My first car was a white 2013 Honda Fit named Scott. He was previously owned by the proprietor of a defunct kickboxing gym in my area, and acted like it. That car had chops, and legs for days. Manual 5-speed, not the sport model but still had surprisingly good clearance and a shocking ability to climb up logging roads well further than most SUV’s dared or bothered to go. Loved that guy, but he sadly met his end late last year in an altercation with a Dodge Ram. A rather one-sided argument, and a total write off.
After that I fell into a situationship with Joe. Joe was/is a 2015 manual 6 speed Chevy Trax with a bad attitude, a lean to the right, misfiring cylinders, and a steering wheel that shakes at highway speeds. I don’t like Joe, and I strongly suspect Joe doesn’t like me, so I traded him in before he had a chance to fulfill his yearning to explore the ditch.
Nowadays I’m quite happily involved with Geoff - a 2019 Toyota Corolla hatchback. Again, not the sport model, but a 6-speed manual nonetheless and a truly fun ride, with significantly better acceleration that either of my previous two vehicles. We’ve agreed that how to spell his name is for him to know, and for me to speculate. Jeff is confident, self-assured, kind & forgiving, overall a balanced and well-adjusted partner - kind of hard to get used to, to be honest.
Stacking firewood, the summer I was 13 years old. The guy said he’d pay me five bucks a cord, meaning that for every 8 foot section I stacked to four foot high, I got paid five dollars.
Had to bike about seven klicks down a back road every day, to get to a metal warehouse with a yard out back. They kept a log splitter and a conveyor belt set at an angle back there. Strange place, with an old cargo van converted into a flat bed rusting in the tall grass to the side. Their dog didn’t like me.
Hard, hot, heavy work. Firewood sections still slippery and dense from sapweight, and a pile that was liable to collapse if and when you pulled at the wrong piece. I was slow to start and did not improve over time. I believe I averaged about four or five cord a day, which is not bad for a thirteen year old if you ask me.
After a few days of stacking, I had a few rows finished and the pile was getting low. They started running the splitter and belt again, while I was picking firewood from the pile. Once they started that, I couldn’t keep up. This was partially due to the fact that I now had to approach the pile with one eye on the conveyor belt, to time things so that I didn’t get hit with falling pieces. They brought in some other guy one day, who lasted a few hours before getting hit in the hand by a falling piece of wood. I didn’t see him again.
First time I went to ask for my pay, the man counted out 25 five dollar bills and handed them over. He wasn’t lying - it was genuinely five bucks a cord. I was baffled at the time as to why the man would have that many low denomination bills - I learned much later on that he was basically laundering money from illicit sources through this operation, which explained a lot.
I stayed there for about a month and a half, ending my summer with about 500 dollars - enough to buy myself a snowboard with some help from my parents. Strange times.