101 Uses for a Vintage LIMO #1: TO RECYCLE THINGS

If I had not been rear-ended by a careless driver last week I would probably not have a white limo parked outside my front door. It is interesting how we can be heading on direction in life and then, suddenly, life changes drastically and we find ourselves catching up with our own life.

I am still not caught up. I just know that a new era in our lives has opened and I am going to write about it because I think it will be an exciting era. And, as many beginnings are said to, this one also started with a BIG BANG. That is all I heard before I realized my car had been hit, my neck hurt, and my kids were OK, but that my car and I were not.

I was rushed to the emergency room to check my neck and back and came out with the diagnosis "nothing broken. You'll have to endure some pain for a week or two and see what happens". My "Scary Purple Car" didn't fare as well. The diagnosis on my car was "Not worth fixing, the frame is ruined in back. You need to buy a new one. And by the way - you need to do that in two days because we are taking the rental from you on Monday"

I had to say goodbye to my car on Thursday and I cried. It was a good car. I remember the day I purchased it on the lot. It was completely intuitive. I did a web search and found that there was one car lot that had a lot of cars I liked in my price range. I went to the lot, I asked for a purple car, the saleman showed me this 1998 Chevy Cavalier and I fell in love. I purchased it on the spot.

Do you want to drive it first, he said?
No thank you.
Well I can take 500$ off the price.
Thank you that would be nice.
Any questions?
No, can I buy the car now?

And that was it. And in three years it never gave me any trouble. It was a perfect car, handled well and was a reliable friend. And about every two months I would find a lovely bumper sticker for the back of it. And then I found a sticker that said "mom's taxi" for the side of it. I always got a lot of comments on my bumper stickers. One said "Consume Less, Share More". One said "Frodo Failed, Bush has the Ring" and another said "Well Behaved Women Seldom Make History". Surprisingly enough the police never pulled me over at all in three years despite that sticker! They probably figured I wasn't really that seriously a bad girl if I had a purple car. Although I sort of was. The reason we called it "scary purple car" was that if someone on the highway was going too slow and we needed them to move to the slow lane we would stare at them and think really hard "move, move, move" Then when they did we would say "see? They are scared of our little purple car"

So I cried as I said good-bye. I am sorry little purple car. You were good and Good-bye now. I cried all the way home. I didn't even want to look at new cars for a day. Then I realized I had to force myself or I would be walking.

So I went online and looked at all the websites for used cars in Des Moines Iowa. There was www.cars.com and www.auto.com and many many more. I think I looked at 10 sites in all and browsed at least 100 cars on each site. Most of the cars were pictures from dealers around Des Moines. A few were from independant sellers. But all I saw was tan, brown, grey, blue, green. And really common cars. Nothing that measured up to the charm of "scary purple car" at all! Then I saw HER!

A 1985 Lincoln Custom Limo.

It was love at first site. My friend says "my sister did the same thing when she was rear-ended two years ago. She had to buy a new car and she purchased the biggest baddest car she could find". That probably did have something to do with the immediate connection I had with the car...but there was more. Something inside of me said "why not?" I don't drive that much. I don't drive out of town with my car and I mostly just use it for errands so the gas mileage will not be an issue and wouldn't it be fun to be able to ride in a limo every day?

I do lust after one of those alternative fuel cars but I cannnot afford that right now. I do everything I can to be environmental - I have all the right bulbs, I use canvas bags when I shop, etc...etc...but in this case I was going to have to settle for "recycling" instead of alternative fuel.

What? You have not heard of recycling cars as a way to save the environment?

Think of how much money is wasted every year creating the newest models of cars. Think of how many people junk or trade-in their cars that are in perfect running condition simply because they are tired of their car. Think of the people who own more than one car. Think about it. Envision piles of rusty metal. What are we going to do with all that metal? I refuse to be part of that movement. I have always kept my cars as long as I could and purchased used.

This time I have taken it one step farther and purchased a recycled used car. This car was originally going to be tossed aside to pollute the earth when a lovely man named Phil (name changed to protect identity) found it at a car auction and lovingly put thousands of dollars of parts and hundreds of hours of labor into it, bringing it back to life, modern low-pollutant standards and 18mpg. He later fell in love with a Mustang and since you can't be married to more than one car he had to pass the LIMO onto another owner.

I stepped in yesterday to save this car from a life of wasting away in a barn somewhere in Iowa and to save the labor market from making yet one more metal car. I think, in the search for alternative fuels people have forgotten the most obvious solution - fewer cars in the world and fewer cars using energy and materials in their manufacture. One expert in the field (http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/Research.html)
has calculated that the production of ONE car uses 1,142 gallons of oil even BEFORE it is driven a mile. And they were not even figuring in the labor that goes into getting the metal for the car to begin with, the transport of materials to the factory and the disposal of the car once it is made and its life has ended.

It is worth linking to the article above. This gentleman asks and answers a lot of questions I have had for a while. Like, what is the use of Soy fuel if you need electricty and gasoline to run the factory? Why are we running after solutions to our energy crisis that REQUIRE energy? Why don't we just use what we have now and look for solutions that are whole solutions? We will never really find a solution to our energy crisis until the factories that produce these solutions are also energy efficient.

I know some people who have probably asked these questions themselves. They purchased a USED RV and had it converted to a veggie fuel car and are driving that around the states. Hmmm...I wonder if you can convert a LIMO to veggie fuel?