1996 BMW Z3
Coachella Valley - featureless, colorless, barren
When I finally got out there and started looking at cars, I considered all manner of things. At the bottom end of the scale was an old VW Cabrio that was located about an hour from where I was living. It was only a couple grand, and I came very close to buying it. Another used car I checked out was a 70's Rolls Royce Silver Shadow. It was a great car, and surprisingly within my price range, but I wanted something a little more mainstream for my daily driver. I looked at some new cars, including the new VW Beetle convertible. The problem was that I wanted a stick shift, and the only cars they had on the lot that weren't automatic were this hideous pastel turquoise color. I also looked at a new BMW Z4, but it was just too expensive.
But while I was at the BMW dealership I saw a used Z3. The second I lay eyes on it I had a good feeling about it. It was red and black, which was a color scheme that worked with me. It was a stick shift, which was one of the reasons it hadn’t sold yet. I came to learn that this was not a selling point in the resort/retirement community where I was. People there so couldn't be bothered to shift gears for themselves. And the Z3 was a 1996, which by my standards was practically new, but was old and tired to the general buying public there. The upshot of all this was that the car was priced firmly in my range.
Long story short, I decided to buy the car. I went down to the dealer for the final negotiations. As I was scrutinizing the sales contract I started copping a bit of an attitude. It had to do with the car loan. The contract said that if I couldn't get financing within x days I had to finance through BMW at their rates. I knew I could get financing, but I said that if I couldn't that I might just change my mind and not buy the car after all. What I didn't understand was that all I had to do was sign my John Hancock and I'd be driving away in the car right then. That's not how it works in New York State. But in California all they have to do is slap a sticker on the windshield and a couple pieces of cardboard for license plates and away you go. When I realized that I signed immediately. Two minutes later I was driving home with the top down.
I loved the car from the very start. There was nothing I didn't like about it. And it gave me the freedom I'd been missing while I was in California. Unfortunately, pretty much right after I got the car, the relationship fell apart. I won't get into that story here except to say that it ended in such a way that I had to get out of there quickly. I came very close to just hopping in the Z3 and driving home. What stopped me was that I had to take my cat back with me, and she would have gone crazy cooped up in a Z3 for days. Long story short, I put the car in storage and flew home.
I intended to come back for the car in April or May, but there were circumstances that made it appealing to fetch it in March. Ironically after I got my plane tickets those circumstances evaporated. But there I was, committed to driving the car back home in what could potentially be bad conditions. I had never done anything like this before, so I had no concept of what kind of pace I'd be able to maintain.
I left Palm Springs on Monday morning, a bit later than I would have liked to leave. I was able to go with the top down for a large part of the first day. In fact I got sunburned on my face. My goal was to make it to Flagstaff AZ on the first day. By the time I got there the sun hadn't even gone down yet, and I still felt perfectly fine. I decided to keep going. By the time it got to be about 9:00 at night I decided to stop just because I was afraid of not being able to find food. By that time I was about 100 miles West of Albuquerque. I got a room at a Motel-6 and had dinner at Denny's.
The next morning I got up and on the road right away. I drove all day. I was using major cities as my milestones, as it were, because my Rand McNally road atlas had a cross-reference chart indicating distances between them. I began to gauge distance in an all new way. Anything over 350 miles was a "long way." Anything under 200 miles was "almost there." If it was 100 miles or less I might as well have already been there. Once again by about 9:00 at night I decided I should stop. By then I'd driven through the rest of New Mexico, Texas, and Oklahoma. Just before I crossed the border into Missouri I almost hit the biggest raccoon I'd ever seen. It was the size of a small dog. Actually a medium-sized dog. But I missed it by inches and kept going. When I crossed over into Missouri I stopped at the first exit. I stayed at another Motel-6.
The next morning I got up and got on the road first thing again, and I drove all day again. I went through Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, and into Ohio. By the time I'd made my way through Columbus it was getting late, but I was smelling home. Interstate 90 was just a couple hours up the road. I had visions of continuing on into the wee hours of the night and make it the rest of the way to my house. But when the temperature dipped below freezing, my better judgment kicked in. I got a room in some sketchy hotel called Knight's Inn. The room stank of Fabulosa.
The next morning I was at ease because I knew I was almost home. But when I stepped out of the room I found a layer of wet snow on the car. This troubled me only in that the Z3 had fat performance tires, which I knew from my experience with the Beetle to be really sucky in the least amount of snow. I cleared the car off and got on the road. It was still hovering around freezing. Within 10-20 miles I started seeing snow flakes in the air. Considering I was headed straight for Lake Erie, this gave me some concern. The last thing I wanted to deal with was lake-effect snow. But just like that the snow went away again. I got to Cleveland and picked up I-90. At that point I practically felt like I was home already. I hit some patches of fog, notably around Erie PA, but nothing worse than that. In a couple hours I was back in New York State again. I was elated. When I passed Buffalo I was in the home stretch. I still had 100 miles to go before I even got off the interstate, but considering the distances I'd been traveling, that was nothing.
When I got to the Ithaca exit I got off the highway and worked my way down between the lakes. I was hoping to hit some traffic, because I wanted to use the power of the Z3 to buzz right by. Wouldn't you know it this was the one time that there was no one ahead of me the whole way. When I got closer to home I took the back roads the rest of the way. I arrived at my house before 5PM. There was a layer of wet snow over everything. Ironically, after going across the entire continent without any kind of incident at all, I got stuck in the snow in my own damn driveway. But I didn't care because I was home.
In the end I went 2700 miles in under 4 days and averaged just over 30MPG. Not bad for a performance car. At that point, the Z3 became my daily driver. I was loving it, but I knew a car that special had to be kept for special occasions.
Finger Lakes - lush, arboreal, alive