[DeTomaso] Fly yellow attracts more than flies....

[MikeLDrew at aol.com]

Hi guys,

So, I went zipping around town in the Pantera today; I'm having carpets made 
for it next week and I wanted to swing by the upholstery shop (just a mile 
from my house) to show it to the guy just so he knows exactly what to expect.  I 
also had dropped a box full of 351C parts for Longchamp Phil in London at the 
Fed Ex office this morning, and then another widget showed up for him when I 
got home, so I needed to intercept the box and stick it inside before the Fed 
Ex international pickup in the afternoon.

Upon leaving the upholstery shop, I just had to jump on the freeway and go up 
to the next exit to get to the Fed Ex shop.  The on-ramp is only about two 
months old, and is a beautiful piece of highway engineering.  It's about three 
or four car-widths wide, banked, and increasing radius.  In any of my other 
cars (particularly my Scirocco), I take it WFO and sliding, but I freely admit I 
don't know how to drive a Pantera properly, so circumspection was the order of 
the day.  The weather was beautiful, there was nobody around, so I just sort 
of ambled onto the freeway, clicked it into 5th gear and cruised in the slow 
lane.

Nearing the exit I glanced in the mirror and saw an all-white Ford Crown Vic 
hauling ass, and just then, the red and blue lights in the grille started 
flashing.  I thought it was rather odd that a CHP cruiser would be going so fast 
in the slow lane, when there was no other traffic in the other two lanes....

....ah yes, well, that would be because of me then, I suppose.  As I took the 
off-ramp I just pulled over and stopped, and the CHP car was right there 
behind me.

Hmm.  I didn't feel like I was doing anything particularly rambunctious, 
particularly under the circumstances of a wide-open road with perfect weather 
etc.?  Normally I'd be going a lot faster.

I shut the motor down and waited for the cop to appear, but he went to the 
passenger side and of course the window was up.  So I had to turn the key on to 
lower the window.  Expecting to see a dude, instead I was confronted with an 
ultra-butch lesbian CHP officer with the biggest grin you ever saw, who said, 
"HI!  What kind of CAR is this?"

Hmm.  This isn't sounding so bad....

"Oh, I'm not going to give you a ticket or anything.  Although I did clock 
you at 80 mph back there--actually 82 mph.  But the road was wide open with 
nobody around, so that's fine.  Did you just drive it here from Oklahoma?"

I explained that I was in the Air Force, hence the out-of-state plates, and 
hoped not to get any grief about it.

Then she said, "Tell me about this car?"

I love it when that happens. :>)

So what followed was a ten-minute dissertation on Pantera history, as well as 
my own history with the car.  She told me that even though she wasn't going 
to write a ticket, she had to run my license and registration just because that 
was standard procedure whenever they did a stop.  

Since the carpets are going in next week, I've pulled all the interior out 
including the passenger seat.  I leaned over to open the glovebox, and just as I 
did so, I remembered that because of the need to access the area behind the 
dash to hook up the A/C and heater hoses in the next few weeks, I hadn't 
bothered attaching the hinges of the glovebox lid, and the glovebox was only secured 
by the latch that I had just unsecured.  So with that, the lid came off in my 
hand, and a whole bunch of fuses and a flashlight and a bunch of other stuff 
cascaded onto the bare floors and bounced around....

...and no registration.  Insurance yes, but where did my registration 
paperwork go?

"Oh, that's okay, that's good enough..." and off she went.

A few minutes later, with a friendly beep of the Fiamm air horns, I was on my 
way again....:>)

Mike<BR><BR><BR>**************************************<BR> AOL now offers 
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