…and I’m still driving it.
With the job at PowerComputing secured, I had to buy a car because the bus was out of the question. This event had happened sooner than I had planned, just like everything else in life. Today was the tenth anniversary of when I handed over the check, showed my proof of insurance and then attempted to drive it off the lot. Attempted? I hadn’t driven a stick-based car since I left North Dakota in 1986. Foolishly, I rationalized to myself that I could get the hang of standard again. As the cliché went, it’s just like riding a bike, you never really forget. After I had killed the engine in the dealer’s lot, twice, the tidal wave of remorse swept over me. Couldn’t go back on this then, especially with it adding $1500 to the price of a VW. The drive to Apple (when it was along 183) wasn’t much better.
My new 1996 Golf GL sat in the parking lot at my apartment complex for the remainder of the week while I finished up my time with Apple, getting there by bus. Thankfully my friend Sonia had the generosity and patience to spend the following Saturday morning tutoring me on when to shift gears as we cruised around Hyde Park. I had an adequate mastery by the time I started my new job after Labor Day. There were still issues with not rolling backwards downhill or parking on slopes and they probably remain if you ask Somara. Now I can’t imagine driving a car without a manual transmission since it becomes a reflexive habit when driving.
Besides relearning how to drive stick, my car went on to be the biggest thing I ever successfully paid off in my life (until I closed on my house). My new job would pay adequately yet it would be a close call from time to time so I heavily considered asking for assistance from my grandparents. After a conversation or two with them, my ex-roommate Paul had the best advice; go ahead and pay for it yourself. It may be rough but if I received any guff from my family, I could tell them to go to hell in any argument the car came up in. Paul was quite wise there since I had to give my mother a ride during my time in North Carolina. She is just like her mother, a back-seat driver and a nuisance of a passenger. I got her to be quiet when I confronted her with “who owns the car?” Thus, the owner of the car will decide how to drive (no idea what her problem was that evening since I tend to follow the speed limit). I even managed to pay my car off two and a half months early to really impress my credit union.
These days it’s great not to have to deal with a car payment, America’s consumerism finds other ways to spend the money. The VW is holding up pretty decently as it turned 100,000 miles earlier. Volkswagen brought the Rabbit back (what the Golf used to be called) for a 2006/7 run. With its poor gas mileage, I probably won’t replace my Golf with a Rabbit. I might go with a diesel Beetle yet I’m really leaning toward a Toyota Yaris or Prius once Somara’s student loans are a more transparent expense in the near future.