It’s not that often that you get to watch a series finale of a show. One reason is that you have to actually follow that particular show. There are so many TV choices nowadays (even with the advent of the DVR) that it’s fairly easy to bounce from show to show without getting particularly attached to any of them. The other reason is that most series have a short leash from television networks, and it’s rare that in this day and age a show will actually come to fruition and end on its own terms. That all being said (although also aided by the magic of the DVR), it’s got to be exponentially more rare to watch two series finales on the same night. What might make it even stranger (given the fact that I’m a dude), is that the two shows are from The CW (formerly The WB): Smallville and One Tree Hill.
I remember that One Tree Hill originally piqued my interest before the 1st episode even aired. Even though I only sparingly caught a couple random episodes of shows like Dawson’s Creek, I secretly always liked some of those girly teen dramas…however, if one of those shows could actually use something like basketball as the main backdrop, I could talk myself into watching it without at the same time feeling like I needed to hand over my man card. I watched every episode of the first season, but about midway through season 2 it became hit or miss for me, and that was pretty much my relationship with the show from that point until the end of season 4. Honestly, at that point I was pretty much ready to drop the show altogether, but that is also around the time that Krissy and I started to get serious about each other, and it just so happened she was a One Tree Hill fanatic. The problem was that this was also the point when the show, which was borderline lame from the beginning, started to really go south. From a marketing perspective, I feel like the original basketball angle was an attempt to draw in people outside the normal teen serial drama audience, and it probably worked. At least, it worked on me…at least, it did at first…but after a while I think the reality of the situation started to settle in, which was that this was a teen serial drama, and the majority of its viewers were always going to be teenage girls. I think the show started to reflect that, as from episode to episode there seemed to be less and less “guy-centric” basketball scenes. Also, the show kept adding more and more characters, as I think the writers realized that there weren’t enough people for the main characters to bed-hop with. Seasons 5 and 6 pretty much saw the show’s complete transition from whatever it was originally intended to be into what was basically a nighttime teen soap opera. The general theme was, in the words of Jay-Z, “Sex, murder, and mayhem – romance for the streets.” While the plotlines were suspect and the acting was weak, it at least made for semi-entertaining TV…but seasons 7 and 8 were borderline unwatchable at times. For starters, Lucas and Peyton (who were 2 of the original core 5 cast members of the show, but had really become the 2 stars) decided to leave the show. The show decided to add what seemed like 10 new characters to try to make up for it. Making matters worse, all of the remaining characters were made to be “good guys” even if they had had a dark side to them in the past. The writers seemed to try to make some of the new characters “bad guys” at 1st, but even all of those characters shortly, to use a pro wrestling term, “turned face” and became good guys as well. For the last two years, the show didn’t really seem to know what it was or what it wanted to be. In fact, if you read IMDB’s little synopsis about the show you would think you were watching a completely different show in 2011. There was no more real backstabbing because everyone somehow turned into a good person. No more backstabbing also meant no more really crazy, yet entertaining, plotlines. (The show tried to introduce a couple dramatic plots such as a psychotic stalker girl and a mystery drunk driving accident, but they just didn’t really work.) Instead, the show seemed to try to morph into some kind of hour-long quirky sitcom, which is hard to do when none of the actors are really funny. By the end of the last season, most scenes featured either this kind of “comedy” or a couple of the characters sipping a beer and trying to say something deep and introspective…except none of them really had anything to be introspective about. It was kind of sad really. People talk all the time about athletes who don’t know when to hang it up and try to continue their careers a couple seasons too long (see Favre, Brett), but the same can be true for TV shows as well (not that One Tree Hill was ever some kind of cinematic marvel to begin with). The fact is that Krissy and I probably fast-forwarded through at least 25% of the final season (especially scenes with Chase, Millie, Nate and Haley’s kid Jamie, or one of Julian’s lovey-dovey rants to Brooke). I guess we continued to watch mostly just because we felt like we were invested in the show…we had watched basically from the first season on; might at least see how everything turns out…but as stale as it had gotten, you understand why TV networks have such a short leash for shows to begin with.
Smallville is a different story all together. Whereas One Tree Hill probably dragged-on a season or two longer than it should have, I feel like Smallville could’ve given us a couple more seasons without any complaints. First, I have to say that I’m a sucker for anything Superman-related. I wouldn’t classify myself as a so-called “fanboy,” but this show would have been pretty sorry for me not to have been interested. I wasn’t a collector, but I used to read the comics. I would race home from the school bus when I was kid to try to catch an episode of the Superman cartoon show. Even the most recent Superman movie that came out, which was a flop, I liked…so, you get the point. With that being said, probably the only Superman rendition more iconic than Smallville was the series of Christopher Reeves movies. And yet, some could argue that Smallville even tops that (and that’s saying something given the number of times Superman has been rebooted in mainstream American media). On a side note, I would be interested to see what kind of numbers Smallville did in terms of viewership over the years. I’m sure it didn’t rate comparably with hit shows from past years, but it had to at least be one of the WB’s/CW’s higher rated shows to have lasted 10 seasons. I would have been interested to see if the show would have been better received if the writing and acting was better, but in terms of paying tribute to the Superman mythology while playing up an angle (starting during Clark Kent’s adolescent years and not fully transforming into Superman until the final episode) that hadn’t really been covered before in the whole Superman genre, I think the show did a great job. And the acting and humor was cheesy at times, but it was almost as if the show knew it was, and eventually it seemed that the writers would work cheesy lines into the script in a way that the show was almost poking fun at itself. Still, while his acting left something to be desired, they couldn’t have casted a guy in Tom Welling (the actor that played Clark) who looked more the part. I guess that’s half foresight and half dumb luck, but by the last couple of seasons Clark’s character just looked exactly like how you would picture a young Superman looking in your mind’s eye. Anyway, I know there are some episodes that I missed throughout the years, but looking back at the IMDB episode listing there are so many episodes that it’s hard to tell which ones I missed and which ones I just forgot. I would say that I have seen almost every episode in seasons 1-3. In seasons 4 and 5 I probably saw most but not every episode, but looking back now I think I may have missed most of season 6 and all of season 7…in a way these were probably the worst seasons to miss as Lex and Lana were pretty much written out of the show by killing off their respective characters (neither ended up being completely “dead” and would later return in short reprised roles). Season 8, which is when Krissy and I jumped back into the show, introduced a bunch of new central characters, and missing most if not all of the previous 2 seasons left us with a lot of extra blanks to fill in. In the end, while Smallville never really got the amount of acclaim it probably deserved, 10 seasons was a good run. Being that it lasted 10 years, it’s going to be strange to no longer have it on the air. Smallville, as corny as it sounds, is a show that I grew up with, and I thought the last episode did a good job of completing the story they were trying to tell. Maybe with the help of iTunes I will start over from the first episode of season 1 in the not too distant future, and fill in some of those blanks that are still there.
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
A Minor Setback
When I first began to take training somewhat seriously, it was easy to take any gains I was making for granted. Once I figured out all of the things I was doing wrong I was seemingly setting new 1 rep maxes every other week. The sad but universal truth for every training goal – strength, weight loss, endurance, etc. – is that the further along you are, the more difficult it is to make significant gains. One thing you don’t expect to happen is to go backwards though…
A month or two ago, I wrote about my gym finally getting standard (non-Smith style) bench equipment. Ironically, around that same time I started to experience some significant “losses” doing any type of chest press using dumbbells. Looking back at my training log or journal or whatever you want to call it, I was starting to get to the point where my dumbbell presses were getting pretty heavy, and I felt like even though I wasn’t that strong on the standard bench or even benching using the Smith machine I more than made up for it with the dumbbells. According to my log, I was at the point of doing 3 sets of 7 with 100 lb. dumbbells on the flat bench and 3 sets of 12 at 85 lb. on the incline. All of the sudden, and somewhat mysteriously, my strength on these exercises seemed to disappear. On the flat bench, I could barely even get the weights off my chest to even start a set with 100’s. Even doing 1 set on its own of between 8-10 reps with 90’s or 95’s was tough. Stranger still, I didn’t seem to have any such power outage on any non-dumbbell chest press exercise. The first time it happened, I just figured I was having an off day: didn’t sleep enough the night before, didn’t eat enough that day, energy was low for some reason, etc. The second time I tried (and failed), I was perplexed and frustrated. The third time, I was just plain ticked-off.
At first, I wasn’t sure what to think. I wondered if it had anything to do with the fact that I had recently dropped a few pounds. (A few months ago, I tipped the scales at 201 lb. I could’ve kept the weight on, but I had found myself playing more and more basketball, and I wanted to see if I could regain some quickness and explosiveness. Plus, I just wanted to see what I looked like a little more lean and toned-up. Right now, I’m somewhere in the 191-193 range.) The fact is that it’s only natural to lose a little bit of strength if you drop some weight. The other (and probably even more relevant factor) relates back to what I said before about playing more ball as of late. Even though I’ve gotten myself into better shape, playing more often has led to a few nagging injuries. Nothing major, but I might have slightly re-tweaked my old shoulder injury, and I did something to my left hand (specifically my index and middle fingers) that still hasn’t healed…I’m not sure if I jammed them or what, but combining that with my previous injuries to my pinky and ring fingers on the same hand (that means I at least still have a good thumb on that hand, boys and girls) makes it tough to grip and balance a weight. In theory I guess that those could account for a little loss in stability and explosive power that might go into dumbbell chest press exercises.
With the new gym equipment, I was planning on trying to use those pieces more now anyway (since I had been deprived of them for years) and use the dumbbells to supplement those exercises, but maybe this was just God’s way of saying, “Slow your roll.” Either way, hopefully some R&R from the heavier dumbbells and being lucky enough to not re-aggravate any of these injuries will allow me to use the 100’s again sometime in the not too distant future.
A month or two ago, I wrote about my gym finally getting standard (non-Smith style) bench equipment. Ironically, around that same time I started to experience some significant “losses” doing any type of chest press using dumbbells. Looking back at my training log or journal or whatever you want to call it, I was starting to get to the point where my dumbbell presses were getting pretty heavy, and I felt like even though I wasn’t that strong on the standard bench or even benching using the Smith machine I more than made up for it with the dumbbells. According to my log, I was at the point of doing 3 sets of 7 with 100 lb. dumbbells on the flat bench and 3 sets of 12 at 85 lb. on the incline. All of the sudden, and somewhat mysteriously, my strength on these exercises seemed to disappear. On the flat bench, I could barely even get the weights off my chest to even start a set with 100’s. Even doing 1 set on its own of between 8-10 reps with 90’s or 95’s was tough. Stranger still, I didn’t seem to have any such power outage on any non-dumbbell chest press exercise. The first time it happened, I just figured I was having an off day: didn’t sleep enough the night before, didn’t eat enough that day, energy was low for some reason, etc. The second time I tried (and failed), I was perplexed and frustrated. The third time, I was just plain ticked-off.
At first, I wasn’t sure what to think. I wondered if it had anything to do with the fact that I had recently dropped a few pounds. (A few months ago, I tipped the scales at 201 lb. I could’ve kept the weight on, but I had found myself playing more and more basketball, and I wanted to see if I could regain some quickness and explosiveness. Plus, I just wanted to see what I looked like a little more lean and toned-up. Right now, I’m somewhere in the 191-193 range.) The fact is that it’s only natural to lose a little bit of strength if you drop some weight. The other (and probably even more relevant factor) relates back to what I said before about playing more ball as of late. Even though I’ve gotten myself into better shape, playing more often has led to a few nagging injuries. Nothing major, but I might have slightly re-tweaked my old shoulder injury, and I did something to my left hand (specifically my index and middle fingers) that still hasn’t healed…I’m not sure if I jammed them or what, but combining that with my previous injuries to my pinky and ring fingers on the same hand (that means I at least still have a good thumb on that hand, boys and girls) makes it tough to grip and balance a weight. In theory I guess that those could account for a little loss in stability and explosive power that might go into dumbbell chest press exercises.
With the new gym equipment, I was planning on trying to use those pieces more now anyway (since I had been deprived of them for years) and use the dumbbells to supplement those exercises, but maybe this was just God’s way of saying, “Slow your roll.” Either way, hopefully some R&R from the heavier dumbbells and being lucky enough to not re-aggravate any of these injuries will allow me to use the 100’s again sometime in the not too distant future.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Madden Update: Season 2
A couple of months ago I wrote a Madden blog post chronicling the difficulties of playing in “franchise mode” under the “All-Madden” skill level. At the time of that post, I was 0-5, and my closest margin of defeat was 17 points. I was hoping to improve enough to eke out at least a win or 2 by season’s end, but little did I know at that time that I was well on my way to an 0-16 season. I think my play did steadily improve as the season wore on (there were 2 or 3 games that I lost by a touchdown or less), but it still wasn’t good enough for even 1 win. In year 2 of my franchise, I fared slightly better. I got my 1st 2 wins against the CPU on All-Madden to finish the year 2-14, and hopefully with a couple draft picks and newly acquired players in the offseason I can improve on that in year 3.
Looking back at that 1st Madden blog, I mostly focused on how impossibly hard the All-Madden setting was. While that’s still true today, the second season of my franchise at least showed me that the All-Madden CPU’s can be beat, and my frame of mind has shifted more towards figuring out ways to win games rather than think about how the games are rigged. Part of the jump had to do with just getting better and applying a lot of the lessons I had learned in the previous season to this season. Obviously, if I don’t continue on that track, nothing else I do is really going to matter a whole heck of a lot. For example, even though my interceptions were way down from year one I still threw way too many of them. Maybe half of those were the “cheating CPU” type, where a CPU defender makes an impossible leaping, diving, one-handed catch, but a good number were just poor decisions on my part.
I’m hoping that aside from my own improvement in play the biggest difference from year 2 to year 3 will be in personnel. Let me just say that I think I picked literally the worst franchise you could have picked to start an All-Madden franchise with. The 2010-2011 Washington Redskins roster was an absolute mess. The years of ponying up big money for veteran free agents and trading away their draft picks left entire units (offensive and defensive line) in shambles, and even more than that caused me to have no depth at virtually every position. The cupboard was literally bare when I started out. I am admittedly pretty good at math and problem-solving, but I don’t have the time, energy, or willingness to do the due diligence of a real-life NFL capologist or GM. As a result, in both of my 1st 2 years I wound up losing the war of attrition. Any injury that occurred resulted in some mop (many times a non-real, Madden-generated player) being inserted in the lineup, and the results were usually not pretty.
Anyway, I believe I have the privilege of having the 1st overall pick in the draft for the 2nd year in a row. Unfortunately, Madden drafts (like real drafts) are a bit of a crapshoot. I picked a defensive tackle with my 1st round pick last season, and the jury is still out on him. He didn’t start, but he served as my 2nd string nose tackle and was in the game for all of my nickel packages. In year 3, I think I’m going to switch from a 3-4 to a 4-3, so he will most likely see more action, but it’s quite possible that he is a bust. (I know the player ratings of my defensive linemen are fairly week, but I thought the linemen’s objective in a 3-4 was to tie up blockers to allow the linebackers to make plays. If they are all able to be blocked by 1 player, it kind of defeats the purpose. Also, the real-life switch of the Skins D to a 3-4 prompted a lot of questions about sticking square pegs into round holes…I didn’t think that would have mattered in terms of Madden, but maybe it does after all.) While he ended up being largely unimpressive, my other early round draft picks could end up improving to the point of being my team’s backbone for a few years. My 2nd round pick was a left guard, who seems to be solid. My 3rd pick, a defensive end, actually wound up starting the majority of the games and led the team in sacks I believe as well. My 4th round pick, a running back, went from being the 3rd down back to the unquestioned starter midway through the year. By the end of the season, I pretty much featured him as my all-around best player on offense, as he led the team in both carries and catches. He still only gained about 3.5 yards per carry, but I think that is about a yard improvement over the team’s overall per carry average the year before. The number of passes thrown his way was partly a function of the conservative way I still had to play on offense, as the majority of his catches were screens and dump-offs out of the backfield, but getting him the ball as much as possible gave me the best chance to win.
So, going into this offseason I think my strategy isn’t going to be so much acquiring a big-time free agent or 2 as much as trying to build up depth throughout my roster…as opposed to the year before where I was looking to fill 6 or 7 starting positions with draft picks and free agents. One position I definitely want to upgrade though is wide receiver, and depending on what type of draft class Madden spits out that might be how I use my 1st round pick (or I might make that my top free agent priority…we shall see). Going into this past season, I knew the position was an area of concern, but I felt that I could get by with a trio of similarly-rated, above average wideouts for 1 year at least…well that theory went out the window quickly because of injuries, and as a result my receiver play suffered even more. Aside from that, I would love to add depth along both lines, at linebacker, and in the defensive backfield. The one blessing of finishing back-to-back seasons with abysmal records is getting a lot of high draft picks. Hopefully, the Madden draft will be as kind, if not kinder, to my roster this season as they were the season before, and I can inch a little bit closer to 0.500 in season 3.
Looking back at that 1st Madden blog, I mostly focused on how impossibly hard the All-Madden setting was. While that’s still true today, the second season of my franchise at least showed me that the All-Madden CPU’s can be beat, and my frame of mind has shifted more towards figuring out ways to win games rather than think about how the games are rigged. Part of the jump had to do with just getting better and applying a lot of the lessons I had learned in the previous season to this season. Obviously, if I don’t continue on that track, nothing else I do is really going to matter a whole heck of a lot. For example, even though my interceptions were way down from year one I still threw way too many of them. Maybe half of those were the “cheating CPU” type, where a CPU defender makes an impossible leaping, diving, one-handed catch, but a good number were just poor decisions on my part.
I’m hoping that aside from my own improvement in play the biggest difference from year 2 to year 3 will be in personnel. Let me just say that I think I picked literally the worst franchise you could have picked to start an All-Madden franchise with. The 2010-2011 Washington Redskins roster was an absolute mess. The years of ponying up big money for veteran free agents and trading away their draft picks left entire units (offensive and defensive line) in shambles, and even more than that caused me to have no depth at virtually every position. The cupboard was literally bare when I started out. I am admittedly pretty good at math and problem-solving, but I don’t have the time, energy, or willingness to do the due diligence of a real-life NFL capologist or GM. As a result, in both of my 1st 2 years I wound up losing the war of attrition. Any injury that occurred resulted in some mop (many times a non-real, Madden-generated player) being inserted in the lineup, and the results were usually not pretty.
Anyway, I believe I have the privilege of having the 1st overall pick in the draft for the 2nd year in a row. Unfortunately, Madden drafts (like real drafts) are a bit of a crapshoot. I picked a defensive tackle with my 1st round pick last season, and the jury is still out on him. He didn’t start, but he served as my 2nd string nose tackle and was in the game for all of my nickel packages. In year 3, I think I’m going to switch from a 3-4 to a 4-3, so he will most likely see more action, but it’s quite possible that he is a bust. (I know the player ratings of my defensive linemen are fairly week, but I thought the linemen’s objective in a 3-4 was to tie up blockers to allow the linebackers to make plays. If they are all able to be blocked by 1 player, it kind of defeats the purpose. Also, the real-life switch of the Skins D to a 3-4 prompted a lot of questions about sticking square pegs into round holes…I didn’t think that would have mattered in terms of Madden, but maybe it does after all.) While he ended up being largely unimpressive, my other early round draft picks could end up improving to the point of being my team’s backbone for a few years. My 2nd round pick was a left guard, who seems to be solid. My 3rd pick, a defensive end, actually wound up starting the majority of the games and led the team in sacks I believe as well. My 4th round pick, a running back, went from being the 3rd down back to the unquestioned starter midway through the year. By the end of the season, I pretty much featured him as my all-around best player on offense, as he led the team in both carries and catches. He still only gained about 3.5 yards per carry, but I think that is about a yard improvement over the team’s overall per carry average the year before. The number of passes thrown his way was partly a function of the conservative way I still had to play on offense, as the majority of his catches were screens and dump-offs out of the backfield, but getting him the ball as much as possible gave me the best chance to win.
So, going into this offseason I think my strategy isn’t going to be so much acquiring a big-time free agent or 2 as much as trying to build up depth throughout my roster…as opposed to the year before where I was looking to fill 6 or 7 starting positions with draft picks and free agents. One position I definitely want to upgrade though is wide receiver, and depending on what type of draft class Madden spits out that might be how I use my 1st round pick (or I might make that my top free agent priority…we shall see). Going into this past season, I knew the position was an area of concern, but I felt that I could get by with a trio of similarly-rated, above average wideouts for 1 year at least…well that theory went out the window quickly because of injuries, and as a result my receiver play suffered even more. Aside from that, I would love to add depth along both lines, at linebacker, and in the defensive backfield. The one blessing of finishing back-to-back seasons with abysmal records is getting a lot of high draft picks. Hopefully, the Madden draft will be as kind, if not kinder, to my roster this season as they were the season before, and I can inch a little bit closer to 0.500 in season 3.
Thursday, May 12, 2011
A Bittersweet Last Ride
This blog is way overdue. In fact it’s so overdue, that the “overdue” version is overdue. As isn’t always the case though, my procrastination actually kind of worked out in my favor this time…my tardiness actually makes this story come full circle. A couple of months ago I wrote a post about the new Dodge Durango. This was kind of supposed to serve as some kind of blog prequel for a major post that was to be written at a later date. I would use it to catalog a bunch of different vehicle options, weigh the pros and cons of each, and hopefully it might even help me come to the most logical conclusion.
My 1995 Ford Ranger was still running at the time, but to say it had seen better days was an understatement. While at that time I was still hoping to get another year or two out of it, I thought it was a good idea to at least start brainstorming about what to get when the time did in fact come. Soon after writing that Durango blog post, the writing appeared to be on the wall for the Ranger. On the way home from New Jersey one particular night, the truck broke down on Interstate 95…as it got towed to our mechanic’s shop, Krissy and I mentally and psychologically prepared for the worst. We had just sprung for new tires on the Ranger less than a year ago, but we had decided that any pricey type of repair from here on out would constitute some serious decision making about the pickup’s future. Luckily (and to our surprise), the truck hadn’t died at all…it had simply run out of gas. You see, for what seems like as long as I’ve driven the Ranger the gas gauge has been busted, and I have simply kept track of the gas using the trip odometer…but that method doesn’t work when someone siphons gas out of your car at night, which I had suspected had happened on at least one other occasion in our apartment complex, and I suspected here again. That was the good news; the bad news was that I had asked the mechanic to just do an overall check of the vehicle since it was in the shop anyway, and he had found a bearing problem in the truck’s rear differential. This basically served as the Ranger’s $800 death sentence. Not to make light of terminal illnesses, but it kind of reminded me of when a doctor tells a patient they only have 6 months to live.
Anyway, I intensified my car-buying research, but that car-shopping blog post still never came. About a month after the “running out of gas” incident, the Ranger really did die. All of the sudden, Krissy and I were down a car, and we didn’t really have time to do as much in-depth research as we had originally wanted, much less write a blog about it. A few days later, we found ourselves at our local Toyota dealer test-driving a brand spankin’ new 2011 Toyota Tacoma. I had toyed around with the idea of getting some kind of sporty looking hatchback or mid-size SUV, but Krissy brought me back to Earth and convinced me that I was and always will be a pickup truck guy…fair enough I suppose. Anyway, prior to actually going car-shopping I had contacted this particular dealership about a particular Tacoma that was listed on their website as being in stock. This Tacoma was a 4x4, but also had a manual transmission, which seems to be a combination that is all but extinct in pickup trucks nowadays. It also was a 4-door and had a full back seat, which weren’t deal-breakers, but they were definitely pluses.
Upon seeing it and test-driving it, we were pretty much sold right away. Along with the couple of features that I thought were must-haves for us, there were a bunch of bells and whistles that I wasn’t originally aware the truck had including Toyota’s TRD (Toyota Racing Development) Off-Road package, power locks and windows, satellite radio, etc. We ended up buying it and taking it home that same night, and we ended up parking it right next to the old broken down Ranger when we got home. I actually felt kind of guilty…it seemed like I had been driving the Ranger (which was technically still in my Dad’s name) for a lifetime, and bringing home another new truck felt something like showing off your new 22 year old girlfriend in front of your 50 year old soon-to-be divorced wife.
The reason this post has now gone full circle due to my lateness is that not only have I delayed writing it for so long that we’ve actually bought a new car, made our first payment on it, and driven it over 2,500 miles, but the old Ranger is finally gone now as well. Ever since we bought the new pickup, the Ranger had sat in our parking lot as we and my parents tried to decide what to do with it. We had a thought to give it to Krissy’s Dad, and maybe he could fix it up and use it just to drive stuff back and forth around town on the weekends. We also thought of selling it to a junkyard for parts. In the end, we decided to simply donate it to Catholic Charities.
Krissy was the one that officially oversaw it getting picked up after I went to work, but seeing the pictures she took on her iPhone of the Ranger being loaded up and towed away were bittersweet all the same. My Dad bought the Ranger brand new…281,128 miles later (over half of which were driven by me) I suppose it will soon belong to someone else after it gets fixed up. To say we got our money’s worth was an understatement. I had mentioned the gas gauge had been broken for some time, but that wasn’t all. The AC was spotty, the radio would never power off, and the middle storage console had been broken and could only be kept shut using a piece of string long since before I even started driving it. The ceiling was all scratched up from a time I had hauled rails to help make a post and rail fence. The only way the rails would fit was if they went through the small sliding door in the backseat into the cab, and any time I went over a bump or sharp turn the edge of one of the rails would pierce the ceiling. There were still small pieces of broken glass in the backseat from when the truck was broken into when Krissy and I were on vacation. On top of all that, the Ranger (even as a new truck) was never made for inclement weather. The combination of its 4-cylinder engine, rear wheel drive, and lack of any appreciable weight in the back over the driving wheels (even if you loaded the bed with snow, cement bags, or whatever else you could find) made for some interesting trips whenever the roads were wet. I could list a dozen times where I either got stuck in mud or ice or did full 360’s (or even a 720 once) in the middle of the street, and only the grace of God and the help of strangers saved me. Still, there are a lot of good memories that accompany that truck. It didn’t have the performance capability of a full-size pickup or even our new Tacoma, but it’s hard to quantify the utility we got from it. A lot of mulch, firewood, garbage, furniture, and anything else you can think of was hauled in that bed. It’s where I first learned to drive stick. It’s the car our old family dog, Dayton, rode in during her last family vacation. It’s what Krissy and I used to take us on a lot of road trips when we were first dating and first got married. Heck, it’s even what we used to haul our wedding gifts home after getting married. So, while it definitely was it’s time to go, bittersweet is definitely the word I would use to describe its departure. While I never technically owned the Ranger, and it wasn’t even technically the first car I ever drove (other family hand-me-downs, an ’88 Ford Tempo and a ’94 Plymouth Voyager, have that distinction), I will always consider it my first car. We can only hope our new pickup, still shiny, new, and with hint left of that new car smell, will last just as long.
New Meets Old
Last Ride
Out With The Old, In With The New
My 1995 Ford Ranger was still running at the time, but to say it had seen better days was an understatement. While at that time I was still hoping to get another year or two out of it, I thought it was a good idea to at least start brainstorming about what to get when the time did in fact come. Soon after writing that Durango blog post, the writing appeared to be on the wall for the Ranger. On the way home from New Jersey one particular night, the truck broke down on Interstate 95…as it got towed to our mechanic’s shop, Krissy and I mentally and psychologically prepared for the worst. We had just sprung for new tires on the Ranger less than a year ago, but we had decided that any pricey type of repair from here on out would constitute some serious decision making about the pickup’s future. Luckily (and to our surprise), the truck hadn’t died at all…it had simply run out of gas. You see, for what seems like as long as I’ve driven the Ranger the gas gauge has been busted, and I have simply kept track of the gas using the trip odometer…but that method doesn’t work when someone siphons gas out of your car at night, which I had suspected had happened on at least one other occasion in our apartment complex, and I suspected here again. That was the good news; the bad news was that I had asked the mechanic to just do an overall check of the vehicle since it was in the shop anyway, and he had found a bearing problem in the truck’s rear differential. This basically served as the Ranger’s $800 death sentence. Not to make light of terminal illnesses, but it kind of reminded me of when a doctor tells a patient they only have 6 months to live.
Anyway, I intensified my car-buying research, but that car-shopping blog post still never came. About a month after the “running out of gas” incident, the Ranger really did die. All of the sudden, Krissy and I were down a car, and we didn’t really have time to do as much in-depth research as we had originally wanted, much less write a blog about it. A few days later, we found ourselves at our local Toyota dealer test-driving a brand spankin’ new 2011 Toyota Tacoma. I had toyed around with the idea of getting some kind of sporty looking hatchback or mid-size SUV, but Krissy brought me back to Earth and convinced me that I was and always will be a pickup truck guy…fair enough I suppose. Anyway, prior to actually going car-shopping I had contacted this particular dealership about a particular Tacoma that was listed on their website as being in stock. This Tacoma was a 4x4, but also had a manual transmission, which seems to be a combination that is all but extinct in pickup trucks nowadays. It also was a 4-door and had a full back seat, which weren’t deal-breakers, but they were definitely pluses.
Upon seeing it and test-driving it, we were pretty much sold right away. Along with the couple of features that I thought were must-haves for us, there were a bunch of bells and whistles that I wasn’t originally aware the truck had including Toyota’s TRD (Toyota Racing Development) Off-Road package, power locks and windows, satellite radio, etc. We ended up buying it and taking it home that same night, and we ended up parking it right next to the old broken down Ranger when we got home. I actually felt kind of guilty…it seemed like I had been driving the Ranger (which was technically still in my Dad’s name) for a lifetime, and bringing home another new truck felt something like showing off your new 22 year old girlfriend in front of your 50 year old soon-to-be divorced wife.
The reason this post has now gone full circle due to my lateness is that not only have I delayed writing it for so long that we’ve actually bought a new car, made our first payment on it, and driven it over 2,500 miles, but the old Ranger is finally gone now as well. Ever since we bought the new pickup, the Ranger had sat in our parking lot as we and my parents tried to decide what to do with it. We had a thought to give it to Krissy’s Dad, and maybe he could fix it up and use it just to drive stuff back and forth around town on the weekends. We also thought of selling it to a junkyard for parts. In the end, we decided to simply donate it to Catholic Charities.
Krissy was the one that officially oversaw it getting picked up after I went to work, but seeing the pictures she took on her iPhone of the Ranger being loaded up and towed away were bittersweet all the same. My Dad bought the Ranger brand new…281,128 miles later (over half of which were driven by me) I suppose it will soon belong to someone else after it gets fixed up. To say we got our money’s worth was an understatement. I had mentioned the gas gauge had been broken for some time, but that wasn’t all. The AC was spotty, the radio would never power off, and the middle storage console had been broken and could only be kept shut using a piece of string long since before I even started driving it. The ceiling was all scratched up from a time I had hauled rails to help make a post and rail fence. The only way the rails would fit was if they went through the small sliding door in the backseat into the cab, and any time I went over a bump or sharp turn the edge of one of the rails would pierce the ceiling. There were still small pieces of broken glass in the backseat from when the truck was broken into when Krissy and I were on vacation. On top of all that, the Ranger (even as a new truck) was never made for inclement weather. The combination of its 4-cylinder engine, rear wheel drive, and lack of any appreciable weight in the back over the driving wheels (even if you loaded the bed with snow, cement bags, or whatever else you could find) made for some interesting trips whenever the roads were wet. I could list a dozen times where I either got stuck in mud or ice or did full 360’s (or even a 720 once) in the middle of the street, and only the grace of God and the help of strangers saved me. Still, there are a lot of good memories that accompany that truck. It didn’t have the performance capability of a full-size pickup or even our new Tacoma, but it’s hard to quantify the utility we got from it. A lot of mulch, firewood, garbage, furniture, and anything else you can think of was hauled in that bed. It’s where I first learned to drive stick. It’s the car our old family dog, Dayton, rode in during her last family vacation. It’s what Krissy and I used to take us on a lot of road trips when we were first dating and first got married. Heck, it’s even what we used to haul our wedding gifts home after getting married. So, while it definitely was it’s time to go, bittersweet is definitely the word I would use to describe its departure. While I never technically owned the Ranger, and it wasn’t even technically the first car I ever drove (other family hand-me-downs, an ’88 Ford Tempo and a ’94 Plymouth Voyager, have that distinction), I will always consider it my first car. We can only hope our new pickup, still shiny, new, and with hint left of that new car smell, will last just as long.
New Meets Old
Last Ride
Out With The Old, In With The New
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)