Cars

We were talking a few days ago about our first cars and the best and worst car we ever owned… some of us had old Studebakers, and beat up Chevys and Fords, but no one had a “foreign” car when they were growing up. It would be interesting to hear the same conversation from our kids… and grandkids.
Anyhow, I got to thinking about the most unusual “car” that I ever owned. I didn’t own it for long, and legally, I probably never really owned it. Here’s the story….

More than forty years ago I was working in Jakarta (Indonesia.) I was there for several months and traffic was bad, even back then. I stayed at a downtown hotel, but it was maybe a little more than a couple of miles from the American Embassy where I was working. Every morning I’d call a cab to get to work and every morning I wound up waiting and waiting for one to arrive. When they did arrive, they often had to stop to get gas, or the cab broke down on the way to the embassy. All in all it just became a nightmare to get to work every morning.

Jakarta, like a lot of Asian cities, had tons of Peticabs, or as they were called in Jakarta at the time, Cyclos. They were basically a seat with a bicycle attached to the back — there were a lot of them in Vietnam, but most all in Jakarta were motorized. It was cheaper to take a cyclo than a taxi, but the drivers were — to say the least, reckless — and the cyclos were very noisy and all of them spewed black smoke, so sitting in the seat you were subject to all the noise and fumes, plus whatever the weather was at the time.

So after experiencing the cab issue for a couple of weeks, I got fed up one morning and approached a cyclo driver outside the hotel. To make a long story short, I bought his cyclo. I paid him two hundred U.S. dollars and away I went. When I got to work, the guard at the embassy looked at me funny, but waved me in because he knew me. I drove the cyclo everywhere I went while I was there — to work and when I went out to eat. A little kid watched it for me when it was at the hotel and there was always someone to watch it at the various restaurants… never an issue with theft.

One evening the Ambassador had a party at his house we were invited. I gave my co-worker from the Philippines, Conrad, a ride to the party in my cyclo. When we arrived, the guard at the gate was totally confused… it looked like we might be invited guests, but apparently no Americans had ever arrived at the Ambassadors residence driving a cyclo. He started questioning us, and I guess we caused such a commotion, that the Ambassador came out, kind of rolled his eyes, and motioned us on in.

When we left Jakarta, I sold the cyclo back to the guy I bought it from — of course he no longer had the two hundred dollars, so I sold it to him for a few Indonesian rupiahs. It was easily worth the $200 not to have to worry about transportation during my stay.
So that’s the most unusual vehicle I ever owned, or at least I like to think I “owned” it — I never had a title or any paperwork that said it was mine….
— 30 —