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Wednesday, July 22, 2015

I have a shiny new car - please don't touch it

So I bought a new vehicle the other day, well it was new to me anyway.
It is the lowest mileage vehicle I have ever owned and so far I am enjoying it quite a bit.
But whenever you buy a new car you go through a period of time where you have all these concerns you did not have with the old clunker you moved up from.
My last car had about a bazillion kilometres on it and it showed. The thing smoked more than a Raggae band and leaked more oil than an Alberta pipeline.
The struts were shot so it was like riding an old chuckwagon and every single bump on the road nearly knocked the fillings out of your teeth.
It rattled, it clunked, it was loud and tired so the time had come to abandon the trusty metal steed for a new mode of transportation.
The old car owed me nothing. I put a lot of kilometres on it and had to do very little in the way of repairs – all right, I should have replaced the struts, but they were expensive and I didn't want to.
The nicest thing about an old, high-mileages car was you didn't really care if it got dirty, or scratched or even a little banged up.
The Missus and I even took it about 20 kilometres up a logging road scouting campsites earlier this year (a fun adventure with marginally functioning suspension.)
It came back covered in grime, dust and a little worse for wear, but by that point it really didn't matter.
The car has seen better days and when a spectacular deal on a much newer car with a fraction of the kilometres came along, I jumped at the opportunity to upgrade in a big way.
I have had the new car for almost two whole weeks so we are still in the honeymoon stage. The first couple days after getting it, I would just sit in it and check out the interior and the all the new-fangled controls I got to play with.
Once in a while I would look out the front window of my house to check out its profile before looking for an excuse – any excuse - to drive it.
While I was willing to go 'boony bashing' in the old car, I was hesitant to even drive this one across an unpaved parking lot lest a rock fly up and chip the pristine paint job.
I don't even like to park the new set of wheels under a tree because there are evil, evil birds out there just waiting to poop on a shiny red car.
“Wait, what's that? Dust! There is a thin layer of dust on my new car! Oh the horror, I must wash it – a lot.”
I know that might be a little over the top, but it is always an event to get a new car and I want to enjoy the feeling of having a new vehicle as much as possible.
And why not, I paid a lot of money to have that feeling and I want to enjoy it for as long as I can and as much as I can.
I had the same feeling with the last car I bought – although this one is much nicer with more options – and I know the feeling fades, but for the next little while I will still get a thrill every time I look out the window and see it sitting there on the street with cars going by...kicking up dust...and those evil birds, just waiting...
Excuse me, I have to go wash my new car. After all, I have not done it for almost two days.


Copyright 2015, Darren Handschuh

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