You’ve heard me talk of my affinity for my car (and how tight I am with money ).
Well, after 10 years of driving a 1995 car, I’ve made the decision that it’s time to part ways.
Let me pause to gather myself, please.
When I was looking through the paperwork tonight (yes, I’m a pack-rat too – another quality passed down from my maternal grandfather, JD Winburn), I noticed that on April 10, 1998 I bought the three-year old car with 27,195 miles.
Almost 10 years later, I’m letting her go with 195,000+ miles showing (note: the speedometer and odometer broke February 2007 so I figure I’m well over 220,000 actual miles).
Now before you think I’ve gone off the deep end and will now have a whopping car payment, I’m actually buying a car that’s ALREADY SIX YEARS OLD (2002) with over 70,000 miles.
It wasn’t so much the fact that I didn’t know how fast I was traveling or how far I was traveling (for the past year)….or the sporadic flashing lights that would come on from time to time, it was the slipping transmission that finally got to me. Having to wait a minute or two before getting in gear isn’t that big a deal and I tried to hang in there the past six or eight months. Over the past few months though, the wait-time had grown to 10 minutes! When Sarah told me one morning last week (while we were sitting waiting for the car to get in gear, hazard lights flashing, and having to wave the neighbors around us in the street) “It’s time to get a new car. This is embarassing. You’ve had this car since I was one”, that’s when I knew it was time.
Karen (my wife) also had previously told me she had enough when she waited 10 minutes one night downtown for the car to “get in gear.”
I want to thank Mike Andrews at Bob Andrews Motors for his help through the years as he nursed every little ding and crack and tried to keep her going.
I’ll introduce him to my “new” car soon and we’ll see if she can make it to 2018!
