Boys and their toys

I have never been married nor do I have any kids so that means I have had a lot of time and money to spend on myself. Because of this I have accumulated a nice collection of "toys", mostly sporting equipment which I use on a regular basis for the most part. I have two bicycles, my Gary Fisher Hifi mountain bike and my Trek Madone road bike. I now have two pairs of skis and my ancient but still fun Sims Premium snowboard which still carves a beautiful turn (I help a little bit). I must admit I haven't been on my mountain bike at all this year because I still have newbikeitis caused by the new road bike which is just fantastic. The weather has been dreadful this year but there have been enough good days for some decent rides so I do have a few hundred kms on my legs.

My favourite toy of all though is my summer car, my 2006 Pontiac Solstice. This is its 6'th summer and I have still not tired of it so that's a good thing. I have done many mods to it over the years so it is now quite a bit quicker albeit quite a bit louder as well due to the new exhaust and hi-flow catalytic converter. I sometimes think people must be saying "there goes that middle aged crazy guy" when I drive by. What they don't know is I have been a bit crazy my entire life. One of the most fun things about driving it though is the reactions it elicits from other people. Kids still wave and yell at me, people still say nice car all the time and just last week a gentleman about 10 years older walked up in the Metro parking lot and asked me if I wanted to sell it.  I didn't even think about selling it although I suppose I should have asked him how much he was willing to pay. It is a special little toy for me because I would not own it without my Dads posthumous help. Dad left us in 2004 but because he was very smart with his money he left a nice little nest egg for his four kids and that is where the money came from to buy the car. I would never have bought it otherwise. Thanks Dad. I took a chance and bought the car without even driving one but in the end I love that little car. It is totally flawed in some ways such as having the most useless trunk in the history of vehicles and I worry that the complicated convertible roof may give me some grief in the future. It looks like I will have to remove a body panel simply to put a new battery in when that is needed. I'm not looking forward to that either but as flawed as it is it's a great looking car and a bit of a collectors already because there were only 65,000 built before GM closed Pontiac for good. I will always use it as my summer car though and hopefully I will be able to get out for some drives with that other middle aged crazy guy with the orange car. Yes you read it right, orange. Orange. Really orange. Now that's crazy. Great little car though.