The El Camino

I told MyL that this would make a good blog entry. We shall see in the ensuing words.

I was on my way to another beach city, passing the airport, sitting at a traffic light when I turned to my left and there it was, a reverent and very sincere example of a classic American muscle car: a black shiny El Camino with larger-than-life 20-inch shiny silver rims, slightly raised from the ground. From my vantage point the driver looked like a large clean cut black man in his mid- to late-30s. His passenger could have been his brother (literally speaking, of course). There was a persistent, but subtle thump coming from the car stereo, which caused the driver and passenger to quietly bob their heads in unobtrusive synchronization. I don't know what caused me to all-but-marvel, but I did; I gawked until the light changed and they made their left turn onto another street leaving me sitting at my own red to contemplate what I'd just seen.

MyL called then. "Yes, I am on my way. By the airport now. You won't believe what I just saw. It was (insert above details here, blah-blah)." MyL sighed. I responded, "But perhaps not so interesting after all... I'll save the full story for later, for in person." He sounded none too thrilled. I do not blame him.

I have always been a bad storyteller. I would have died that first fateful night had I been Scheherazade. I am not disillusioned.

On our walk back from dinner, I resurfaced my supposed epiphany with American muscle cars and that mysterious, dark and shiny El Camino I'd earlier spied with its motley, yet comfortably suited pair of passengers. MyL was still not convinced that the story was worth repeating, and that's when I mentioned that to someone who writes regular blog entries, it would probably be a good one. I will not at this point get into the history of blogging, a fairly new advent of the Internet gaining more speed than RSS feeds (that discussion has been had many times over, and this blog is dedicated to the black, shiny El Camino). I will say that I knew that I had to write it.

MyF had said that he would read my blogs if I actually wrote them, and not copy and paste other people's creations of Chuck Norris facts. MyF, this is for you. And of course for MyL. Oh, and for Annie Stevens, my Freshman Creative Writing professor who insisted my sporadic lapses in judgment, otherwise known as short stories, would one day make good bathroom fodder. I never remembered to thank her for that vote of confidence...?

Tangent, sorry. Actually my apologies to the El Camino for Annie's well deserved digression (only Dearest will understand this reference, unfortunately).

But back to this El Camino. I cannot do it justice by writing about it, so I have decided that I'm going to try and find a picture of it and immortalize it in a blog entry, this one perhaps. In other words, I will try and find its likeness somehow graphically and add it to this blog.

So far I have come up with this image. Please, if you are reading this blog, feel free to provide your opinion of what you would consider the perfect El Camino. In doing so, perhaps I will not have to wait for my next fateful encounter with the shiny, black El Camino at a traffic light by the airport.

Fine, I've put the pen down.