Cars, or, the (ever) Shining Lights

Long story. Hopefully interesting. ;-)

We're not car people. Or, maybe I should say that K is not a "car guy." Our cars are merely utilitarian things in our lives (like a lot of other things such as furniture).

We did own a brand new car once -- which we later regretted having bought, but which served us well for many years -- but more on that in a minute, first, let's backtrack.

When we lived in Brazil -- we came to the U.S. when we were both 25 -- we never owned a car. First, we couldn't afford it, second, we didn't need it. We lived in São Paulo, a huge metropolis, and used public transportation to go to the university. Then, after we got married, we lived walking distance from the place where we taught. A year and a half later, we moved to the U.S.

K had a driver's license and drove my parents' car once in a while in Brazil (oh, and he once almost had a terrible accident with his dad's car, but that's another story), but I didn't get a license until I was 24, months before coming to the U.S.

Back in 1996 when we got here our first car was an 11 year old Honda Prelude that we paid $700 for. We bought that car with the help of K's uncle who had just bought a brand new Honda Civic (important detail for later in the story). A year later we upgraded to a Nissan Sentra that cost us 2K (I don't remember how old it was). Then, in 1999 we were foolish enough to buy a brand new Honda Civic and we became a "fancy" two car couple. The Sentra even "died" (broken transmission) and we decided to pay 1K for a new engine because we thought it was worth keeping it for a few more years.*

When we were expecting our second son in 2004 we needed a minivan (my parents visited for extended periods of time and we all needed to fit in the car) and K decided he wanted the old model Honda Odyssey (the smaller one with regular doors). We checked out cars on eBay and K even sent K3 out to look at a car down in Texas once.

Then, one day, after teaching my class, I sat down at the bus stop to go back home. I was heavily pregnant and taking the bus right in front of the building where I taught was way more convenient than finding parking and walking to and from the car. I looked down and saw a campus newspaper on the ground and picked it up. Lo and behold! There was an ad for a Honda Civic there, precisely the kind we were looking for (a 1997 one). We bought it and sold the Civic.

A few months later we relocated from Massachusetts to Philadelphia and sold the Nissan too and became a one car family again (K took the train to the city). Then, in 2007 K got the fateful big pharma job and we needed a new car. Not being a car person and hating to go shopping for anything (particularly for cars), K took his brother K3's advice and bought his brother's friend's brand new Mazda 3 with a nice break in the price ('cause the friend wanted to sell quickly).

This car, which, you may remember I hit with the old Odyssey a while back -- NO!! That's crazy! This happened precisely two years ago. Eerie!! -- is the car that we needed to have sold two years ago when K decided to walk away from big pharma and/or last year so we could pay ne of our credit cards, but we never got around to it. We really NEED to do that now, though, both sell the car and then pay the card. So, the car is for sale, let me know if you're interested. ;-)

OK, there's more to this story. Do you remember I mentioned that K's uncle had bought a new Honda Civic back in 1996? This was the car that he put over 30 thousand miles a year on and he owned it for nearly ten years. Yes. You guessed it, the car has over 300 thousand miles on it!! Well, back in 2006 when K's parents moved to the U.S. they bought the uncle's car. They subsequently bought a new Corolla (later regretted), but kept the Civic. They were going to "sell" it back to uncle this year after we borrowed it for a few months, but, GUESS WHAT?! Father-in-law decided to give us the car since we need to sell the other car.

Bottom line. After the Mazda is sold, we'll be the proud owners of two crumbling Hondas (I was going to subtitle the post "the two dying Hondas"), one with over 300K miles and the other with 200K+. That means that any day now we'll be on the road and the car will die on us. Or maybe not. These Japanese cars seem to have a thousand lives!

I was going to end the story here, but Laura at 11D just wrote this post about engine lights (the comment section is fun!) which reminded me not only to write this post, but also to disclose that the engine lights are on in both cars (sigh). Both cars have been checked out a few times and nothing was found (they obviously have countless other problems, but nothing can keep those lights from shining, apparently! -- HA!! I've got me a subtitle right there!). So, yeah... fun times.

Last, but not least, the Odyssey is burning oil (there's no leak) and now we need to have several gallons of oil in the car at all times because the oil light comes on unexpectedly and we have to stop (as we did 1 am on Monday night) to refill the oil or the car can die right then.

Yeah, what adventurous lives we lead! And I guess we're going to have to start renting cars for most of our long trips now. I don't know how long we'll be able to hold off until we have to buy a newer car. Sigh. Keep your fingers crossed on our behalf!

OH, and please do tell us now, what are you car stories?

P.S. Let me know if you're interested in buying the Mazda. Seriously, it's a good car! ;-)

* We didn't regret that decision, but poor K3 (K's younger brother) maybe did because years later he used the Sentra for a couple of months and it gave him a lot of trouble -- the battery was bad. That pushed K3 over the edge and he bought his own brand new Honda Civic (same green color as ours, but a 2 door hatchback). Now I'm curious to know whether K3 ever regretted buying a brand new car like his older brother and dad did.