DeLorean Comes Out To Play

Inside my brain a rambunctious child constantly knocks on my brain's squishy "play" door. It happens in the morning, the afternoon and very, very late at night. When I ignore my inner child, he fires a shot of adrenaline through my veins. Sometimes this happens at 1:17 a.m.

Sometimes I hate him.

But, when I'm not trying sleep, I really like the little guy. He always has good ideas that involve bananas, mountain bikes, video games, or cars. For the past few weeks he's been wanting to play with the latter. In order to appease him, I pulled the DeLorean out of storage on the weekend.

First came the tire check. The driver's front dropped to 19 psi, which, combined with the sportiness of no power steering, creates issues my puny stick-arms can’t deal with.

Next came the gasoline installation. As indicated by the owner’s manual, only 91 octane will suffice, which is odd considering the low 8.8:1 compression ratio. Ten dollars later I had a sixteenth of a tank, and enough to get her running.

Once the battery was charged I cranked her over and listened to the beautiful sound of backfiring echoing in the garage. I watched for 10 minutes while the dual exhaust belched out unhealthy amounts of black, probably carcinogenic-but maybe-not-am-I-really-going-to-take-the-chance smoke.

When it cleared Suz and I jumped in and took her for a spin up to my parents for dinner. It was the first time this year that I truly felt summer was here, and it was time to play.