| Mar. 21st, 2008 @ 04:36 pm End of an Era |
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Current Music: Ben Folds - Still Fighting It
Yesterday I handed in my car to the insurance folk. This is the final step of the process of turning a damaged car into money. My new car comes soon.
I feel a bit off-center. I had gotten my car just as I was leaving Brisbane for Canberra. I was leaving my undergrad days behind and starting on my PhD. I had to leave my friends and old life behind and start anew in a city I'd only visited once for a day.
I called my car Harold, after the chubby old man from Neighbours. Harold wasn't flashy, but he had a gentle confidence. Harold was my first car. I didn't really have that "This is your first car, son" moment. I just sort of took ownership of it.
Harold and I drove out of Brisbane on the way south in February of 2004. The radio was a little weak, so I spent most of the time talking to myself. We drove along the East Coast, stopping off in Port Macquarie for a night. The next morning we made our way through Newcastle and onto Sydney. This was one of the most memorable times of my life - driving down the motorway at 120 km/hr in thick rain that was barely wiped away before the windscreen was blurry again. Traffic was only metres away in all directions. It was delirious, insane and fun. I stopped off in Sydney for a day or so and then onto Canberra. It was the longest solitary drive I had ever done in my life.
Harold was my car whilst I did my PhD. Every day for a year or more we crossed the NSW/ACT border between Queanbeyan and Canberra to go to work. At one time, Harold's engine was having issues which was basically that a cable to a spark plug was dodgy and so the engine was literally not firing on all pistons. This lead to a few hair-raising attempts at getting onto The Roundabout of Death during peak hour with an engine with close to no accelerative ability.
Later, a friend of ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) el_moofo's ran into my car after a very late night watching the World Cup. This began the decline of my appreciation for Harold. After then it was all expensive repairs, nuisances and general idiosyncracies. Then last year, some jerk ran into my car and drove off. That was the beginning of the end for Harold. It took us ages to get resolved, and the final result was that Harold was an insurance writeoff - it was more expensive to repair him than replace him. So now he's being sold for spare parts. The money is going towards my new car, who is yet to be named as I haven't met him in person.
Yesterday I had to drop Harold off at the auto refinishers where we'd visited a few times after his run-ins with silly cars. I cleaned out the cash tray, gave them my keys and then walked away.
You've gotta make a clean break, but I just had to look back once more. Look back at the car that helped me, infuriated me, but took me so many places and looked after me when I was sad. I looked back and this is what I saw.
Harold The Car, 1988-2008
Goodbye Harold you unlucky, unfashionable bugger. |
tired
