driving my life away

So I lost my car in the flood. As noted in a previous post, I have sometimes have a special bond with my cars. The sweet little '93 Civic that idly sits in that driveway was a good car. Now she's waterlogged. Indeed, as I checked last night, the center armrest console is actually still full of water. Nasty. There's nothing to salvage there, not even the radio. Five feet of brackish water took her down.

For the past few weeks, I've scoured the papers and looked online for cars. The local markets are starving for used cars, and accordingly, there are none to be found. Of course, there's the requisite worry about flooded cars getting out in the marketplace, something I was wary of in 1995's flood aftermath. The trick, of course, is to stick your hand way under the seat and feel around the undersprings of the seat bottom. If you take your hand out and there's rust on it, it's a pretty good chance it was a flooded car. Considering the stench of the flood waters in New Orleans, I don't know how anyone can mask such a smell, but I guess it's possible.

Anyway, I've been shopping. Our excursion on Saturday extended from Alexandria to New Iberia, three dealerships in total. Honda dealerships. I won't lie, I'm a Honda driver through and through. Yes, I make references to the uber-auto here and there, but in reality, I drive a Honda. Since 1985, my family has owned eight, four of them mine, and one, the Odyssey tank/van for Tracey. Unfortunately, good used Hondas are hard to come by. No one ever gets rid of them (unless Mother Nature intervenes) and they're not cheap. Reviewing my budget, about five grand, I had about nada to work with.

Until Tracey suggested something radically new to me about the situation: buy a new car.

What? How could this be? After taking so long to learn not to spend money (oh, I'm a spendaholic, did you know that?), and then spending a year under the influence of someone who throws money at everything, and then having to come back to reality and see that money does, in fact, not grow on AMEX trees, I found this suggestion to be quite shocking. I'm already WAY in the hole from using my credit card last year, so essentially doubling that debt scared the shit out of me.

But if Tracey knew what she was talking about, then I implicitly trusted her in the matter. She's poking fun at me as I type this, making sure I say that this was actually her idea. "Are you going to post a picture for your internet friends?" *poke poke*

Uhm. Yeah.

Friends, the new Penguin-mobile:


No, it's not some retro-curved hot-rod. Nor is it a high-performance Euro-coupe. It is a 2006 Honda Civic. In my usual blue, of course. I insisted on a 5-speed manual, even though it looks like standard transmissions are becoming passe in this automatic world. Standard sound system plays CD's with MP3's, so I'm set for tunes.

And, between you and me, it's a smooooooth driving car.

This little bit of sunshine should make my morning commutes that much nicer.

Oh, that reminds me. Monday morning, I left for work, a big brilliant moon up above. It was a full moon, so the drive to New Orleans was well lit by old Luna. I stopped in Raceland to tank up. As I'm standing there, I take a gander to the setting moon and...well...it wasn't full any more. No, I thought, that's not right. It was full when I left Lafayette. Huh? I wandered inside for a steak biscuit and Starbucks Doubleshot (courtesy of Bubba's II), and came back out to find the moon...hmm...darker? Had to be an eclipse, but I didn't hear Jack about it. Sure enough, the eclipse was visible here for all of ten minutes. The ten minutes I was gassing up at the station, actually. Then the moon set, show over.

Day off tomorrow. At least a break from the drive. I'm working on a single computer hidden in a helicopter parts warehouse right around the corner from here. Easy gig and I get to spend the remainder of my day driving the backroads of South Louisiana.