Farewell, Rosealia
Jan. 12th, 2013 04:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miss_lucy21Rosealia was my first car. I bought her in the fall of 2000, when I lived in my first "apartment"- it was on campus, but had a full kitchen and I didn't have a meal plan. In the city I went to college in, like most places in Ohio, public transportation is not plentiful or convenient, so a car became more of a necessity than a desire at that point. She was a 1998 Hyundai Elantra, and I was her second owner. I named her Rosealia because 1) the Better than Ezra song by the same name was one of my favorite songs at that point and 2) the official color of the car, according to Hyundai, was "rosewind" (I'd call it maroon, myself, but I'm not a car manufacturer).
Rosealia got me through school, including a horrific move that I had to do almost entirely by myself, carload by carload. She got me to Washington DC, where she stayed with me at the first place I lived, then moved back to Ohio when I moved somewhere that didn't have parking (my parents took her for the other 2 years I lived out there). She was reunited with me and we lived through 2006 and the awful first half of 2007 together, which included quite a few back road drives when I couldn't take it anymore. She came with me that summer to the small town in southwest Ohio that I've affectionately nicknamed Leftyville, where she unwittingly became a construction vehicle while I was working for an affordable housing organization. This included a hilarious incident whereupon I was sent to Lowes to buy 6 ground rods, without anyone telling me that ground rods are about 10 feet long pieces of steel. The seats in the car didn't fold down, and the car itself was only about 5 feet wide, and I was left to try to figure out how to get these suckers into the car and back down the road to town (we didn't exactly have a Lowes in town. Closest was about half an hour away). Fortunately, some contractors in the parking lot helped me lift the rods (those suckers are heavy. And close to half again as long as I am tall), put them in the car, and tie them to the window frame so they wouldn't move around, using the laces from my hiking boots (which I wore on the building site when it was muddy, but it was hot, so I took them off when I wasn't on-site). And then Rosealia got me to Cleveland in 2009, whereupon her transmission gave up the ghost exactly one week after I moved.
Because the transmission had gone, and to be honest, I'd already replaced nearly everything else in the car, from the exhaust system to the driver's side door lock, my parents and I decided that Rosealia's reliability was rapidly becoming suspect. This hadn't been that big of a deal in Leftyville, when I lived less than a mile from everything I truly needed (it would have been a pain if she'd died on the back roads outside of town, if I was driving up to one of the cities, but that's what AAA is for). In Cleveland, where the winters are much harsher, and where I lived much further away from the necessities and where the public transportation was only half useful, an unreliable car was more of a liability. Plus, traveling between Cleveland and Columbus was a real concern, because there's a whole lot of nothing in the 150 miles in between the two cities. So, my parents helped me buy Maisie, my 2004 Corolla, that I drive now. My dad was working from home exclusively at that point, so he wasn't driving much, and he and my mom were sharing her car, so he decided to go ahead and fix Rosealia up enough to get around for errands. It was supposed to be temporary. She wound up being his car for 3.5 years. I offered to take her back a few times, but Dad felt better with me in a newer car.
Recently, the brakes started to go on Rosealia. And there was something not right with the engine and possibly the rebuilt transmission. It was going to cost about $750 to fix her and Dad decided that it wasn't worth it. He and Mom work on the same general side of town now, and they have similar schedules, so they can share a car reasonably well. And I'm still unemployed at the moment, so I have some flexibility to drop off and pick up if need be. So, today, Dad and I went to Carmax and sold Rosealia. She was a good car, but she's just 15 years old, and yeah. I'm a little bit sad, but less so than I was when the transmission went out on me back in 2009 and I got the new car. I'm hoping she'll wind up going to someone who can fix her brakes and get another few years of usefulness out of her- a college student, maybe, who doesn't need to drive every day. She's only got 165K miles on her, which is really low for a 15 year old car (that's mostly thanks to the 2 years or so I was in DC and she didn't get used much, and the 2 years in Leftyville where I drove once or twice a week, if that). But even if she winds up at the scrap yard, I know she was useful to me and my family for a very long time and that's the important part.
Rosealia got me through school, including a horrific move that I had to do almost entirely by myself, carload by carload. She got me to Washington DC, where she stayed with me at the first place I lived, then moved back to Ohio when I moved somewhere that didn't have parking (my parents took her for the other 2 years I lived out there). She was reunited with me and we lived through 2006 and the awful first half of 2007 together, which included quite a few back road drives when I couldn't take it anymore. She came with me that summer to the small town in southwest Ohio that I've affectionately nicknamed Leftyville, where she unwittingly became a construction vehicle while I was working for an affordable housing organization. This included a hilarious incident whereupon I was sent to Lowes to buy 6 ground rods, without anyone telling me that ground rods are about 10 feet long pieces of steel. The seats in the car didn't fold down, and the car itself was only about 5 feet wide, and I was left to try to figure out how to get these suckers into the car and back down the road to town (we didn't exactly have a Lowes in town. Closest was about half an hour away). Fortunately, some contractors in the parking lot helped me lift the rods (those suckers are heavy. And close to half again as long as I am tall), put them in the car, and tie them to the window frame so they wouldn't move around, using the laces from my hiking boots (which I wore on the building site when it was muddy, but it was hot, so I took them off when I wasn't on-site). And then Rosealia got me to Cleveland in 2009, whereupon her transmission gave up the ghost exactly one week after I moved.
Because the transmission had gone, and to be honest, I'd already replaced nearly everything else in the car, from the exhaust system to the driver's side door lock, my parents and I decided that Rosealia's reliability was rapidly becoming suspect. This hadn't been that big of a deal in Leftyville, when I lived less than a mile from everything I truly needed (it would have been a pain if she'd died on the back roads outside of town, if I was driving up to one of the cities, but that's what AAA is for). In Cleveland, where the winters are much harsher, and where I lived much further away from the necessities and where the public transportation was only half useful, an unreliable car was more of a liability. Plus, traveling between Cleveland and Columbus was a real concern, because there's a whole lot of nothing in the 150 miles in between the two cities. So, my parents helped me buy Maisie, my 2004 Corolla, that I drive now. My dad was working from home exclusively at that point, so he wasn't driving much, and he and my mom were sharing her car, so he decided to go ahead and fix Rosealia up enough to get around for errands. It was supposed to be temporary. She wound up being his car for 3.5 years. I offered to take her back a few times, but Dad felt better with me in a newer car.
Recently, the brakes started to go on Rosealia. And there was something not right with the engine and possibly the rebuilt transmission. It was going to cost about $750 to fix her and Dad decided that it wasn't worth it. He and Mom work on the same general side of town now, and they have similar schedules, so they can share a car reasonably well. And I'm still unemployed at the moment, so I have some flexibility to drop off and pick up if need be. So, today, Dad and I went to Carmax and sold Rosealia. She was a good car, but she's just 15 years old, and yeah. I'm a little bit sad, but less so than I was when the transmission went out on me back in 2009 and I got the new car. I'm hoping she'll wind up going to someone who can fix her brakes and get another few years of usefulness out of her- a college student, maybe, who doesn't need to drive every day. She's only got 165K miles on her, which is really low for a 15 year old car (that's mostly thanks to the 2 years or so I was in DC and she didn't get used much, and the 2 years in Leftyville where I drove once or twice a week, if that). But even if she winds up at the scrap yard, I know she was useful to me and my family for a very long time and that's the important part.
no subject
Date: 2013-01-12 11:37 pm (UTC)And my other grandmother's 1998 Geo Metro is still going strong, with a new owner (my younger sister *didn't* total that one, though she did also total the 2003 Pontiac Vibe my father bought to replace the Corolla. She's now on a Ford Focus my father bought for her, and I'm driving a Toyota Camry I bought from my uncle--the first car that was truly "mine", and I love the hell out of this car, and I'm going to be very sad when it's time to part with it.)
So basically, there's definitely a chance your car will live on and make someone else very happy.
no subject
Date: 2013-01-13 12:30 am (UTC)Your opening the door to pay tolls reminded me that I spent a year without the ability to open the driver's side front door from the inside- that was fun. You had to roll down the window and open the door from the outside. This worked fine in the summer, but was a little more challenging when the windows got iced in the winter. And then the window (which was not a power window- Rosealia didn't have power anything) decided it no longer really wanted to go up and down in the track correctly and I was pretty much forced to replace the door handle and get the window fixed- it was gapping about two inches from the side at the top by then. Breaking into my car would have been ridiculously easy. Fortunately, the year that happened, I was living in Leftyville, where no one but me locked their doors anyway (city girl that I am- they used to tease me about it). Good times.
no subject
Date: 2013-01-13 12:35 am (UTC)The driver's side door on the minivan wouldn't close again if you opened it, for a while, so I spent about half my senior year of high school having to climb through from the passenger side. At least that was easy enough in the van where there was no center console to get in the way... Except that one time for the winter chorus concert when I was in heels and a skirt...
I thankfully never got stuck with the Metro. That thing had a lawnmower engine in it... (though the Corolla wasn't really any better...)