble across Il Maestro sitting in the car.  Up came
the camera and snap.  Just another point-and-shoot from the Historics
weekend.

The other one is a sentimental favorite for me, even without any
explicit cars in it (70k, much quicker to load):

http://www.living-history.org/classics/secamist.jpg

This was from the same year, 1985.  That year we got one of the Way Cool
Campsites, at the top of a little hill overlooking what is now Turn 6
and 7.  It was early Saturday morning, we'd been awakened by the sound
of someone tuning an aluminum V8 Can Am car, so I crawled out of the
tent and this was what I saw: the mist still hanging in the hollows, the
shadows of the dark oaks long against the yellow grass, and the grey
serpent of track climbing up and over to drop down into the Corkscrew,
maybe the most unmistakable corner in American road racing.

I'll have to scan the picture of Kim, the Lusso, and my Alfa some
time...

- --Scott "All right! I'll say it! Destiny! Destiny! No escaping that for
me!" Fisher

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