Liberating a broken Miata from the clutches of NorCal
Blake Z. Rong The Chevrolet Silverado 2500 HD could probably tow 15 more of these.
In hindsight, I didn't have to drive to Big Sur, Calif.—but it was a nice weekend, after all. In hindsight, the car had developed a strain at higher RPMs, and an oil change the day before revealed two measly quarts drained from the engine. The rest was slathered across the bottom of the transmission. But those are mere frivolities when faced with a coastal drive, top down, sun and sky and Jehovah Himself smiling down upon you.
And when the hunks of metal inside the 2000 Mazda Miata's 1.8-liter DOHC four-cylinder stopped spinning, and the explosions stopped happening somewhere around the 101 outside ofGonzales, Calif., that's when the education began.
After a tow to nearby Salinas, Calif., I left the Miata at the nearest Mazda dealer. Then, I spent the weekend in Monterey, Calif., and ate entirely too much seafood. I saw the great man's GMC camper at the Steinbeck Center. I gorged myself on stale candy at Cannery Row. I strolled around Carmel, Calif., home to the highest concentration of wine tastings in the known universe. I returned to Los Angeles by way of a rented Toyota Yaris, one with crank windows, and I fleet-footed it in a desperate bid to return it before 6 p.m., lest I get charged an extravagant 20 extra dollars. And the next day, I got the call that I had been dreading. "We pulled the drain plug," said a man from the dealership, "And there was metal everywhere." The engine had spun a bearing. It would never explode again. I acknowledged the trouble, thanked them for it and promised to retrieve the car as soon as possible.
Three weeks passed.
Blake Z. Rong
The Miata, shown here more in touch with its British influences than deemed necessary.
I tried to forget that I still had a car in NorCal. But there it sat, 300 miles away, languishing—maybe the dealer had revealed a hidden unscrupulousness and scrapped the car for cash.
Sadly, this was not so. I had to tow it back.
Fortunately, I had a 2015 Chevrolet Silverado 2500 HD LT for the week. It was quite the truck, capable of towing 17,000 pounds, or an entire year's' worth of Miata production. Every surface was square and imposing, like Brutalist architecture: I suspect that if GM designers could make the tires square and cast them out of concrete, they wouldn't have hesitated.
My friend Josh joined me on the adventure. He moved to Los Angeles three weeks prior and, he told me, was "functionally homeless." Essentially, he was the only guy I knew who didn't have anything better to do. We hooked ourselves up to the ropes, yelled, "On belay!" and steered the mighty Silverado toward Salinas.
Blake Z. Rong
The eponymous Pete, of Pete's Towing, sits down and puzzles it out.
We spent the evening in a dingy Travelodge in sunny Coalinga, Calif., leaving town the next day along twisty, winding, slightly frightening Rt. 198—pinched curves past tan hills, surrounded by scraggly and scattered trees. Around noon, we pulled into the long-retired gas station that was Pete's Towing. All the space between its islands was cluttered with U-Haul vans of every shape and size. The eponymous Pete, wandering between them, didn't notice us at first.
Pete had been at this business for 25 years. Dusty plaques and car-part posters hung faded from the walls of his cramped office; stacks of repair manuals, bills, safety brochures teetered on sagging metal desks. I signed the paperwork and grabbed some ominous pamphlets. "You probably won't, but if you ever run into any problems, call this number." He circled it on the receipt.
"You sure? Last time I towed something, it was a mattress, not a car." (A past incident also fraught with hilarious misadventure.)
He chuckled. "You'll be fine. C'mon, let's get you outta here."
I backed the Silverado up against the trailer while Pete huddled around the Silverado's hitch, looping various chains and plugging various plugs. "A weird setup they got for this damn thing," he muttered. Consummate professional that he was, though, he quickly figured out whatever it was that had confounded him. We were soon on our way.
Blake Z. Rong
Poor Miata :(
The dust on the Miata resembled the kind that settles on curtains in a long-abandoned living room. It was parked on the side of the dealer lot, next to a row of Mazda 3s, looking filthy and forlorn but still—mercifully—in one piece. Two tags hung off the rearview mirror, tokens from the two shops I had visited. 107 and 838. I tossed those, along with a bottle of water whose contents resembled something from Chernobyl's basement. Then, I retrieved the most important prize: an iPhone cable I had left behind in the center console.
A large man named Steve came out of the shop. He looked baffled at our presence.
"Uh," I began. "We're here to pick up this car."
He looked at the truck. He looked at the trailer. Then, he looked at the Miata, which he'd had to look at day in, day out, at work for the past three weeks.
"Ok," he shrugged, with an attitude that indicated he didn't care if we were the rightful owners or just highly specific and conspicuous thieves. He just wanted the car gone. I climbed in, on steering duty. Steve gathered some help from the shop. Josh checked his phone.
From out back, I heard Steve say: "Alright, let's get this f&^%r on there." I felt a giant shove from four burly mechanics. The nose pointed skyward. Crunching and scraping ensued, the kind that always sounds worse than it actually is but nonetheless instills panic. The wheels were over the tiedown straps, and the front lip's plastic screws had come off—to liberate the straps, we'd have to push it back, thereby risking the front bumper falling off. Or, we could jack up the car, but we couldn't fit an actual floor jack onto the narrow trailer. We'd need to use the flimsy scissor jack. I was still trapped in the car, unable to open the doors that were blocked by the trailer's wheels. So I'd have to turn the car on, roll down the windows, pop the top, crawl out, put the top back on, wiggle through the driver's side window, roll the passenger window back up, impale myself on the driver's window, dislocate my shoulder reaching for the key, then drive the next 400 miles with the driver's window askew and blanketing the interior in dust, pollen, spiders, and errant newspapers.
I did the sensible thing and panicked.
Just then, a spiky-haired adolescent wandered toward the flatbed and started asking nosy questions.
"Nice Miata. Is it yours?" Nosy Kid left no stone unturned.
"Yeah," I said, tersely. I wiggled halfway onto the trailer's fender, which was marked with billboard-signage letters proclaiming "NO STEP."
"You autocross it?" asked Nosy Kid. "Do any track days?"
"Sometimes."
"What's wrong with it, dude?"
"Engine," I muttered.
"How'd you paint the tires?"
"Paint." I was out of comprehensible answers.
"That's really cool, man!" He grinned and stared at me like a lunatic. "Looks great!"
Blake Z. Rong
Occasionally, when sitting in traffic, I'd look back and say, "hey, who's that guy tailgating us?"
The car was loaded, to the best of our abilities, and we were now on the road. There are no atheists towing trailers: for even the most ardent among us, there is always the need to appease a hidden force, somewhere in the universe and beyond your control, in the hopes that they will ensure no cataclysm in your best-laid plans. The truck-trailer combination easily passed Gonzales, where I had succumbed to fate nearly a month earlier, where the tow truck driver had stopped at his own house for cash and cigarettes before dropping us off. Faraway mountains the color of plywood rolled past on both sides, beyond the plain fields and the winery billboards. ("Catch the melody and taste the wine!" read one billboard, which worked: I needed a drink after reading that.)
The Silverado felt implacable. It didn't even feel like there was a trailer behind us. The hidden force seemed sufficiently pleased. Going over the hills south of Atascadero, Calif., wasn't a problem—I kept an eye on the transmission temperature, which hovered around 174 degrees, changing lanes carefully and watching the trailer wheels while they strode the white lines. "Speed limit 55," said the mirrored warning on the driver's side fender: With a speed limit of 65-70 mph, this was the first time I had ever driven the 101 at precisely the posted speed.
We reached our destination four hours and 23 minutes later without a single bathroom break. I parked the truck in front of my friend Corbin's place: The infamous man of Trolls Royce fame—it's still alive, he says—had volunteered his engine-swapping services for a nominal fee. He was syncing the carburetors on a Honda Hurricane when we arrived, and the fumes could explain why we forgot to unhook a chain while freeing the car from its tire straps.
Blake Z. Rong
Now arrived, safely, at its destination.
On the final leg of the journey back to my apartment, Josh realized that his wallet had gone missing. A frantic search followed—he crawled across the backseat, unfurling duffel bags, flipping over seats, fiddling with the vast center console. He made phone calls and panicked and sweated and began to smell even worse. By this time, we were at my place, and I spent the next 20 minutes attempting to back up a trailer into a parallel-parking spot.
Ever back up a trailer? It's basically a task that's Sisyphean unto infinity—imagine steering a car when the wheel is mounted upside down and on the backseat, then imagine every time you get close to success, an earthquake flips the car on its roof and you have to push it upright. Left goes right, up goes down, cats become dogs, and little wisps of smoke emit from your ears at a temperature that will set your hair ablaze. (Kids these days.—ED)
"Alright, that's as close as it'll ever get," said Josh, who finally pushed the truck/trailer combo into its space. "Now, I still have to find my walle-"
"Oh, it's right here," I said, casually reaching into the passenger door.
"Oh. Huh."
The next day, I returned the trailer to U-Haul, easily the most seamless event in the entire experience.
Blake Z. Rong
After four and a half hours on the road. All occupants have subsequently fled to the nearest restroom.
Why all this effort, then? Why this much gasoline and time and money spent? Why not scrap the car, part it out, donate the shell to a race team, hang the valve cover as a piece of found art? I had spent half of what I originally paid for the car just getting it back. It was too frightening to recount. Yet I wanted to keep the Miata forever, and I wasn't going to let it go this quickly…
"What are you going to do, show it at Pebble?" Josh chided. "'One survivor Miata, period-correct modifications…'"
When I bought my car in the summer 2011, I heard the laments of too many people who had sold their own Miatas and cursed their regrets. I vowed never to get rid of it. I can't, at any rate. I define and am simultaneously defined by this car. The car has drawn blood and crushed my fingers and covered me in oil and gasoline and brake fluid; I have been kicked in the head while working on it; I've breathed in its fumes, its acrid machine vapors.
A blown engine is the death knell for many cars, but compared to everything the Miata and I had been through?Nothing.
Blake Z. Rong
As Lao Tzu once said, "the journey of a thousand miles starts with a single ggggaaahh the damn chain is stuck!"
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