The Corvette Fiasco Part 3 - The First Speeding Ticket

After the tire situation was resolved it was onto more fun, which inevitably would lead to, you guessed it, a speeding ticket. The speeding ticket came with great joy, remember, at this time in my life I was rich as fuck and simply didn't care. You know the cop was probably getting pissed at me, because I simply didnt care, I knew I was hauling ass, I was prepared to accept my fines for having fun and I made that blatantly obvious to him.

So onto the story. There is this curve on Wells Road in Orange Park, FL. The posted speed limit is 35mph with a suggested speed limit of 25. Having finally gotten used to the way the vette drives, I was getting real comfortable behind the wheel and willing to take some risks. So naturally I had to show of the handling to my girlfriend at the time. This girl was with me when the Camaro got totaled, she'd been with me for about 5 years, and she was not at all happy about me buying the vette. She treated the car with no respect, but thats a different story. Moving along.

So we get near the curve and I tell her to hold on, that I was gonna show her how fast I could take the curve. 60mph is right about where the vette would begin losing traction on this curve and mind you a normal car is hard pressed to hang tight at 35. As soon as we get around the corner, straighten out we see the cop just before the railroad crossing, which thankfully didnt have a train on the tracks. The cop pulls out, we damn near go airborne on the tracks ( at that point those tracks were smooth as glass ), the girlfriend gets pissed, I started laughing, and then pulled off the road into a parking lot.

Needless to say the cop wasn't all too pleased with me, it took him extra long to run my tags, and license plate, I guess he was making sure the car wasn't hot. We exchanged a few words, I told him he had found a pretty good spot to hang out, and that I would probably see him again next week. I was being an ass, but it was fun. I did the online school thing to waive the points on the record and paid my fines.

This was not the last brush with the law in the vette, but I can gladly say I received no other tickets in the vette.

Below is a satellite view of the scene.

The Corvette Fiasco Part 2 - The Fun Begins

Just a couple weeks of having the Corvette in my possesion the fun began. Not just the sheer joy of owning my dream car, but the maintenance.

I knew full well buying a vette was an expensive purchase, and expected the maintenance to be on the high side, a the time I just didnt care. I was making a shit ton of money and was young and stupid.

The maintenance woes started with a low tire warning on the Corvette's display. I pulled into a tire dealership and discovered that I had taken a shard of metal to the driver's side rear tire. I was told on that the tire shop couldn't help me, they did not have the equipment to lift my car. In order to safely lift a vette, you have to lift all four tires at once with all the doors, hood, and hatch opened. the car's unibody flexes, and will pop off the frame. This tire shop did not have this lift system installed. They also informed me that it was against the law to put a plug in the tire, because it was a Z rated tire (high performance tire). I spoke to the manager, they agreed to plug it so I could get to work and call a tow truck.

Needless to say I did not call the tow truck, I called and spoke to the Chevy dealership. They confirmed the Z Rated story and suggested I replace the tire immediately, but warned me that 1 new tire on the rear would lead to big problems, since rotating tires on the vette is not possible. The rear tires are 18" and the fronts are 17", they are directional tires, so you cant even switch sides. So I started the search for 2 new rear tires.

I found them at a very common major tire dealership, and fortunately they could lift my car properly. I took the car in bought 2 tires and paid over $1,000 after taxes. See apparently at the time the tires were $500 each. The good thing is when I bought the car I bought a tire road hazzard warranty because they offered it after realizing that they were not supposed to offer it on corvette purchases. Needless to say I was rembursed for the first tire, having to pay for the other. It paid for the warranty bigtime (I paid $75 for the warranty)

While I was getting them installed I was talking to an owner of a Geo Metro (I used to have a Suzuki Swift) he mentioned that the cost of 1 of my tires was still more than all 4 of his. We chuckled had a good laugh, he was poking fun at me for being so impracticle.

After fighting back and forth to get the balancing done right, you dont put wheel weights on the outside of a vette rims it causes unsightly scratches on expensive ass rims. You have to use the inner wheel sticky weights, and when you dont get the balancing done right the car will shake apart at 75mph. Anyhow, after the balancing was done, I started getting tire sensor error messages on the display.

I ended up taking to car the chevy, after reading on the internet that the problem was caused by a malfunctioning tire sensor. The corvette introduced a new technology to the car industry that has since become standard on at least all GM owned car lines. At this introducment, hardly any tire techs knew how the system worked. Basically the tire tech pooched the sensors on the car.

You can't remove a tire for more than about 20 ft from the car, and you surely can't take all four tires away from the car to be balanced. When you do the car "forgets" the RFID tag on the sensors, causing the car to not properly display the tire pressure. Who would have known heheh.

Chevy fixed the issue, it was under warranty, no big deal.

Oh BTW if you buy the flagship vehicle from a chevy dealership they treat you like gold, maybe it was because i didn't haggle with them and they knew they'd make alot of money from me, but I dont know, because all the chevy dealships I visited always treated me that way, well until the C6 came out. The tire visit warranted me lunch with the dealerships management back in their offices, we had a good time.

The Corvette Fiasco Part 1 - The Purchase

1997 Anniversary Edition Silver Camaro (Red accented interior)
Status: Totaled (Jacksonville On-Duty Undercover Police Officer)

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1998 Nassau Blue Corvette Coupe ( C5 )

I bought the car in early 2000, used with just a few thousand miles on it. The sticker price was 37,875. I never haggled the price, or bothered asking about the total amount, none of the normal car buying bullshit. I simply asked to test drive it, decided I wanted it, placed it on hold to friday with a $5,000 rubber check, and then showed up on Friday morning and did the deal.

I was 22 at the time, AOL stock was no longer in its prime, but I was still selling stocks. The previous year I had sold so much stock that my social security payroll deduction stopped, I had capped out for the year. I paid more that year in taxes, than what my employer paid me in salary. Basically I was 21 years old, rich as fuck and didnt care what I was buying. Oh the days!

Anyhow, I could have bought the car hands down straight up with cash, I chose not to. Hinde sight being 20/20 I should have. I wrote a personal check for $18,500 as my down payment and handed them a bank check for the rest. I had already gotten a fat loan from my bank. 22 years old, they offered me a platinum VISA, and a Mortgage loan after seeing the amount of flow I had in my accounts. Anyhow, the look on the salesman's face as a 22 year old young man handed him a shitload of cash was priceless, I'll never forget it.

After the deal was all completed, I went to work, pulled the car around the back and showed the guys my newest Stock toy.

This was the beginning of a long story.........

A lot has happened

Everything went real nuts for me early october.

- Found out that the call center i was a network admin for was going to be shutdown.
- Was told I would be relocated in the process.
- Lost a dear friend, Jacquetta Bessent to AALL (Adult Acute Lymphatic Leukemia)
- Had a Scrapbook Show Crop to go to, we sold lots of shirts, convincing us, shows is the way we need to go with our business.
- The call center actually did shut down.
- Started the process to relo to Dulles, VA
- Dismantled and shipped out the IT equipment from the call center.
- Business trip for interviews in Dulles.
- Found out that the relo package i was given was not at all what i was told i was going to get.
- Applied for a relo exception increase the relo package to what I was told Id be getting in the layoof interview.
- Went to the Eckler's Corvette Car show
- Thought I was going to have to sign my seperation paperwork before the relo exception was either approved or not.
- The relo exception was denied.
- Signed my seperation paperwork anyhow
- Now jobless, the Monster.com account is starting to grow with content.
- Final preparations were made for my wedding
- My corvette had a catastrophic failure under it's hood, leaving me stranded thankfully at the chevy dealership (details later)
- Decided to run numbers on trading in the vette, told myself anything more than tires and breaks that it would be time to get rid of my dream car.
- Bought a 2005 Tony Stewart Signature Series Supercharged SS Monte Carlo, saying goodbye to the vette,
- Got married to my loving Filpina Hot Mamma Jamma, Jen.
- Had a semi honeymoon at the Gaylord Palms / Epcot / Swan Resort Hotel
- Nearly lost Marc's son at Epcot, nearly giving us all a heart attack.
- Finished my newest resume, and completed the Monster.com account profile and setup.
- Posted for a ton my IT jobs in and around Orlando.
- Sent email to my previous collegues and let them all know how to contact me going forward.

There has been a lot that has gone on, this is just a small list, I know there are a few other things in there that I'm missing. Hopefully I'll work them out of my head. Some of these things I will ellaborate on, others, not so much.

I'm trying to set all this stuff in the past, and start fresh, hopefully with a new job, that actually challenges me to push myself further, and something that brings my family some decent stability. We have gone through a lot since Jen lost her job at AOL just after we found out we were prego with Draven Luke. I am hoping the future holds stable times go forward, at least until we can get ahead a little.

Now to try and stick with this

Alright I have totally sucked at trying to make blogging a part of my daily routine. I'm hoping that maybe I'll be able to try again and see.

In the next few days I'm going to post a lot, and then hopefully stick to it.

Enjoy.