Good advice

Last week PokerNews published a list of tips for surviving the WSOP. The second one says:

9. Don’t Leave Anything in Your Car You Wouldn’t Leave in an Oven

I’ve seen it all — melted iPods, blue ink from a ballpoint pen exploded over tan
upholstery, styrofoam cups melted into center consoles. The temperature inside a
locked car in the Rio Convention Center parking lot on a June afternoon can
easily reach 140-150 degrees, so be conscious of what you decide to leave inside
of it. Never leave things like MP3 players, high-end headphones, batteries,
medications, perishable food, chocolate, or energy bars inside your car. Also
consider investing in one of those tacky shiny things that cover the front
windshield. It still won’t be cool in there when you open the door at the end of
the day, but it’s a marked improvement.

This brought back a horrible memory for me, which I might as well recount here. I've told it before, in another venue.

As you know, I lived in Minnesota before moving here. As you may not know, I was a frequent contributor to one of the newspapers there. The St. Paul Pioneer Press has a daily feature, "Bulletin Board" (highly recommended web site visit there), which consists of stories and observations from readers' lives. I used to submit stuff there all the time. In fact, I did it for about 15 years. My stories there were largely the forerunner of this blog; without having that vast experience of telling stories from my life, and discovering that a decent number of people seemed to like reading them, I doubt I would have developed the confidence to think I had anything worth saying in my own blog.

Before I started the blog, I was still sending stories back to Bulletin Board as I began my Vegas adventure. Here's one as it was published on August 31, 2006. Thanks to the BB editor for retrieving and sending it to me.

From Rake of Las Vegas: "I don't think Bulletin Board has ever had a category about messes people have had to clean up. It seems like a natural. [Bulletin Board says: It is!] I hereby suggest the title 'Another nice mess,' in honor of Laurel and Hardy. (Mr. Hardy is commonly, but erroneously, quoted as saying 'Here's another fine mess you've gotten me into' -- but he never said that. The correct quotation uses the word 'nice' rather than 'fine.' See http://tinyurl.com/4vsf7.) [Bulletin Board says: Your wish is our command!] Here's my story:

"Yesterday I did a little grocery shopping. Among other things, I bought two 12-packs of Coca-Cola. When I got home, my hands were too full to carry both of them inside, so I just left one in the passenger seat of my car, figuring that I would bring it in next time I came home from somewhere, rather than make a second trip out to the car to retrieve it. This small decision, naturally, quickly faded from my consciousness.

"Late this afternoon, I went out to my car. Here is a list of the thoughts I had, in order, as I approached it:

"1. What are all those brown spots on my car? Must be something associated with the construction. (My parking lot separates my apartment building from a construction site.) I'm going to have to complain to somebody about this.

"2. Wait a second. The car next to mine is the same one that was here when I parked last night, and it doesn't have these spots on it.

"3. (Upon looking more closely.) Why are the spots only on the window and not the paint?

"4. Oh, they're on the inside.

"5. Why is there a can of Coke wedged upside down between the driver's seat and the door?

"6. Why is there a big hole in that Coke can?

"7. Why are the other Coke cans strewn over the passenger seat?

"At this point, my feeble brain puts the puzzle pieces together and deduces what has happened: The black car interior, left in direct sunlight, got so hot that one or more cans exploded. The train of ensuing thoughts is not appropriate for publication in a family newspaper.

"It's hard to describe the mess without photographs, but I'll try. Nine of the 12 cans had ruptured. Of those, about four still had roughly half the contents inside. That means that something like 80 ounces of Coke was distributed throughout the car interior. The majority of it, apparently, just soaked directly into the cloth seat on the passenger side.

"But some of the cans apparently failed explosively, as evidenced by the one that had wedged itself between the driver's seat and door, and the spray across the back
window.

"There is dried, sticky Coke residue everywhere. It's on the windshield, the mirror, the windows, the door panels, the dashboard, the steering wheel, the shifter, the floor, the headliner, the map pockets, the vents. Except for a few items made of washable hard plastic (e.g., my sunglasses case), everything in there that isn't part of the car is ruined: maps and map books, random papers and magazines, etc.

"The passenger seat is so soaked with cola that it seeps up in pools when you press on it. And the car reeks of Coke. No, not Coke, exactly -- cooked Coke.

"It may be the ugliest, stickiest mess I've ever had to deal with. Once, I accidentally left a 24-pack of Coke in the trunk of this same car during a Minnesota winter. Several of the cans broke open when the liquid froze. That was far less of a mess than this, because by the time the cans ruptured, much of the contents had already frozen. Since I discovered the problem before the next thaw, it was mostly a matter of picking up chunks of Coke-ice. This is a thousand times worse.

"Tomorrow I'll take it to an auto detailing shop and hope they don't laugh too hard at me. No matter how much they clean, though, I think I'm stuck with that awful smell for as long as I keep the car. (I'm reminded of the episode of 'Seinfeld,' in which Jerry's car got so saturated with the body odor of a valet that he couldn't sell it, couldn't even get a thief to steal it.)

"Life lessons learned:

"First, never leave anything pressurized inside the passenger compartment of a car in the summer desert heat.

"Second, despite advertising claims to the contrary, not everything goes better with Coke."

If you ever take a ride in my car, ask me to point out the few spots of Coke still left scattered around in a few places that the detailers missed. I've left them there as a reminder to myself--though the memory is painful enough that I probably don't really need any tangible evidence to keep me from making the same mistake again.

Updates: I subsequently graduated to covered parking at my apartment building (there was a waiting list, because the place has fewer covered parking spots than living units). And the smell did eventually go away.

Today's little-known historical fact: Salvador Dali's famous painting is not, in fact, a work of abstract art. In truth, he left some watches in his car when visiting Las Vegas one summer, and what you see above was the result.