---

The Goddess Speaks

Nadine Kam

Buff your way to fitness
with cardio car care

---

Let others fret about their workout resolutions, counting crunches, calculating calories and tabulating the results, seeking out fat-melting bars and machines devoted to specific fat zones such as spongy abs, wobbly gluts and second or third wattles.

I don't have to sweat such details because I've found the perfect apparatus for body sculpting: a new car, or in my case, a new used car. Buff and get buffed is my new mantra.

Where there's a will, there doesn't have to be special equipment or fad diets. Can't afford weights? Pick up a couple of 16-ounce cans of soup. When driving to the grocery or to the mall, park on the far end of garages, rather than pulling up to the space directly in front of your destination.

WHENEVER I GET a car, a key selling point is its size. It can't be so big that I can't wash and wax it myself. I know, I know. People always ask why I don't just send the cars through the car wash. In one of life's cruel jokes, I was sensitized by a car freak of an ex-beau to the hazards of dust specks. As much as I mocked his phobias when we were together, they became embedded in my consciousness. I know too well that a minute speck of dust rubbed the wrong way can result in a feathery hairline scratch. No matter how fine, a scratch is a scratch, and my new used car is covered in them due to former twice-a-month dates with a professional detailer, as set up by the former owner. I feel like I have X-ray vision for spotting all the whorl patterns invisible to others who marvel that the 5-year-old car looks as if it just left the showroom.

There'll be none of that pro treatment for me. No one can tend to my car better than I can, although no one would have guessed that from looking at my former car, a '90 Mazda Miata convertible that had a chipped paint job, a broken rear fender, a missing rear window and a 3-year-old coating of dirt and road grime. It got to a point that, parked near a bunch of derelict cars on Keawe Street, it looked abandoned.

I started out with such great intentions, faithfully bringing out the chamois every weekend. I waxed it every other week. But eventually, I started noticing that the former slick, smooth, shiny surface was turning bumpy from bits of corrosive material adrift in the air. No matter how hard I tried to keep them at bay, the spots were multiplying. Eventually, I lost interest in maintaining a surface that could no longer be perfect.

Eventually, the rear window dried and crumbled. Washings continued to diminish to prevent water from getting in the car. Toward the end, paint came off in sheets any time water ran over my car, so the washings halted completely. As a final indignity, a bag of grapes went astray after a grocery trip. For days I noticed a sour smell in the car but attributed it to my parrot, who ate grapes and often traveled with me. I found the car-made wine behind my seat after a week.

I VOW TO LET none of this happen again. Talk about multitasking -- while I'm trying to keep that tomato red paint job sparkling, I'm also getting a great workout. That means breathing right while stretching to reach over the hood and trunk with a soft cloth, then switching to deep knee bends to clean the side panels and tire rims. I've renewed my appreciation for the triceps- and biceps-building "wax-on, wax-off" regimen as prescribed by Pat Morita in "The Karate Kid."

It seems to be working. I can now open those hard-to-twist lids of food jars without calling for backup. And paddling an outrigger canoe? Effortless. I felt a day's, rather than a week's, worth of pain.

So don't worry if your gym membership lapsed. You've got a 3,000-pound fitness machine just waiting in your garage.

---

The Goddess Speaks is a Tuesday feature by and
about women. If you have something to say, write
"The Goddess Speaks," 7 Waterfront Plaza, Suite 210, Honolulu 96813;
or e-mail features@starbulletin.com.

---