However, I don’t know how to figure that out. In California, you just have to be here through one noticeable earthquake and you’ll be accepted. There’s probably a rite of passage here, too, maybe a secret handshake, but no one talks about it. I get by using “Dude!”, “Righteous!”, and “People on ’ludes should not drive” with reckless abandon. I also wear my slip-on Vans with flames, age-appropriate or not.

Am I going to miss California? Some of it, sure; I’ll miss the sunny days, beach walks, and easy access to high-quality Mexican food. I’m not exactly sure how I’m going to deal with the loss of grilled fish tacos, crispy carnitas, and Cadillac margaritas strong enough to be considered disinfectant, but I will survive… probably. Worst case, I’m perfectly capable of making the margaritas myself.

I’ll miss a lot of the car culture, too. I have a feeling that as good as the local Cars & Coffee may be on the East Coast, it is unlikely to draw from the same universe of vehicles. In the last 90 days or so, there were seven original GT-40s, some from each of three generations, at one show, four Paganis and three Koenigseggs at another, and so many McLarens at a third that no one even stopped to look at them; everybody, including me, went directly to the white-over-green 21-window VW bus instead.

Will I miss the traffic? No, not at all. Having a 45-minute drive take an hour and a half is just stupid, as is the fact that you can’t really predict how long your drive will actually be. As far as I can tell, the local chapter of the Anti-Destination League has a secret daily e-mail list wherein they announce where all of the impaired should meet to drive. Because of this dichotomy, we leave early and know every decent coffee roaster near our friends’ houses so that we can duck in and waste some time before we were actually supposed to show up. (It’s rude to show up early, but even worse to get drafted to help when you do. If I wanted to help make dinner, I would have brought a sharp knife, a decent pan or two, and an apron with neither ruffles nor floral print.⁴)

How bad is it? When I moved to south Orange County in the mid-Nineties, I could make it to downtown San Diego in a little over an hour; now I plan on two. One day, the Friday before a holiday weekend, it took over six hours.

There are a bunch of tracks there, too: Thermal Club, Chuckwalla, Buttonwillow, Willow Springs, Auto Club Speedway, Irwindale, the Porsche Experience Center, plus Laguna Seca, Sonoma, or Spring Mountain if you want to drive a little farther. But every one of them is a proctological nuisance to access in heavy traffic.

In contrast, where I live now, it’s about an hour and a half of easy driving to get to Summit Point.

Even California’s back roads aren’t really back roads anymore; they’ve been taken over by urban sprawl and fulfillment centers. A buddy put together a tour of fun SoCal driving roads last year—basically, he turned a Butler Motorcycle Map into a loop—but most of the fun parts lasted 10 minutes or less, linked by clogged freeways, lines of trucks, uncoordinated traffic lights, and bumper-to-bumper buffoonery.

It’s not that there’s no traffic where I am now; there is, but it’s easy to circumvent. The immediate area is walkable. Our homeowner’s association runs a shuttle bus to the Metro, which gets us either into the fun parts of DC or to Reagan Airport, and the city itself has a shuttle bus that loops to most of the places we actually like to go. Or we go the other direction and the traffic is next to nothing.

So this was a good move, in more ways than one. Our townhouse has a garage, which is weird enough for the area, but it’s also a two-car garage. Weirder still is that it has ten-foot ceilings, which means a lift easily fits. Which means all three cars have indoor parking. Which means that Moby, the Mercedes; TWUBBL, the Dinan 3; and Hopper, the 911 are all semi-officially Forever Cars.

Given the potential garage issue, they almost weren’t. I was considering a Hyundai Ioniq 5N, in part because Hyundai poached Albert Bierman, former chief engineer at BMW M, to run their motorsports program. But while the N is electric, comfortable, stupid quick, and quieter than a nun’s fart, it just isn’t very engaging. Oddly enough, our Hyundai sales guy tacitly agreed. Just to be clear, he didn’t talk us out of the 5N, but his engagement with his own cars–a modded Mustang GT and a wildly modded Audi S5 that isn’t even vaguely street-legal—made our decision clear.

We have new back roads to explore, and fun, fast, familiar cars to do it in. I’ll let you know how my new Virginia license holds up

1. At least I don’t think so. Unless of course I cheesed Satch off with one too many grievously obscure references or antiquated vocabulary choices.
2. Why, yes, I am a cockalorum of some magnitude. Thank you for noticing.
3. Uh-oh: two potential problems and three footnotes in a single sentence. What have I done?!
4. Sure, I can spatchcock the turkey, but do you really want me to use your garden shears to do it? And can I borrow them for the drive home? I may need to spatchcock some of those Anti-Destination Leaguers as well.

The post Anyone? Anyone? | Hello, Virginia; Spicoli, I’m Gonna Miss You appeared first on BimmerLife.

Allow me to provide some context. As part of the Sturm und Drang arising from the goat rodeo otherwise known as my attempt to secure a garage lift at a not-crazy price, it’s been clear that the Sturm, the Drang, the goats, and even the rodeo clowns have been winning. Tariffs continue to frustrate the vendors and make it practically impossible for them to engage in normal transactions, and because of my Scottish and Swiss ancestry, as well as my upbringing by Great Depression Era parents, I’m both generally and genetically indisposed to pay crazy money for anything, let alone a garage lift.² As a result, every couple of days, after everyone else in the neighborhood has gone to work, I’ve been moving TWUBBL, the ex-Satch-and-Party-A Dinan Three, to a new place on the street. Except for one weekend (there was an event at the adjacent park) and on election day (because the local polling station is a block away and people here tend to vote in person), it really hasn’t been too much trouble, only a mild annoyance. It’s not that there haven’t been other options for off-street parking, but they’ve all suffered from one of two disqualifying faults: Either they’ve been stupid expensive or unduly distant.

Until now.

One of the large neighborhood condo complexes completed their remodeling, and the space reserved for all of the construction crap was no longer needed. As a result, 10 off-street spaces two blocks away became available with attractive long-term lease terms. How attractive? I’ll be 102 years old by the time the cost difference between the lift and parking lease zeros out.³

Sure, it’s outdoor parking, but TWUBBL came with a car cover, and the space is under a mature tree, and therefore shaded. It would be nice if there was electricity available so I could plug in a battery tender, but I drive the car often enough that it’s really not too much trouble. So I signed the lease, wrote a check for six months, and took possession of the space on a Monday. I backed the car in, pulled up the window shades, locked the doors, and congratulated myself for both my patience and business acumen.

Now you’re caught up.

Imagine my surprise on Wednesday when I found a police SUV parked next to the car. My initial thought was, literally, “Ruh-Roh, I’m in trouble now.”⁴ It’s not like I’d done anything particularly dumb in TWUBBL; I’ve been good (at least recently). But given the ubiquity of stupidity and the prevalence of speed and red-light cameras around Northern Virgina, it’s just not that hard to get a surprise in the mail.

It’s not like I have trouble with law enforcement, especially now, as an old white guy with nice cars in a nice neighborhood, but I still had that residual unease from being a goofy teenage driver with more testosterone than skill. As a result, I had an immediate flair of anxiety that my surprise might be more immediate, more visceral, and by extension, more expensive.

But no: The Explorer was empty, and it seems that the space next to mine is its new home.

While I was initially concerned, I quickly reconsidered: The Explorer is liveried and fully cop-equipped, including what appear to be cameras and video-recording equipment. I couldn’t tell if this equipment was running, but there were red lights glowing in the center console, and the sheer obviousness of police presence was enough, at least for my purposes. Of course, the weaponry had been removed (as it should be), but if the manual transmission in TWUBBL isn’t enough to preclude theft, the possibility of being recorded in the act should dissuade even the most intellectually impaired of car thieves. I concluded that on balance, this was a good thing and not trouble.

Even were I tempted to make dramatic, tire-smoking exits from the lot, I wouldn’t. This is partly because of the police presence, but mostly because it would be a singularly gormless thing to do; I actually like my neighbors, and despite their taste in music, I like their kids, too. Most important, all of their dogs love me. In addition, the entry to the lot is from a narrow street, and is itself narrow and flanked by very large, solid brick pillars.

It’s been a few weeks since that initial encounter, and while the police vehicle isn’t always there, it’s there frequently—and on no predictable schedule. While there is a small police substation a couple of blocks away in the park, it seems that it’s there only for emergencies and park events. As a result, the neighborhood wisdom is that the vehicle belongs to a neighbor.

I’m actually hoping to meet this neighbor at the next happy hour so I can thank them for the good trouble. You know, for TWUBBL.

1. No, I did not bury the lede. I led with lede. It’s hardly my fault that in the absence of backstory, the lede makes no damn sense. For what it’s worth, this whole episode has been a journey of consistent frustration, senseless whimsy, irritating serendipity, and frequent parallel parking. Your patience is appreciated.
2. I have plenty of other, better things to spend crazy money on, ancestry be damned: travel, guitars, Steve McCurry prints, an X5 M with a safari build that I also don’t have any place to park.
3. As an added benefit, the space is right behind our favorite Indian restaurant. They have a great happy hour, good lunch specials, and best lamb biryani I’ve ever had. This makes it temptingly easy to confirm that TWUBBL is still where it’s supposed to be.
4. Use a Scooby-Doo voice for the full effect. I did.

Photo: Harrison Keely/Wikimedia Commons 4.0

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