Ravings of a madman

Goodbye, Car

So I sold my car today.

Or, more specifically, found a buyer for it.

I need it for another week or so to get to/from work, but after that… well, we can’t ship it to Colorado. I mean, we could, but it’s really not worth it. I’ve been thinking about selling it for a while now, but there hasn’t been a good excuse, and moving to Colorado? If there ever was a valid excuse, this is it.

I got a good price, and it’s going where I hoped it would - some kid in high school. It’s a great first car - it was my second. It looks nice and sleek, and will impress a lot of his friends, unless they’re driving something really expensive - hell, in terms of looks it’s up there with a LOT of nice cars. Hyundai did a great job with the body lines on the Tiburon.

But it’s… the first real change that’s hit home. I mean, packing up the house, yeah, sure, it’s hard to ignore that, especially when you’re living in the house day in and day out. But in some ways, it’s just another move, and we were going to have to move out of this house anyway. So it’s not like the magnitude of the move has hit home yet. I don’t think it will until it’s all packed into the damn van.

But selling my car? Christ. I’ve had it for 10.5 years. I bought it new - the dealer was so impressed that I knew what I wanted. That I wouldn’t budge, wouldn’t compromise. They had to find it at another dealer and ship it in. And I still didn’t get the color I wanted - there was a nice green that I was hoping for.

I’ve lived in 5 different places in the DC area in the 10.5 years I’ve been here. With roomates and alone, and my one constant companion has been that car. It’s kept me safe, it’s been a lot of fun to drive, it’s annoyed me and cost me more money that it probably should have. But it’s the one real constant I’ve had over these years - the one thing that I’ve always been able to count on.

So yeah, to sell it? Or at least, find a buyer? It really starts to hit home on just how much of an upheaval my life is going through right now. I mean, I know I’m going to miss DC when we leave, but DC was never really somewhere I wanted to live to begin with. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve fallen in love with it, and I WILL miss it when we’re gone, but in some ways, ultimately, it’s just another place I’ll have lived when I look back over my life.

But that car. I knew what I wanted before I even got it. The spring of my senior year of college, a great friend of mine and I went out test driving cars, knowing that eventually I’d have to get a new one. My first car, my mom’s old Dodge Colt (which I loved as well, for different reasons) wasn’t going to last much longer, and so we were starting early on trying to find me a new car. It’s a good thing we did. The Colt didn’t pass VA state emissions, I believe it was, so within a month of moving to DC I needed a new car. Having already test driven a bunch of cars, I was able to walk into a dealer and tell them exactly what I wanted.

(Funnily enough, the exact same thing is going to play out in Colorado when I get there. I already know what my next car is going to be - an Outback 2.5i Limited.)

I bought it new, and paid it off in about 5 years. Somewhere on this journal is an entry where I talk about paying it off - I know, because I found it recently, trying to track down some information about the car’s history.

And ultimately part of me thinks I’m being silly - it’s just a car, after all. And after I had it detailed inside this weekend, it doesn’t even feel like my car - it just feels like a car. The personality is gone. All my stuff is gone. It’s a sterile, sanitized version of the car I loved. But it’s still the same car.

And I do love it. And I probably always will.

Goodbye car, you’ve been great to me, and kept me safe. I hope you treat your new owner just as well.