After Pictures

The Story

It started out, innocently enough, as one of those beautiful spring mornings where your sexed up Ferrari calls out to you from the garage and begs for attention.: [sexy car voice] "Don't take that silly Honda to work, take me. I'll let you take my top off"

So I nessle right in there, sans top, fire her up and we're off. It's a great warm day, and she's running great. (She ought to be running great, she's had everything from a recent major service to new brake pads and rear calipers. Ah, but she's worth it). I drive a mile or so to Rt 197.

Rt 197 is a kind of DC-commuter-no-mans-land type of road where a tight cluster of gas stations can thrive, while surrounded by 1 or 2 failing restaurants. I'll only want to be on lame-ass 197 for a few seconds so I heel-toe as I slide into the merge lane, partly to get good accelleration before my lane ends, but mostly just to hear that baby sing when I blip the throttle for the downshift. "All clear in the mergle lane. Punch it!"

Now, I can't forget that it's a hard left across oncoming traffic to the main highway onramp (295) just a few hundred yards away, so I'll need to scrub off all that extra speed almost immediately. No worries, I've got those brand new brakes. In fact, let's be a little sassy and brake extra late (Dennis: Who needs ABS?). "Awe yeah, that's the stuff!"

Now there's a break in traffic and I'm suddenly accelerating onto the ramp. Rt 295 is crawling with cops on a sunny day like today, so I'd better get a speed fix before I merge. I briefly consider the heavenly concept of an endless onramp with neverending acceleration, but alas this one is almost done before it starts. But I luck out, and... "Beautiful", I merge into traffic at, ehem, a more-than-adequite highway cruising speed without having to tap the brakes. Life is good. My heart is still tingling with that yummy feeling of acceleration.

But wait.. Suddenly I sense something wrong. It feels *too* good! The car frequently makes my hair stand on end, but not usually on the back of my neck. After plenty of conditioning (points on my license), my Pavlovian response to that eere car feeling kicks in automatically: "Scan for cops!". The front looks clear, I've got plenty of cover from radar, I'm in the slow lane which can't be bad but let's take look behind us. "SHIT!". Panic spreads from the back of my neck to every single cell in my body. My car is on fire. I'm cruising down the highway at a more-than-respectable pace and orange flames are lapping 6 inches out of the grill of the rear decklid.

I feel the gas pedal go limp under my right foot as the engine cuts out and my foot jumps over to the brake. I tug on the wheel and dive right onto the shoulder, giving the brakes a huge stab and locking up the fronts. Despite the very quick manuver I manage to keep enough control to avoid hitting the curb.

I jump out of the car, snagging the release for the hood on the way out. A strange array of emotions are fighting it out in my head. One part of me wants to cry, of course. Another, strangely enough, wants to dance a happy jig for safely exiting the car (burning alive is way low on my Favorite Way to Die list.) The emotions shift to regret as I recall a conversation with Lashdeep, less than 12 hours earlier about fire extinguishers (I didn't have one).

A national park worker and a passing school bus provided the 2 extinguishers it took to put out the blaze, but by that time several minutes had passed. The engine compartment and the decklid were very crispy. The fire department showed up some 20 minutes later (!) and dowsed the [now dead cold] engine compartment with water (just for show, I think). My insurance company asked me to get my belongings out of the car and pull the plate off after I got it to Grand Touring. Thinking appears to be that the car will be totaled. I guess I'm in the market for a car. Maybe a TR so Al and I can be twins again.

An Update

Years later I got emails from friend who found my old car on eBay. The seller claimed a very minor fire had occured. I contacted him and let him know the fire was not minor. He quickly closed the auction, and we had a good phone conversation. I was happy (and impressed) that the car was running again. He seemed to have bought the car in a fit of red fever and was wanting to get some of his money back out of it. He paid nearly what I had paid for the car when it was in perfect working order (well, except for whatever caused the fire). I sent along copies of my receipts so he could keep them with the car.