The Clark Truck

Our 1994 Chevy truck is much like an old friend; it starts, drives, stops, and repeats said steps over and over and over. Since buying it two days before David was born, we've added 80,000 hard-earned miles to the odometer. We've put more miles on it than it had when we bought it. Yes, it's lowered. And No, the lowering job doesn't pose a problem usually. Yes, the purple paint is from the factory. And No, it is not Husky Purple. You won't see any videos here of rancid tire-smoke shows and touts of 1/4 mile prowess. It's no speed demon, but knows how to get out of traffic's way (plus it rumbles nicely through the pipes I had installed a few years back). While the Clarks are known for naming their vehicles, this truck never got a name that caught on. "The Truck" has served it well.

It's possible that aliens landed on our street this week - cloaked of course and probably behind a fence - because our electronic marvel of a pickup took a big hit. The wiper motor, the battery, and the alternator went bad, all in a matter of 24 hours. To be truthful the wiper motor has been on the fritz for 3 years, inadvertently shutting off at the most inappropriate times unless run on Delay, but it waited patiently until last Monday night for a torrential downpour to seize up entirely and become a paperweight. Once the wiper motor was replaced ($69.99 and an hour/half of elbow grease), the alternator started howling like a air raid siren while the volt meter fluctuated all over the dial. Turns out the alternator had built up resistance to doing its job over 13 years, and took the battery out with it. That second frazzled event - finished up in the rain with water dripping off the open hood and down my back - cost about $200. (side note: all the parts running for this wave of electronic failure was done by our crustier trustier road warrior - Big Daddy the `59 Chevy). Last summer we put $1000 into the truck when the transmission quit using 1st gear and overdrive; yeah, that was an enlightening drive home from Seattle, with the engine turning over at 3000RPM and chugging fuel like a Coug Beta House post-game function. That $1000 was a turning point for us, and with some divine intervention I got a $1000 bonus just in time to pay for the repairs. It was then we decided to keep it. So why on earth would we hold onto and put this kind of money into a truck that was around when Kurt Cobain was still alive?

Because it's paid for.

It's hard to argue with owning a truck that has a very low cost per mile overall, because in suburban America - like it or not - a pickup makes life a lot easier. I came home from my wiper motor test drive with a ten-foot piece of downspout pipe in the six-foot bed. You going to get that home in a Kia Spectra? Not likely unless you cut it into three-foot sections, thereby nullifying any reason for getting the pipe in the first place. Bikes For Tykes has benefited from the Purple Pickup in more ways than just hauling bikes; people know Bikes For Tykes by the truck. Law Enforcement knows Bikes For Tykes by the truck, which helps because hauling ten bicycles in the back of a lowered short bed can look really sketchy (I was pulled over once, and thankfully I had a business card with me).

I'm hoping we can put a lot more miles on this identifiable paid-for vehicle in the coming years. Maybe in time we'll finally name it.