Sound Serendipity & The Sister Car

 
I have come to realize that driving a classic car means that automobiling will often be an adventure.  Two examples...


We have had rain.  There has been am existing moisture problem in the car, and I saw evidence of it when I washed it last week.  There were beads of water on the inside of the rear passenger side window, which means I need to work on the door or window seal.  After the rain this week, I expected the floor mats in the rear to be damp -- even wet to the touch.  They weren't.  My theory is that the sun roof may have been partially open and the repair to the instrument cluster finally made it possible to fully close.  There is a pull back cover over the window that you move manually that I was advised to not even try to  move, so I had no real way to know about whether the glass was fully closed or not.

Encouraged by the decrease of interior moisture, I was chagrined that the radio did not seem to be working yesterday morning.  The display was not fully showing and I couldn't get any volume or any stations to tune in.  I figured that the rain had something to do with that.  Driving without any sound was really boring and I was again wondering about my choice -- especially after all the recent repairs.  Well, after a few stops, I got back into the car and the stereo came on!  Not only that, it scanned to one of the stations I liked.  I also noticed that the sound was coming out of multiple speakers -- when before, we only got it in the front.  I don't know if I pushed a bunch of  buttons to get that to happen or what (anyone who knows old Mercedes can attest that the Bosch radio is not at all intuitive to use).  All I know, is I was surrounded by Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and it sounded awesome.  

With the sound on and the engine all warmed up, I didn't want to get out of the car.  I could have just gotten on the highway and driven for a couple of hours.  Chalk it up to another adventure in classic car driving.  Even though I never really know what to expect, I still like driving this car better than any of our newer models. 

As for the sister adventure, we found another TD 300 -- that lives only a couple of miles away!

I dropped TBG off an Barnes and Noble to buy a new tablet. I went to Michaels to return a couple of things.  When I went back to pick him up, he introduced me to Charlie.  He had been running after Charlie's car, thinking it was me coming to pick him up.  When Charlie parked and got out of his car, I was just pulling in.  Tommy caught site of me pulling into the lot the same time Charlie did. 

Charlie's car is one year newer and has only 95K miles on it.  It is in better condition.  But the color is the same! He has the same issues with old door seals, and he knows our mechanic.  He uses someone else who is going to replace his door seals, so we might do that next year.  He showed me how he puts weather stripping in the door when he gets it washed.  Charlie was shocked at how little we paid for our version.  He paid seven times as much.  Granted his is a year newer with 120K less miles, but we did save a substantial amount on  our purchase price.

Turns out that Charlie lives just three or so miles south from us.  So now people can't rely on sighting me if they see an old Benz estate wagon around town.  What a coincidence? That is total serendipity too!