More reasons to own Alfas...

[Scott Fisher <sefisher@domain.elided>]

Yesterday, in my morning commute, as I blew past an on-ramp I saw a very
familiar shape slipping in among the Hondas and the sport-utes that make
up the majority of the obstacles -- er, my fellow commuters -- here in
Silicon Valley.  Dark blue, those three separate cigar-shaped sections,
and of all things, Carello headlamp covers just like my dark green '74!

I lifted off the accelerator, the Spica burbling its disappointment
(Spica likes to have the skinny pedal ALL THE WAY DOWN, grazie); I let a
Land Bruiser in the next lane wheeze past me and slipped one, two, then
three lanes over to the right, the traffic that had been a rearward blur
a few minutes before now ambling by me as I slowed to let the blue
Spider make up the speed differential.

Very nice Spider, condition roughly equal to mine, from a model year in
the '75-'82 range (rubber bumpers, no spoiler) was all I could deduce
about it in fast, fairly heavy traffic.  The top was up on the blue car
- -- well, it was overcast and chilly; I even put on a jacket before
leaving home.  The driver (someone on the list, perhaps?) waved as I
gave him the thumb's-up, my own hair standing straight up in the blast
from over the windscreen.  He pulled off at the next exit, while I had
one more to go.  I selected third gear and resumed my ciao-Sophia
approach to the mosaic of Navigators and Explorers (heh :-), blazing
past them and onto my own off-ramp with a huge grin still spread across
my face.

And it recalled a morning several weeks ago when I'd passed two
identical late-model Toyota Corollas at about the same point on the
freeway.  Same paint and interior color, same apparent trim level, one
immediately ahead of the other.  And I'd thought at the time how
depressing it would be to be driving on the freeway and come up on
someone else driving the same kind of car as me.

Or not.

Either way, I made one of those boyhood vows (believing as I do that
it's never too late to have a happy childhood) that shape our lives ever
after:

I will never willingly own a car that, if I saw its twin in traffic,
would NOT make me slow down, cross several lanes, and give a gleeful
thumbs-up to the other driver.  Or at least want to.

 --Scott Fisher
   Sunnyvale, California

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