Sunday, February 14, 2010

Car Love



At 6:05pm this evening I watched as my car drove away, now the possession of someone else. I am actually feeling quite emotional about this. I guess that symbolically, becoming car-less means I really am putting my life in a backpack and going travelling, a fact which I don't think has yet sunk in. It is, as my sister Rachael said this evening, the end of an era.

I bought my Corona at teachers' college using part of the Teach NZ scholarship money I had 'earned' just by virtue of wanting to become an English teacher. Rachael (who knows more about cars than any person I know) found the car and helped me get a good deal.

Three and half years, and 55,000 kilometres later, I ironically hand it over to a woman who has just returned from the country I am bound for. In that time the Corona has taken a band (and myself) on a South Island tour, journeyed a few 'op shop missions', been to Gisborne and back over a dozen times, and over the Wainuiomata Hill I estimate 273 times*. I think the Corona's greatest achievement was fitting four people, two guitars, half a drum kit, three tents, as well as four people's sleeping gear, food and clothes in one trip back from the Parihaka festival in early 2008.

This was the car that made people think I was a good driver. I never got a ticket in this car, (well, maybe one parking ticket) and never crashed it. It was too old to look theft-worthy and even my mechanics liked it (one of them, Les, reckoned it was the last of the reliable Toyotas).

Right, if I was a man, this much talk about my car would lead you to question the size of one part of my anatomy, so I will just finish with this...

As I sat on the bus home with my wad of cash** and thought of the memories, I felt happy that someone else seemed as happy to buy my car as I felt owning it.



*Yes, I did calculate this.
**As Rachael helpfully advised: "I was going to suggest you don't throw the money in the air and then pretend to swim in it on the bus floor, but I figured you'd know better than to lie on a bus floor." She's a hoot that one.

5 comments:

  1. isn't it funny how some objects become so a part of our lives that it feels like we are letting go of memories or losing a member of your family. Cars almost develop a personality, which is I guess why some people name them

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  2. I've always felt that. They are things in our live that we have to care for and that basically are responsible for our lives. Call me crazy but I always slap the dashboard and thank my car for getting me back safely after a long drive. When I had company cars, we had to change them every three years and I used to say sorry and goodbye to them. (I didn't give them names though - an Aunt and Uncle named their old Bradford van 'Egbert!).
    The Rover I own and drive now was a company car new in 1998. After 3 years I had to change (to a VW Passat). I missed that car (the Rover 620ti) so when, 2 years later we saw it for sale in a sales yard (owned by the car lease company) we bought it and have proudly owned it for the last seven years.

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  3. Yes, it wasn't until late that night I realised I had said goodbye to my car (and written this post) on Valentines Day. Thanks for your comments and sympathy.

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  4. "Call me crazy but..."
    No problem, you're crazy.

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  5. I always tap the dashboard too, sometimes I do it when I am going up a big hill with a large load and I talk to it "come on, you can do it" I too have never named my cars because to me my cars have always been boy/girls

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