Nightglow Window

In Praise Of The Saab

About 11 years ago, SOL Snowboarding was viewed as TransWorld SNOWboarding Business' main competition. I remember SOL got a sneak tour of the new Oakley world headquarters and we all were pretty pissed about it. It was a decent scoop back when things like that seemed to matter. I, for one, wasn't going to be beat like that -- especially since SOL's editor had posted a snarky comment when I was hired.

So I went all out with my coverage of the Oakley shareholder meeting. Sharon H., our copy chief, wrote "genius" on the cover sheet of the story as it routed. It was one of my best professional compliments. Truth be told, I liked the story too. But it was risky and pretty "out there."

So I was nervous, two months later, when I got a series of phone messages from Colin B., the president of Oakley, saying he wanted to talk to me about the story. Now, you can't make everyone happy all the time -- especially as a journalist. But it's never fun to defend something you've written to an angry executive. Taking a deep breath, I called him back.

He not only liked my story, he loved it. He offered me a full-time job that I (perhaps foolishly) declined. Nonplussed, he asked me to write the company's catalog and profile its athletes for its Web site. I mumbled something approximating "Yeah maybe" and hung up feeling extremely relieved.

Five months later the check for the catalog arrived. It's still the largest (by a country mile) freelance payment I've ever received. I was driving a beat up Toyota Corolla FX16 with 110,000 miles on it. So I took that Oakley check and bought a car, a new 1998 Saab 900S.

Today, ten years and 183,532 miles later, I finally said goodbye to that "Oakley" car.

As I was cleaning it out, I found myself growing sentimental. Weird. After all, for the last two years it's been a smelly bucket of bolts that leaked when it rained and never felt 100-percent healthy. But it never stranded me either, and it certainly was the best, most reliable car I had ever owned. So perhaps I had a right to be fond of it. I can only hope the other Swedish car maker proves to be as reliable.