Let's Go For a Ride!
For those that don't know me, I drive a 2007 blue Toyota Corolla with 299,999+ miles on it. The reason I put the (+) at the end is because the odometer stopped registering miles over two years ago.
For those that do know me continue to ask, “Al, why don’t you get a new car?”
Well, there are several reasons.
For one, I haven’t had a car payment in over ten years. For another, my understanding that currently decent used cars are hard to find, and very expensive.
But the real reason I won’t get rid of it is because the damn thing just won’t die.
And I’m not about to kill it.
Almost two-and-a-half years ago the starter died (the original 2007 starter) the day before the Fourth of July.
I’ve replaced brakes, tires, the muffler a few times and, like the Energizer Bunny, it keeps going, and going, and going.
There is only one thing (well, four things) that I will not replace again.
Those damn hubcaps!
I’ve tried, several times, and each time they fly off. Every time I hit a big pot hole in the road (and where I live there are plenty) I’d lose a hubcap.
The most memorable separation of hub from tire?
Christmas a decade or so ago, on Route 22, I hit a pothole so deep I felt my soul leave my body, and watched my front right tire hubcap race me to the exit of the highway.
The hubcap won.
Here is a game you can play next time on the road, count how many old Toyota Corolla’s have all four hubcaps.
Four out of five mechanics agree, they won’t.
In October of last year, I hit a deer on my way to a friend’s party. Never saw the deer, just the four legs that slide across the front of my car, and then it was gone. Took out left headlight, the fender crinkled like an accordion (could barely open my driver’s side door), and the hood buckled. Afterwards, could still able to drive the car, so headed home.
At that point, I knew the car was gone (or was it?).
Next day, I drove it over to my guy (yes, I have a guy) and asked him if he could get it to run long enough so I had time to buy another car.
When I spoke to him the next day he said, “It’s as good as new.”
Thought he was being facetious but it did look good as new (or as new as an eighteen-year-old car can look).
FYI: My car is still on the road.
Funny thing is, when I bought my car I wasn’t even looking for one. A friend needed a ride to pick up her new car at the dealership. While there I saw a ‘used’ car, with only four-thousand miles (it was a demo).
At the time I drove a Saturn with nearly two-hundred-thousand miles and thought it was time for a new car (how naive of me).
By the time I left the dealership I had a ‘new’ car.
That brings us to today.
I answered a phone call from my brother’s brother-in-law’s wife Lauren.
“Don’t think we’re crazy,” she laughed, “but we just saw a car that looked just like yours being towed.”
I assured her that it was not mine.
Then her husband Jimmy chimed in, “It looked just like your car, it didn’t have any hubcaps.”
I assured them that no old Toyota’s have hubcaps.
“We even turned around,” he continued, “just to make sure that it wasn’t you.”
I thanked them for turning around to check, even though it wasn’t my car.
Why did I thank them?
Because one day, it is going to me.
