Size Does Matter

As much grief as I tend to give my wife I think she's perfectly happy to let me do whatever I want in the garage. She deals with the inside of the house, the garage and the outside are mostly left to me. The only declared law was the Arkansas Rule. (Thou shalt not have cars on cinder blocks where the neighbors can see them.) Despite having a dog who could become a JYD I don't have any aspiration of running an actual junkyard, so it's not a problem.

Last week (not long after seeing the movie Cars) I was wandering the internet and stumbled across Sports Car Market Magazine and thier "Affordable Classics" section. The simple fact is I'll probably never own an F40, a real Cobra, or a 300 SL Gullwing. (It's a painful thing to admit, but I screwed up the whole tech-bubble / stock-options thing so there you go.) But these guys had reviews and comments on a bunch of cars I wouldn't be embarrassed to see in my garage. (But I'll pass on the Mercury Capri.) Some of the comments in the articles are pretty funny so I read a few to my wife. She laughs at a few, humors me on a few more, then says...

"You know you can't have another car until you get rid of one you already have."

"What?"

"Where would you put it? I'm not parking Otto outside." (Otto is her new Audi A3. It's a nice car, we paid good money for it, and I don't want it outside in the rain any more than she does.)

Hmmm.... Now, keep in mind, I wasn't really thinking about buying anything. After all buying implies trading money for something and before you can do that you have to have some money. I'm fresh out, so it really wasn't an issue.

But I'm not a big fan of rules. I don't like being told I can't do something. Tell me I shouldn't. Tell me it would be better if I didn't. Tell me western civilization will implode if I do. But can't? ... Really? ... I can't? ... Sounds like a dare to me.

So I did a little measuring last night. A little poking around. And a little analysis of the problem. (I'm an engineer, that's what I do.) Here's what I came up with:

1) The problem isn't really having another car it's finding a place to put it.
2) I have a 3-car garage, and at last count we have 4 cars and two motorcycles.
3) My daily driver can stay outside (it's been outside for the last 3 years) but her Audi has to have a carage spot.
4) That leaves two garage spaces to hold two cars and two bikes and make room for the mythical new car.

Sounds impossible right?

Ah ha! You and my wife forgot that the two cars are TR6s! (And, to give you some credit, you probably didn't know that one of the garage spots is 33' deep instead of the usual 20' or 22'.)

I got up early this morning and did some cleaning and re-arranging while she was still sleeping:



That's right, that's two cars and one motorcycle in one garage bay. There's even enough room to put the Suzuki in there (once it's off the trailer). That leaves a whole garage space empty, just waiting for a nice shiny new toy.

How do you think she's going to respond when she gets up and sees that?

heh heh heh