PennSilverTaco's "Perfect 5-Lug Regular Cab" Build, Aspergers, and General BS MegaThread!

What vehicles win?

 

Also, the whole establishing a relationship with the local cops thing comes into play here...

Everyone knows what mischief night is; I used to never put Halloween decorations out at all until Halloween night because so was afraid of vandals...

 

From July 2000 to July 2002, my dad was station at NAS Whidbey Island and we lived in Oak Harbor. On Halloween night in 2001, which was the second to last year I went trick-or-treating, my dad and I came back home and found one of my pumpkins (thankfully not the Jack-O-Lantern that I'd carved myself) smashed in the street in front of our house...

Oak Harbor was probably the smallest community I'd ever lived in, people knew each other, and unfortunately kids who bullied me knew where I lived; Nobody else's pumpkins on that street were smashed, so I have no doubt that this was not a random attack...

I was a lot more upset than I should have been, but I was an autistic 12-year old and that was my property; My mom took me to the store and bought me another pumpkin the next day, which ended up being part of our Thanksgiving decor, but the pumpkin wasn't the problem...

As I stated, the pumpkin was easily replaced; What got me so enraged was that someone would come onto my property, take something of mine from my front porch, and destroy it, all because they didn't like me...

Back in 1996 when we were living in California, my brand new bike and an old scooter my cousin gave me were stolen out of my front yard and trashed; What makes that particularly enraging was that it was Navy housing and the security station was right across the street from our house...

This is probably why I'm so protective of a 12-year old, 140K mile Tacoma!

 

How did that go?

 

I never enter in the local shows with the intention of winning anything; For me it's just about having a good time...

 

Anyway, I was literally crying over the bike in 1996 and the pumpkin in 2001; The bike and scooter only had the air let out of their tires, and the bike had a couple small parts missing that didn't affect my ability to ride it, but that's besides the point...

I let a neighborhood girl who I had a crush on borrow my scooter while my parents and I went to dinner, and my parents saw no harm in this; We're living in a...I guess you could call it a "sixplex...?" There six units in the building; Four 2-story units in the middle and a 1-story unit on each end...

We lived in one of the 2-story units and there was an alcove out front where the garbage cans were kept; All of my vehicles, including two bikes, the scooter, a Power Wheels Jeep, and a red wagon, were kept in this alcove and secured with a chain and padlock...

I told this girl to simply put the scooter back and secure the padlock when she was done, and while she obviously forgot to lock the scooter up I don't think she had anything to do with the theft; When we came back from dinner my scooter and brand new bike were gone, and being an autistic 7-year old, I promptly had a meltdown...

 

I never spent any money...?

 

This was the scooter I used to have, though mine was a light blue that faded into white...

 

Yes, it was originally a girls' scooter, circa late 1980s; My older cousin had turned 16 in July 1996 and just gotten her driver's license, and this thing had been sitting probably since 1991-1992, but all it needed was new tires. I loved the thing, so my aunt and uncle decided to just let me keep it. My mom and aunt brought it to a local bike shop and got new tires for it, their treat; I can still remember excitedly waiting for them to bring it back...

I was given the choice of either white tires like the ones that were already on it, or black tires; In the interest of making it look masculine, I obviously chose the black tires. They had off-white sidewalls, but they still looked good; Instant conversion from girls' scooter to boys' scooter...

This was a few years before Razor kick scooters came out (my parents bought me one of those in 2000 to replace this scooter), and none of the kids in the base housing gave a shit that it was a formerly a "girls' scooter"...

Every kid had a bicycle, but I was the only kid with a scooter that had bike tires, and whenever I brought that thing out the kids were lining up to take turns riding on it. The scooter was called a Rad Scoot, and the picture above is what came up when I did a search on "Rad Scoot"; I believe my scooter had different handlebars, but that is pretty much the same one I had; The site I got it from says the one in the picture is from 1987. My two cousins from California were born in 1980 and 1983 respectively, so 1987 sounds about right!

I remember that a girl who I wasn't particularly good friends with took a nasty spill on my scooter, and I forget whether this was before or after the bike and scooter were stolen, but she was one of my top suspects; I say again that I got the bike and scooter back minutes after discovering them stolen, and the damage to the bike was incredibly minor. Still doesn't make it any less aggravating though!

 

We lived in California from probably June or July of 1996 until June or July of 1998; I know it was from 1996 to 1998 and we moved in the summer, but I forget exact months...

If I remember correctly, the scooter actually went with us to Virginia Beach, though I rarely used it from 1998 onward and I believe we sold it at a garage sale in 2000; I definitely did not have it when we moved to Oak Harbor in 2000, which is part of the reason my parents bought me the Razor scooter...

 

Not long after we moved to Mountain View, California I found the scooter and a bike in my aunt and uncle's backyard in Monterey, California. I had a new bike by then (the one that got stolen), but someone proposed the idea of fixing the bike I'd found so I'd have something to ride when we drove to Monterey and we wouldn't have to bring my bike; Yes, it was a girls' bike in very girly colors (light blue, pink, and yellow), but I was obsessed with the thing and my uncle said he would paint it any color I wanted. My favorite color was green, so he painted it green; My mom and my aunt took it to the bike shop alongside the scooter if I remember correctly and got new tires for it, and that was my bike for the next two when we visited my aunt and uncle. I believe it got sold at a garage sale or donated to charity after we moved...

 

This is pretty much the scooter I used to have, with the exception of the color scheme...

 

I especially remember the "RAD SCOOT" logo on the the footboard that at the time I thought was written in sharpie marker...

 

I do not think mine had the BMX pegs...

 

https://bmxmuseum.com/bikes/se_racing/2076

 

Also, this is the same uncle at the same house who let me drive his '71 VW Bus during a visit out there four years ago!

 

Obviously I'm not paying for anything but a water pump and new shock absorbers (My choice), but I've heard people say that Toyota pays $10K, $14K, and even over $17K ( roughly the MSRP of my truck when it was new, I might add) when all is said and done; I'm guessing that if a truck in Hawaii needs a new frame, it would cost more than a truck in the lower 48 states due to the costs of shipping it to Hawaii...

Seriously, how much is Toyota paying per truck to replace frames?

 

I am also assuming that getting a frame to a dealer in Alaska (especially somewhere well into the state like Fairbanks) would also cost more than anywhere in the Continental US. I've also seen a picture of a 2nd Gen Tacoma in Utqiagvik (Formerly and more commonly known as Barrow). There are no car dealers there whatsoever, and I am still not entirely sure how they get vehicles up there or deal with warranty repairs on those vehicles when something goes wrong. If a 2nd Gen owner in Utqiagvik finds a hole in their frame, does the truck get flown South to Fairbanks or Anchorage for a dealer there to do the inspection and ultimately replace the frame?

 

The aforementioned photo of a 2nd Gen Tacoma in Utqiagvik (Barrow) that I saw online some time ago; According to the author/photographer of the article, it was taken in 2015, and this is definitely a 2005-2010 model so the frame replacement period is likely to be LONG EXPIRED