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Jul. 22nd, 2013 09:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stormdogIt was a bittersweet act, removing the license plates from my old car, Perseverance, to place them on my new one, the as-yet-unnamed Lumina. The fact that the front-end problem may have been solved simply by moving the badly worn front tires to the back and inflating them correctly is a huge relief. The fact that it is essentially the end for Percy can't help but tinge the event with nostalgia.
Percy came into my life right around the time I was splitting up with my ex-wife. I had moved in with my parents while she moved elsewhere. We were going to try living apart for a while. During that span, my previous car (Igor the Neon) developed mechanical problems beyond my willingness to address even with Super-mechanic Juan. I'd purchased Percy a few months before that I think, as a secondary vehicle because I was getting into hypermiling and really wanted a small stick-shift car to play with.
When I came home and told her I'd bought the car I'd gone out to look at, she was decidedly unamused. As it turned out though, Percy was there just when I needed him. He was a fantastic car. Exactly the sort of vehicle I'd choose for myself, if I had the latitude to choose (as I did when I bought him from a seller on Craigslist for about $250). The first fillup I noted in my logbook was on June 7th of 2010. In the three years since, he and I have traveled about 46,000 miles together. He carried me to New Orleans, Paducah Kentucky and Southern Illinois, Detroit, Minneapolis, up through Houghton and Hancock to Calumet and Copper Harbor, and to innumerable other daily destinations. When everything was in good shape, the gas mileage I got from that little car was just fantastic. After a non-stop drive from Detroit to Wisconsin, I calculated right around 49 miles per gallon.
---
Tonight, I left the archives at 3 instead of staying to research more so that I could spend some time on the Lumina. I swapped the front tires with the back ones, and inflated them up to 44 psi, the maximum sidewall pressure. I was, honestly, rather surprised to find after doing so that the major pull to the right while driving was gone. Maybe it really was bad tires combined with low air pressure. There's still a bit of a clunk up in the front end that I'll mention to Juan, and I do need to replace those two bad tires. But the car is definitely drivable.
In fact, it's legally drivable as well as physically. I was trying to work out a schedule to get to the DMV and deal with registration and everything when I decided to look at online options. As it turns out, I was able to do the entire process online. Now I just have to mail the original title and a check and they'll send out my new title and tags. How about that? The DMV is doing something right there!
So with the possible exception of going around the block a few times to teach my brother to drive a stick-shift, the somewhat arbitrary span of time that will be defined, for me, by my emotional attachment to the life-context of, and my shared experiences with, the mode of personal transportation known to me as Percy, is at an end. Such is the way of the physical.
I look forward to new and unknown adventures with my new car. May it be as good to me, and may it provide me with as many positive, memorable experiences, as my other vehicles have.
Here's to the new.
Passing of the Old, Coming of the New - Pic-a-day 22 July 2013
Copyright Stormdog 2013
Percy came into my life right around the time I was splitting up with my ex-wife. I had moved in with my parents while she moved elsewhere. We were going to try living apart for a while. During that span, my previous car (Igor the Neon) developed mechanical problems beyond my willingness to address even with Super-mechanic Juan. I'd purchased Percy a few months before that I think, as a secondary vehicle because I was getting into hypermiling and really wanted a small stick-shift car to play with.
When I came home and told her I'd bought the car I'd gone out to look at, she was decidedly unamused. As it turned out though, Percy was there just when I needed him. He was a fantastic car. Exactly the sort of vehicle I'd choose for myself, if I had the latitude to choose (as I did when I bought him from a seller on Craigslist for about $250). The first fillup I noted in my logbook was on June 7th of 2010. In the three years since, he and I have traveled about 46,000 miles together. He carried me to New Orleans, Paducah Kentucky and Southern Illinois, Detroit, Minneapolis, up through Houghton and Hancock to Calumet and Copper Harbor, and to innumerable other daily destinations. When everything was in good shape, the gas mileage I got from that little car was just fantastic. After a non-stop drive from Detroit to Wisconsin, I calculated right around 49 miles per gallon.
---
Tonight, I left the archives at 3 instead of staying to research more so that I could spend some time on the Lumina. I swapped the front tires with the back ones, and inflated them up to 44 psi, the maximum sidewall pressure. I was, honestly, rather surprised to find after doing so that the major pull to the right while driving was gone. Maybe it really was bad tires combined with low air pressure. There's still a bit of a clunk up in the front end that I'll mention to Juan, and I do need to replace those two bad tires. But the car is definitely drivable.
In fact, it's legally drivable as well as physically. I was trying to work out a schedule to get to the DMV and deal with registration and everything when I decided to look at online options. As it turns out, I was able to do the entire process online. Now I just have to mail the original title and a check and they'll send out my new title and tags. How about that? The DMV is doing something right there!
So with the possible exception of going around the block a few times to teach my brother to drive a stick-shift, the somewhat arbitrary span of time that will be defined, for me, by my emotional attachment to the life-context of, and my shared experiences with, the mode of personal transportation known to me as Percy, is at an end. Such is the way of the physical.
I look forward to new and unknown adventures with my new car. May it be as good to me, and may it provide me with as many positive, memorable experiences, as my other vehicles have.
Here's to the new.
Passing of the Old, Coming of the New - Pic-a-day 22 July 2013
Copyright Stormdog 2013
