aka Burnhardt, the Burncycle. 1986 Ford Tempo GL (for Goddam Luxury) sun-faded red, 2.3L 4-cyl. 5-speed manual. Not to be confused with everyone's favorite Kenyan.

Purchased in June 1997 from Frankie's grandpa's car lot in Globe, Arizona with an astonishingly low 52,000 miles. I put four new tires on it and drove that August to Dallas to pick up Goff on the way to Grinnell. Made a total of 10 one-way trips between AZ and IA (1600 miles each), spontaneous trips to Chicago, Twin Cities, St. Louis, New York, Kansas City, Omaha, Denver (once with NO brakes the whole way, just downshifting and hand braking). Currently, it has about 110,000 miles.

One December, Evan and I totally froze driving from Dallas to Tucson. We couldn't figure out why the hell the heater wasn't working. Turns out it was because the climate control panel was levered to "Max A/C" which closed the heater coil entirely out of the air circuit. It was really damn cold. The greatest tragedy was that the A/C basically never worked, so it didn't make a shitbit of sense that the lever would be on Max A/C anyway.

Never needed to have it towed. Granted, it was out of commission a few times during our time together, but most of the time it was because I had tried to fix something and broken it worse. Swapped the alternator on it 3 times. The first time just for the hell of it, the second two times because I reversed the polarities trying to jump start it after leaving the lights on. I almost always worked on it myself and I should be clear in noting that I know very little about working on cars.

Burnie was most noted for his performance customizations.

The retro stripey visor covers served to decrease drag while providing low-rpm vanity mirror torque. The rubber cactus antenna character (boosted the antenna's range for pulling in those late night Art Bell broadcasts) together with the dingleballs gave the correct impression to Missouri Highway Patrol K9 units that I was a menace to society's virtues.

Other customizations included the multicolor string lights pinned to the headliner as a substitute for the interior dome, the musical horn given by Graver and installed as we tailgated a Pioneer football game and the five-foot fiberglass CB antenna mounted on the trunk. I never did get those flame decals I was always talking about.

Burnie still sits in my parents' driveway. Apparently my sister's boyfriend has decided to resurrect it from its mothballed state for his own personal use. There's no use getting angry about it.

Pictures to come.