And That's All She Rode...

I was brutally awakened from my slumber this morning by the sounds of death. Horrible, awful, wailing noises ending in one loud BOOM! I knew immediately that something was not right. My intuition was confirmed when I then heard Brian from afar say, "OH NOOOO!" I got out of bed and walked down the hall into the living room where I met Brian. "What happened?" I asked. "Did you hear that?!" he responded. "Yeah." - how could I not? "It's dead," was the simple yet profound reply.

After almost 12 years, "old blue" has left us. I bought her right after I graduated from high school. My first car. We've had a good run, with plenty of adventures and misfortunes along the way:

• I took her on a rode trip with three girlfriends up to Washington and then down the coast to San Fransisco. A lot of memories there, but I would never do it again - that is one long and winding road.
• She accompanied me on lots of dates and to many singles dances back in the day.
• I got my first ticket in "old blue" for not coming to a complete stop.
• She's had two face lifts. Yep, I was pretty good at rear-ending other cars in my early driving years. Funny thing, no other cars were ever damaged.
• We took her on our honeymoon to Jackson Hole. She didn't even make it to Logan without overheating. We had to stop in Brigham City and replace the thermostat, which was a pain because it was a Sunday and everything was closed.
• Brian got pulled over for three consecutive years for an expired registration.
  
• Her head gasket blew on Thanksgiving Day while we were driving down Redwood Road, on our way to Grandpa Homer's house. You'd think a bomb went off with how much steam and smoke came out!
• Brian got pulled over and ticketed right in front of our apartment for speeding.
  
• We replaced the transmission.
• She was broken into while Brian was attending a class at SLCC. They left a nice hole under the door handle and made off with Brian's laptop. (We ended up getting the laptop back through a series of crazy and unlikely events, but that's another story!)
  
• The shifter knob broke off, so for a long time you had to shove a screw driver in the shaft to change gears. Brian got tired of that and fixed it with a #8 pool ball and a screw. Classy.
• The infamous "stolen vehicle" incident. Nuff said there.
  

And all this happened in just 123,455 miles. We are actually surprised that she lasted so long. She's been sick for awhile. You know those cars that when you are sitting at a stop light, you can hear them approaching from 20 yards back? That's "old blue". It was embarassing to drive her or to even be a passenger. I wanted to get rid of her a long time ago, but Brian insisted on keeping her until she died. Well, today was that fateful day. And now we have to figure out how to dispose of the body.

The one and only downside to this ordeal is that we haven't had a payment in eight years, and now that is about to change. We've got to do some serious car shopping, so stay tuned for some pics of Brian's new wheels!