If you’ve been a reader of our antics for long enough, you know that David has had an incredible journey. He’s gone from the man with a backyard mud pit, alternators under trees, shower spaghetti, and tools frozen to the floor, to a California dad with a business, a wife, and a modern BMW. As it turns out – at least in the fantasy realm of COTD – you can take the David away from the shower spaghetti, but you cannot take the shower spaghetti away from David.
David drove his Jeep Comanche 2,000 miles to pick up 1,500 pounds of parts that he needed to build a new WWII Jeep from scratch. See, the old David didn’t go anywhere! Sid Bridge:
Young David: Hi there, 2025 David. Visiting me again to tell me about the future, I see.
David: Yep. And boy am I tired. I actually came back in time to relax and crash on your couch for a bit.
Young David: What is it this time? Did you take a long trip in the i3 to attend the Concours de Elegance and overdo it on caviar again? Did you take the family on a whirlwind trip across Italy with a stopover in Switzerland to experience the Alps and dine on locally sourced snow crab legs?
David: If you must know, I drove a Jeep Comanche (that I JUST finished wrenching on) hundreds of miles to pick up a motherload of WWII Jeep parts so I can put together a WWII Jeep from scratch using nothing but parts I found on eBay. I’ve got an impossible wrenching deadline, so I’d appreciate some empathy.
Young David: I KNEW YOU WERE STILL ME!! Come on! Let’s eat some shower spaghetti and make another cake in a valve cover!
JerryLH3 has legitimately good advice about wrenching on the Internet:
Forums are still the gold standard in my opinion for finding and sharing information about specific vehicle platforms. So many people have dumped them in favor of Facebook groups and I have to say, Facebook groups suck. The search functionality is terrible, there are no sub-forums, and there actually isn’t nearly as much useful info as you need. For older cars, everything has been done by some guys 20 years ago and was documented meticulously. The only problem is their pics are now a bunch of red x’s because they were uploaded to Photobucket.
Jason wrote a Cold Start about a Ford Prefect, the car, that is. But since the Autopian has lovely nerds in it, of course, we’re going to get Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy references:
Balloondoggle:
That Ford Prefect is SOOOO froody!
D-dub:
It’s mostly harmless.
A Real Bobby Dazzler:
“What is the top speed of a Ford Prefect?”
“42!”
“No, that won’t work.”
Finally, Brian wrote a Morning Dump about European roads, and I can’t stop laughing at this remark from Eggsalad:
“Going 626 miles in 10 hours is one thing, but to do it at highway speeds is another.”
Um, pretty much the only way to go 626 miles in 10 hours is to do it at highway speeds. Unless you want to putter around town for 7 hours and then go 200mph for the final 3 hours.
Have a great evening, everyone!
Top graphic images: The Autopian; Speakman
David will recognise the lead image as Spaetzle.
Christmas Day I drove to a friend’s home for dinner. Almost 100 miles roundtrip exactly. Thankfully about 90% of it was on the Interstate.
The most enjoyable part was being able to safely cruise at 75 to 85 as traffic allowed.
In my area they do not really do much to clean up an accident scene besides hauling off the big pieces. Both auto and human based.
The Interstates look like a NASCAR – Demo derby was just held, well no, they clean up the NASCAR debris at least.
I saw clothing, toys, hoods, wheels, seats, but especially bumper covers.
Even a few burnt out shells that have been left for weeks, maybe months on the shoulder.
I hope this is not the norm where the rest of you all live.
And saw a few Altimas as well.
But the KIA and Hyundai drivers are giving them a big bird when driving skill is really being considered. I fear for the future, and obvious decline in IQ that seems to accelerate more each year.
Jesus take the wheel. Please.
How long do you want to wait for removal of items in the roadway. It can take days to remove everything and while I prefer to not run over body parts is rather not freeze to death waiting for lego bricks to be removed
Not sure where you live.
But here they need to clean this shit up when it happens, accidents that is.
A few years ago our state used prisoners and local inmates to clean up the roadways. It worked pretty well doing it that way.
But the courts have ruled that to be unusual punishment.
The accident debris stays because most wrecker drivers here are lazy asses who don’t give a shit, even though the rules say to carry off as much shit as they can.
The other shit can be picked up by the city or DOT trucks that are constantly cruising the interstates and highways. But they consider cleaning up shit to be below their status in life. No surprise.
But our state troopers are stretched very thin here, and usually leave an accident scene long before the wreckers. As such the rules are not enforced.
But as usual, not sure what your point is here though.
I drive about that far 5 days a week for work and double if I visit my brother.
Distance is always going to be an issue with US versus Europe. The US has a population distribution almost as lopsided as Australi so away from dense urban areas the country is surprisingly empty. I have spent six hours driving 300 miles and never left Oregon. I have also been in counties with a population density 1 per square mile. Little city cars don’t do so well in the big empty, although we’ve driven a Fiat 500 over the Cascades. There should be happy medium involving a plug in hybrid with room for a couple of hay bales
I adore how the spaghetti coming out of the shower in the title image looks like certain types of parasitic worms after they’ve been extracted from someone’s butt.
Good luck getting that image out of your head everyone!
I read the comments on the old shower spaghetti article, and boy, did DT have a glow up in LA.
I am old enough to remember the shower spaghetti incident. Out boy DT has come a long long way!
I was shocked to see spaghetti-era pictures of Otto. He’s grown so much in just 3 years. And it was a reminder of his incredible taste in pants. I want to know where he shops.
That’s #4 for me! I have it on good authority that my next one earns me a bowl of shower spaghetti.
Best we can do is coffee pot Ramen.
Coffee pot Ramen is good! It’s the subsequent Ramen pot coffee that leaves me questioning all my life choices.
Wonder what you have to do to earn a personal wheelbarrow full of shrimp.