10. You decided that you liked building model cars better than
having them, because they didn't go anywhere or do anything, so
you bought a full-sized car that you're constantly building on, and
it doesn't go anywhere or do anything most of the time either.
9. You've invested so much time, energy, memory and blood in
learning how to tune a brace of SU carbs that you would consider
it a waste of brain cells to have a car that didn't use them.
8. The shock of temperature changes as you cross the Bay Bridge
from Emeryville in late summer, soar over the bay and then drop
into San Francisco's damp, clenching fog reminds you of the
proverb, "What went ye into the wilderness to seek, a man clothed
in soft raiment?"
7. When you were a kid, you used up all the green crayons
coloring the outside of any big cardboard box you could drag
home, and all the black and the silver ones making big Smiths
gauges on the inside.
6. You like the way kids' heads swivel as they walk past your car
when you park it by the sidewalk, looking like their noses were tied
to the doorhandles with invisible bits of elastic.
5. The ritual of starting the car up in the morning -- key in,
choke out, rattle the gearlever to be sure it's out of gear, left foot
on the brake, hold the pedal down halfway and twist the key --
does for you what kneeling to receive the Host does to the Pope.
4. The sound of the motor as it warms up on the way to work
makes you hear the music to John Frankenheimer's film
Grand Prix.
3. Swirling through the scattered leaves, the empty-in-the-belly
feeling as you crest little hills; the doorpanels press into your
elbow as you round undulating bends in the roadway, and the
wheel kicks back in your hands as you pick away at the apex.
2. The clatter of the valvetrain at the top of the rev band reminds
you of Moss and Fangio, Caracciola and Nuvolari, and the great
grey dragon of the Ring rising out of the Eifel Mountains in the
fog.
1. Because when you get down to it, there is nothing in the world,
absolutely nothing that is half so much worth doing as simply
messing about with old British sports cars.
--Scott "Ten thousand years can give you such a crick in the neck" Fisher
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