Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Hello Bumblebee (aka Tweety) OR Jordan's attempt to remain relevant



For the past two years I have been trying to decide how to address the rust spots growing on my car. I decided to paint it might be fun to paint the whole thing, so I started deciding what paint job to do. I thought about a Buckeye Football Helmet design but decided that would be too much work. So, I thought I would paint it like the Transformers Autobot Bumblebee.

Thanks to a friend who owns a paint store, I got a gallon of Safety Yellow industrial acrylic paint (the stuff used to paint factory floors and parking lot pillars) and some black spray paint. David and I painted the whole thing yellow with rollers and a brush in about four hours total. Crystal and I painted the black lines on in about 30 minutes with spray paint.

One of my favorite small touches is that I painted the screws on the license plates yellow, too.

The yellow painting all happened while Crystal was in Fresno this summer, so she was surprised to see it when she got home. The safety yellow works as advertised, because, as Crystal put it, "the car glows in the dark!"


I have enjoyed driving it around and hope to get a lot more years and miles out of it (and less rust!)


On a funny side note, I was showing off my "new" car to some of the Boy Scouts I work with and one of the 15-year-olds said my plan to drive a car painted like Bumblebee would make me look like a dork. Crystal probably agrees, but I hope most people out there don't! Ha ha.

As noted in the post title, my car is now also called "Tweety," in honor of David and Megan's late neighbor Lee Dean. Lee lived next door to them and was always sitting on the porch willing to share a laugh and a good story. He and I also rode the same bus a few times while I was going school and he was headed to work. The last time I saw Lee before his heart attack was when I pulled up to David's house in the car before I put the stripes on it. Lee looked at it, laughed and said, "You're driving a Tweety Bird car!" A couple days later I was visiting him in the intensive care unit while he was in a coma from which he never recovered. During that last visit in the hospital, I told him I would call the car Tweety in his honor; I'm sure he would have gotten a kick out of that.

3 comments:

Ali said...

I was sure that first picture had to be a google image, but NO -it really IS your car!! That rocks. I love the story behind the name too :) You guys are great! (and no, you won't look like a dork...your chances of getting pulled over might go up 100%, but then again, your chances of getting rammed into cause they didn't see you will go down 100% too :) I'd chance with the first rather than the last!

PML said...

Well your first picture is kind of tricky, but now I guess I can fully believe that is your car. I bet you will never lose it in a parking lot and pretty soon way more people will know who you are!

Tanner Muhlestein said...

Hey Jordan. This is Tanner. You really should invest in a pare of nike's. They are a very addition to anybody wardrobe. If you by chance happen to purchase some. Please notify me immediately.

-Thanks
Tanner Muhlestein