Road Remedies

SCARY SPICE
SEATTLE, Washington – My neti pot advisor also volunteers his dump-run truck for the scuba story.

"You can drive a stick, right?" Mike asks.

"Learned on one. Hate driving anything else."

"Good. Watch out for the shifter knob, though ... flies off sometimes."

Bring it on. I don't care. The orange on this vehicle is honest: rust, not the "spicy" hue of the Chevy Aveo I rented last time.

As Allie Fox ranted in Mosquito Coast: "Someone over there in America is painting yellow lines on a road and someone else is wrapping half an onion in a blister of supermarket cellophane or putting an electric squeezer down the garbage disposal and saying 'It's busted'. Someone's just opened a can of chocolate-flavored soup in a beautiful kitchen, because he can't get his car started to eat out ... And they're all cursing the president. They want him retooled."

A burnt umber Aveo is all cheeseburger. Even Japanese teenyboppers would agree. And the subject made Northwest divers downright voluble in January: "We saw you on the road and said, 'that must be the reporter. No serious diver would be caught in that car'."

"Cheap rental," I stressed.

"Still..."

The spicemobile sucked. No argument here.

But I'm also woman enough to suffer the odd Barbie car. C'mon, I catch-and-release wolf spiders the size of my palm. I can troubleshoot a Lister SL3 diesel engine. And I reported from both Colombia and South Africa last year: the two countries vying for "highest murder rate" on most hit parades.

I defy any car – even one like a wedge of Port Salut – to tarnish that rep.