We've Gone A Long Way, Baby.

October always seems to be a month of milestones with me. Fall in general always seems to be a time of change, but October seems to be when it all comes to a head. Some recentish examples:

The first car I ever actually bought — like, went to the dealership and signed papers for — was bought...ed in October of 2001. It was a green, 2-door 1997 Ford Aspire. And it was terrible.

Jenny and I had our first good date on October 18, 2003. (Our first date was September 24, 2003, but it was pretty miserable). Our dating anniversary was October 24 (also 2003). Our first pet was born sometime in October of 2005, and I'm pretty sure the first time Jenny got drunk around me was in October, too.

Before my grandpa died, when I was still in high school, he came to see me and I got to show him around my podunk hometown (Goshen) and the podunkish college I was applying to (Manchester), and that was pretty much the last memory I have of seeing him. Also in October.

The first portrait photos I ever took hit their proof galleries in October. The first "real" job I ever had I started to dislike in October. The first camera I ever loved I broke in October (cracked the rear LCD).

The only other month that even ranks in the list of "Month Where Interesting Things Happen" would be May — which is where my wedding anniversary falls. (Take note; I expect gifts.)

This year, though... besides Jenny and I celebrating our seventh year together (THAT'S A LONG TIME!), and me hitting 5,000 tweets, my worn-out old car is going to hit 150,000 miles.

Now, it's not the Aspire I mentioned before. THAT car hit the bricks with me in January of 2004. I'm talking about the only car that I've owned (out of 5) that I haven't come to loathe. My Civic.

The Civic was, at the time, both the most- and least-sensible car I could've bought. I was in college, I was working three jobs, taking 16 credit hours, and needed something economical and reliable. So I bought the Honda that got 30+ mpg and never broke down. I bought the sedan, because I thought the extra space would come in handy. I bought the automatic so I could — moment of weakness here, guys — hold hands with Jenny while I was driving. (The Aspire was a stick shift.) Insurance was cheap, maintenance was cheap, and nobody even thought to try to steal anything from it because it looked like a car that an English professor would drive.

It was entirely practical.

That said, it's also entirely boring. While most of my friends were buying Mustangs, Camaros, Jeeps, and Explorers, decked to the gills with speakers and amps, burning out at every stop light, the stock stereo in my car couldn't even get loud enough to be heard outside the car with the windows down. It was not, in any way, the kind of car an 18-year-old male should buy.

But I bought it, anyway, hopelessly focused on practicality and something magical called "resale value." I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

The next year, after I had left Manchester, Jenny and I took our first road trip together and the first real road trip in the Civic. 1,100 miles from magical Bristol to Denver, Colorado, we sputtered across the Great Midwest in a plume of efficiency. I was dorky enough to track mileage and we were making over 40 miles to the gallon. I actually OVER BUDGETED for gas, when gas was hitting record prices. I felt like a champ.

Then I got overtaken on a little hill outside Morrison (elevation: 5,467 feet) and felt like a total dweeb again.

Not even a year later, Jenny and I took an international road trip and drove to Toronto... in January... which, if you've never made the trip, is a lot like driving through a snowglobe. Where even the main national highway looks like a country road and gas stations and civilization can be hours apart. I pushed the gas gauge down so low at one point I was sure it was just going to fall off. In a car where the trip odometer had never read more than 350 miles (and I had had some close calls before, sputtering into gas stations on the last bits of vapor), the Magic Honda stretched itself for over 430 miles on a single tank. And after that, I pulled up into a hotel parking lot and slept.

Another 1,000 or so miles down.

In 2006, I landed a sweet internship with the Keystone Lodge & Spa in Colorado. I could've flown out, had my dad (who lives outside Denver) drive me up to my apartment, and saved several thousand miles of driving, but that would've been silly. So I loaded down my car with what must have been a metric ton of clothes, computer equipment, cameras, stereo, guitar, books, magazines, and whatever else I could fit in, and made another drive — technically, a commute — to Colorado. I spent more time on I-70 between Keystone and Denver that summer than I did actually enjoying the mountains. I drove all over; drove other interns around, took my dad places, went exploring, got lost, and spent most of the summer listening to Jimmy Eat World on that crappy stereo. If I wasn't working, sleeping, or spilling beer all over the floor at the bar, I was in my car, going somewhere.

I remember getting an oil change a day or so before I left Indiana, and pulling into a Midas somewhere in suburban Denver — a few days before I left for home again — I figured out I'd put 5,000 miles on my car. I all but lived in that thing.

There were times along the way where I really did feel like I was living in my car. When I first moved to Indianapolis, I moved down for a job and even though I lived at the place I was working — like, literally — Jenny was still in Fort Wayne, and I was still finishing up my Bachelor's degree, so I got to know that stretch of highway between Indy and Fort Wayne really, really well. I spent so much time sleeping in my car that I kept a pillow and blanket in there. (The lingering effect of that is that I STILL keep food, toothbrush, and floss in the car, just in case.)

The last trip the Magic Honda went on was our honeymoon. We drove straight out from our reception to Somewhere, Ohio, and then on to the easternmost part of Virginia, right on the Chesapeake. And then we went sightseeing, around the Chesapeake. And then we went to Washington, then another pit-stop in Ohio, then home. It was probably the least-eventful, but most memorable trip the car has ever seen us through.

And now, as I speed along to my daily heres and theres, racking up more and more miles and more and more time in that driver's seat, the battle scars are starting to add up. A dent above the rear passenger door from a camping trip in 2004. A scratched-up front bumper from where I slid off the road and into a fence during a snow storm one winter. Countless dings and dents from living in apartments, loading and unloading the car as I moved from place to place — college to college, apartment to apartment, apartment to our home. The Honda emblem on the hood froze and sheered off so many times that it literally couldn't hold on anymore, even with super glue. I've climbed on top of it for an over-the-crowd shot at more than one wedding. Sat on the trunk lid to watch the sun set. Once I was knocking ice out of the wheel wells and accidentally bent the body panel so the door couldn't open.

On the inside, I can see the gouges from the time we brought home random bits of furniture: Tables, chairs, three or four desks now, all kinds of appliances, and a treadmill. The rear windows don't quite roll up like they used to, and the passenger's side rear window doesn't actually close without some manual assistance. The A/C is temperamental. The fans inside the blower are on their last legs. When it's cold, the springs in the driver's seat squeak as I inhale and exhale. I'm pretty sure the rear windscreen is coming loose. The windshield washer jets have completely stopped working. The driver's-side rear door doesn't open anymore (unrelated to the ice incident).

That car has been places. Of those 150,000 miles, 120,000 of them are mine. If I averaged 60 MPH over those miles — which, let's face it, I haven't because I drive like an old woman — that's almost 2,000 hours of staring through that windshield. Change the average 45 miles an hour, and I've logged 3,000 hours of wheel time. That's 125 days! And it doesn't include the time I've spent SLEEPING in the damn thing.

It's far from being the perfect car, and it's far from being my last car, but I think it's the first one I ever felt at home with. Felt comfortable in. Would've taken to meet my friends and not expected to show me up with class or embarrass me with a lame joke. I've loved all my cars — the 1986 Civic DX hatchback, the 1998 Exploder, the Aspire, and that achingly beautiful 1968 Mustang coupe — but this one was more than a relationship of convenience, of necessity, or lust.

I'm not just in love with the Magic Honda. I do love it. And it loves me back.

And that's the way a car should be.






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