Promenade! (aka My Daughter’s Senior Prom)
Today’s the big day–my daughter’s Senior Prom. All the work of the last year comes down to today. No big deal, no pressure.
Yesterday, I did a lot of cleanup on the car. I put on pieces of trim and other decorative stuff. I wiped down all the surfaces with Armor-All wipes. I washed Pearline to get the surface dust/dirt off everything. I sprayed Macquire’s tire cleaner on the tires and put on the wheel rims. I put on the badges and logos.
Today is to put in the carpet and seats. I started about 8 AM on a somewhat chilly and overcast morning. I laid out the lining and the carpet so I knew what went where. Then, I started the assembly process. I dry-fit in all the carpets and found them to be more-or-less what was wanted. Then, I took a can of 3M #90 spray adhesive and started with the transmission tunnel. Once I had the heat shielding in, I started on the carpet.
Before putting the carpets in permanently, I ran power lines for the amplifier and speaker cables, so when I finally go to put in the sound system, that I’ll already have the wires under the carpets.
About noon, I had the carpets in that would go under the seats. It’s about this time that my friend Todd showed up. Todd is a rancher and carries a lot of tools in his truck. He also has a good eye for mechanic stuff. Between the two of us (and a couple cold beers), we managed to get the seats installed correctly through the carpets and into original bolt holes. I’m not going to lie, without his assistance, my daughter would not have driven the car to prom. I do know that I never want to remove the seat bolts again, but I’m sure I’ll have to, some day.
We finished about 3 PM (3 hours prior to promenade). We drove the car around town for about 30 minutes and then I started on the most important step–teaching my daughter to drive a manual transmission. We went to a deserted street on the edge of town and spent about 30 minutes going through the basics enough that she could go through the promenade line. She is a quick study and had it down. She even managed to take off going from a stop sign on a hill.
We then took the requisite photos of her in her prom dress with the car. She posts stuff about herself on her social channels, but I’m not going to here.
As you can see from the last photo of the gallery below, she drove the car the half mile to the drop-off point on her own. I might’ve shed a couple of tears as she got out of the driver’s seat and onto the red carpet.
