Hey everyone.

I am a regular on the 200 forum here. I won't tell you exactly who I am, but I'll give you a hint, I have a 1980 245 with 424K miles.

Anyway, I've gotten a couple of emails from some of my friends on the Brickboard that asked how the tow of the '80 244 went. Up until now, I didn't post because I think she (the person the car was towed from) has been checking the Brickboard to see if I ever "brag" about my retrival. Well, I figured if I don't post with my usual screen name, she will never look at the thread (and even if she does, she won't see my screen name anywhere.)

Anyway, it was quite an adventure.

I got a buddy of mine to come along with me. From Portland to Springfield (where the car was) is about 120-130 miles, so it's about a couple of hours one way. The mechanic (who was the actual owner of the car) had a tow truck he let us use for the task. I got a quick lesson on how to hook up the car by practicing on an engine-less '75 245 that was in the yard.

Anyhow, my friend and I left Portland around 10:00 PM or so. The idea was that we would sneak down there while everyone would be (hopefully) sleeping, hook the car up to the truck with out making enough noise to wake anybody, and then get the hell outta there!

We got to Springfield at about 12:30, maybe 12:45 AM. Once we got there, it took us about 10 minutes to find the house where the car was parked. Unfortunately for us, we could tell that no body was asleep inside of that house. In fact, as we were driving by, we could see someone walk from the garage into the house (looked like he had a 6-pack of beer or something).

There would have been no way we could have hooked up the car with out someone in the house hearing it, but we weren't about to give up after that long of a ride though.

I had an extra set of keys for the dead car from the mechanic, so I was able to unlock the car, get inside, and unlock the steering wheel. We were really lucky because the car was parked on the street, and the street was (enough of) a hill to get the car rolling away.

After silently steering the rolling car for about a block and a half down the street away from the house, I parked it as best I could to get it hooked up to the tow truck (I kind of had the back end stick out a bit). This was no simple task, since I didn't have the power steering assistance from the car.

We got the truck down to where the car was, and started to hook the sucker up. It was a lot harder to hook up then the practice car, probably because it was so dark. By this time, it was about 1:30 AM.

Finally, at about 1:45, we had the car secure and ready to go. After making a final check of everything, we hopped into the truck, and we were on our way back to Portland.

Driving on I-205 is really odd that late at night. We encountered very few cars, and I'd be willing to bet that 2 out of every 3 cars we saw were being driven by a drunk person (strange weaving and sudden braking). We kept our distance.

We stopped a couple of times to check on the car. No problems.

I ended up doing all but the last 30 minutes of driving because the truck was a standard transmission, and my friend doesn't know how to drive a stick shift really well. (He's gotten a bit of practice on my '80 245 with an M-46, but not enough for as long of a trip as this was.)

We finally got back to Portland around 4:00 AM. I was dead tired. I got out of the truck to unlock the gate to the mechanic's yard (I had the combination written down). Simple as could be. We got the car in the yard, unhooked it, parked the truck, and went home.

It was quite I night I must say.

Boy, you should have heard the phone call I got woken up to in the morning from that girl. She was cussing and screaming. "Somebody stole my car!!! I can't believe this!!!"

"Well, why don't you get that guy you screwed around with go get you one like I did," I told her before I hung up the phone. I was half asleep after all. She called back but I didn't answer. She left a message, but I erased it before I ever listened to it.

Funny thing is now that she doesn't have a car of her own, I keep getting emails from her where she "apologizes and wants to try to work things out." Then she'll ask if I could give her a ride back to Portland. Unbelievable.

Boy, she did a number to that clutch alright. You'd think a person would learn how to drive it properly within a few days of practice... She had that thing for about a month and completely destroyed it.

At this point, she knows the mechanic sent someone, but she doesn't know it was me.

Oh well, I’ve learned some valuable life lessons from this whole mess, that you can be sure. The main one: Don’t take females around my age (18) serious.