Goodbye, Gutless.

There once was a boy with a car

He took on roadtrips near and far.

They picked up lots of dates,

Started with Idaho plates,

Now forever parted they are.

Yesterday marked the end of an era. The era of The Gutless. Brandon's baby, his first car, the car he drove in high school has gone on to a better place (than our driveway/garage).

"The Gutless"

1993 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme

78,273 miles & countless smiles

His horrible wife has had a bad attitude about his (other) baby for a while now, since mechanics could never seem to find anything wrong with it, but we couldn't go more than a few weeks without needing a repair. (But I have to thank my in-laws for gifting us the car that treated us so well for so many years - THANK YOU!) But I felt the time had come to say goodbye. We were on the verge of selling it for scrap after a slap in the face from Carmax, but I happened to mention her while hanging out with some friends, and it turns out that someone knew someone in need of a cheap car. With mechanics in the family, they weren't concerned about the repairs, she just needed a new battery and they would sort out the rest. So after a couple of visits to check her out and us listing off her "quirks" we had a buyer. A very shrewd buyer who has a ton of car-buying experience to our none. You can guess who got the better end of the deal. But we ended up with more than the scrapyard would have given us, so we settled...and learned some lessons in haggling for the next time around. As Brandon put it - there's no room to be nice. We'll have to work on that. 

Behind the wheel for the last time.

For months, I nagged him and nudged him to do something about the car that only seemed to be good for making it difficult for me to get in the Mazda, being completely insensitive to the fact that this was his baby. The car he drove in high school. The car he picked me up in to help me move into my EFY dorms a few days after we first met. The car he picked me up in for our first date. The car we roadtripped to Moscow in numerous times. I'm a terrible person. But guess who was the one with tears streaming down their face as we watched her new owner drive her away? Yep. The insensitive nag. Brandon had made his peace with the situation a while ago, knowing that it was going to happen. From their first look to our last was less than a week and I really hadn't anticipated it happening so quickly and I found myself getting emotional about all the fun times we'd had (no funny business - just good, clean fun) with her. 

I'll miss squeezing between the two cars every Sunday morning, and on particularly fat days, meeting Buddy in the driveway so I can get in. 

I'll miss not being able the reach the pedals properly without pillows behind me and getting leg cramps from extending them as far as I could. 

I'll miss the cassette player. 

I'll miss having to get in the passenger side and climb over the bench seat because the driver's door wouldn't open from the outside. 

I'll miss having to slam the trunk shut at exactly the right angle and guiding the power windows up the track. 

I'll miss seeing her in the garage every time I go to throw a diaper out - she kept us company.

I'll miss the "Will She, Won't She?" game we used to play in the heat of summer, incredibly pregnant. (For the record, most of the time she wouldn't, so I hoofed it most of the way to a doctor's appointment.)

I'll miss the purr of her ample engine and hearing Buddy say "she still got some get up 'n' go."

I know she's just a machine, but as I watched her drive away for the very last time, I couldn't help but think of her as a friend. An old, cantankerous, temperamental friend who's moved on and will hopefully treat her new family well. To quote Buddy, "I'm at peace."