Slipstream - May 2019

wasn’t any time to waste. My goal was to be back in Dallas
late Wednesday night, and that meant leaving right away. Josh
pulled the car out of the garage and onto the street. I adjusted
the seat, the mirrors, strapped on the seatbelt, put my radar
detector up and headed into the heartland.
That first 80 miles were both life-changing and life-affirming
for me. Here I was in the car of my dreams and I was now
driving on one of the most beautiful sections of Interstate
in America. On the left, the Columbia River, with its large
choppy waves, were lacking the summer’s wind surfers on this
blustery winter day. On the right, a string of powerful freight
trains were speeding west toward Portland. Underneath lay
warm dry roads that defied the light snow flurries above me.
This was a moment of awe that lasted an entire hour.
Inside the Porsche cocoon I was warm and coddled; the
sound of the engine and turbos were music to my ears. My
sensory inputs aligned and persuaded me that all of my
decisions up to until now had led to this. I was marked with
a stamp of approval that only I could issue and that only I
could accept. In a world with no spectators this would still
be the choice I would make. I wanted to stop and photograph
the car in this beautiful setting, but a stubborn adherence to
my unrealistic schedule wouldn’t allow for it.
The temps were in the low 40s and there were light snow
flurries. It was time for my first fill-up. I pulled off at a Love’s
in Boardman, Oregon. While the car was filling up, I ran
inside to get a coffee. What happened next, I never expected
or experienced before.
The weather was such that the windows of the truck stop
were fogged over on the inside. As I approached the cashier,
I noticed about a half dozen people had cleared little ovals
on the windows so they could look out towards the gas
pumps. The cashier turned from the window and addressed
me. “Is that your car?” A customer behind me asked “What
year is it?” and another asked whether it was a manual or
an automatic. I answered every question politely, thanked
every compliment, and then went out to the pump, where
another small crowd had gathered with many of the same
questions repeated. I wasn’t really ready for this, and perhaps
like Norma Desmond, I will one day miss it when it no longer
happens, but I realized later, at each successive stop, that this
was going to be my experience from now on.
What I also realized and didn’t expect was that there was
something about the car that brings happiness to others.
Maybe they were mirroring the happiness I was projecting,
or maybe the color reminded them of the last time they spent
the day at a beach, Mexico Blue being so close to the cerulean
sky over the Pacific.
Happiness like this is an incredible thing because it doesn’t
matter who experiences it. Me? Them? Us? Once again,
questions and answers above my paygrade, but without
reservation I knew something about the car made others happy.
In the next 100 miles after that stop I abandoned the list
of names I was considering for the car (Max, Frau Blau,
and Lorelei among the frontrunners) and decided to name
her “Happiness.”
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18 May