Some patterns are too big to see until you step back, until time provides you with the proper perspective.
I’ve always had a love of roadsters, those two-seater convertibles that zip along, low to the ground, cambered wheels pushing through the corners, the wind and the engine’s thrum harmonizing down the backroads. My father is responsible for this, as his own love of roadsters was infectious (he was partial to MGs, and had three of them while I was growing up). In my own life, I’ve been lucky to have two of them—a Triumph Spitfire (“Cricket”) and a TR3B (“Pepper”)—both classic cars from a classic age when roadsters were more commonplace than they are today. Long-time readers may remember when Pepper came into our lives, and again, a decade later, when we sent her to explore new roads. That was a sad day, for both my wife and me, but a necessary one. I figured it to be a chapter closed, a period to be remembered but not revisited.
More to the point, I’d always thought that our two roadsters had been more of a “me” thing and less of an “us” thing. After all, with Cricket, I was the one rebuilding the carburettors, replacing the head gasket, and installing a new wiring harness. I was the one wielding the timing light and torque wrench. As for Pepper, when we bought her, my wife made sure I knew she saw it as a gift to me, which I accepted readily and with gratitude.
What I did not realize was that my wife has as much love for the little beasts as I do. She’d had a Triumph roadster before she met me, was a champion of the cause when we went to buy Cricket, and (as noted) was absolutely the driver behind the purchase of Pepper. You don’t have to be the mechanic to love a fine machine, but I did not see this. I’d just thought she was along for the ride, literally and metaphorically.
For the last five years, we’ve been in a cocoon. From lockdown, through my last work-from-home years, and finally through these past medical-care-intensive years of my retirement, we haven’t gone much of anywhere. No travel to speak of. Little socialization. And especially no trips around the Puget Sound region in our little roadster. Last June, though, we had a short “getaway” to downtown Seattle, and we realized how long it’s really been since we’d been out and about. We realized how much we missed it. Both of us.
And that’s when my wife suggested we look for a new roadster.
If I can do something to make my wife happy/happier, I will do it, so when she encouraged me to begin comparing vehicles, when I realized that this was, indeed, something she wanted as much as I did, well, no power in the ‘Verse could stop me.
It took some research to find a model that ticked all our boxes, but I found one that fit both my long torso and our budget: a 2016 BMW Z4. “Fenris” (yes, all of our cars have had names) is now happily berthed in the hastily cleared-out bay of our garage that Pepper used to decorate with oil from her myriad leaks.
We’ve already taken him on a few trips around town, traveling old routes we used to take with Pepper—down the waterfront, up through winding valleys, along the lake past the arboretum—and a new excitement has infected us both. For the first time, we have a reliable roadster, a comfortable roadster, a roadster where everything works.
We’re on the road, again.
k
Kurt R.A. Giambastiani 