Burnt Orange and Full of Spunk

                                      

    The time has come for me to say goodbye to a beloved family member, faithful friend, and partner in crime, my 1998 Toyota Rav4.  It was my first car as a “grown-up,” the first one that I actually got to pick out and pay for.  We’d only been married for about two months.  I had previously been driving around a van that we were going to use for our business, but I wanted something more practical to drive everyday.  John had a cool Jetta, but it was a manual, and I was no good with it. 

     So, in August of 2006, I acquired what would come to be a very dear companion.  Now the Rav4 has been with us for five and a half years, basically our whole marriage.  The use of the car has transitioned a few times, and it’s really come to be a symbol of our lives in a lot of ways.  If you think about, what really goes everywhere with you?  Maybe you have a favorite sweater or a special pair of shoes, but you don’t wear them every day.  This car, though…she’s just about seen it all.  So much so that I get a little misty-eyed every time I think of saying goodbye.  Usually, with things like that, after I can’t use them anymore, they go in a scrapbook, or I make a shadowbox for them, but I don’t think that’ll work with this.  Sadly, the car will have to leave us.  We don’t have the space for it and we’ve got no reason to keep it, except my emotional attachment.  All these things are temporary, and it’s just time to let this one go.  But first, a look back…

     I remember the first time I saw her.  John was searching eBay for a car that would be a good fit for me, and he woke me up one morning to show me a photo of the Rav4.  The orange color was almost enough to throw her out of the runnings, but John really thought that it was a good car, and I liked most of the other features.  Plus, we could afford it.  Yes, the golden ticket in those days was always the price tag.  We established a “no car payments” rule at the beginning of our marriage, hence the car shopping via eBay.  So, within a few minutes, he had me convinced that this was my car, and we were making plans to head to Miami (yes, Miami, Florida) to pick it up. 

     The trip to retrieve the car was an adventure in itself.  Miami is far away.  But, as per usual, the trip was memorable and well worth it.  We flew in and the previous owners picked us up from the airport.  We paid for the car, hopped in, and began our life with the wonderful Rav4. 

     It felt like the drive home from the hospital with a new baby.  Except the hospital is in Miami and we live in Missouri.  We didn’t have a lot of extra time or money, so a beach vacation was not on the agenda, but we did map our route to at least drive up the coast for an hour or two.  When we came upon a nice looking beach, we decided we could spare 30 minutes to take a quick walk on the sand and put our toes in the salt water.  I have a head full of sweet memories, and John and I, as newlyweds, walking along the beach is among the sweetest.  It was on that walk that I found another special item, my keychain.   John has a habit of picking up cool rocks during his many adventures, so, naturally, he was hunting for one.  (Unfortunately, I think the clutter of life has squelched this habit now.)   As we walked along the beach, John spotted a cool looking orange rock, and bent down to pick it up.  When we both got a better look, we realized it was truly unique.  It was orange, like the car, flat, round, and had a tiny hole in the top.  It was a perfectly perfect keychain!  It’s like it was just there waiting for us to find it, and to be a special memento of the day we bought the car.  I’m not embarrassed to say that I cried a year later when it broke falling on the concrete floor in the garage. 

       After a stay-over at the McAlister house in Georgia, we completed the long journey home with our new babe.  One of my favorite parts of the Rav4 story is that when we got home, we discovered that the mileage listed on the odometer was “flawed”.  Somehow, the odometer was incorrect, and the seller, though insisting he didn’t do it, was willing to send us a $1000 refund if we would keep it.  We paid $3800 for the car, so it ended up only costing $2800, and we get the great mystery of never knowing how many miles are truly on the car!  We figured out that there were at least 35k extra…maybe more.  It didn’t matter, though, we were in love. 

     So once we were settled in, I couldn’t wait to drive it around everywhere.  It was so much cooler than driving a big van!  I proudly took it to work at It’s Your Day Bridal Shop and school at the community college.  I didn’t even put the SCC parking tag on it, the Rav4 was way too cool for that!  Scotty put a remote start and a new radio in for me…so I was really set.  If I got a close enough spot, I could actually start my car from inside the school in the winter.     

       The Rav4 has taken us a lot of miles over the years…a trip to Colorado for Amber’s wedding, lots of business jaunts across the Midwest, and on countless adventures around town.  She’s picked up dozens of hitchhikers and homeless people, sped out of the driveway after a few fights, and been in a couple of accidents. 

      John backed into a tree a two years ago, and since then, you have to really slam the back door.  Then, a few months back, he was rear-ended, and now you have to really REALLY slam the back door.  But it closes. 

     That’s not the best of her quirks, though.  My personal favorite was the buzz.  A couple of years ago, the blinker started to make this strange buzzing sound from time to time.  If you would just jiggle the blinker, though, it went away.  However, as time went on, it happened more and more frequently, and it became tougher to get rid of it.  Also, the noise became worse.  After a 6 months or so, it turned out to be the most annoying noise I’ve ever heard, and it was extremely tricky to make it stop.  Think of the worst sound that you could imagine, and then think of having it incessantly in your ear, and double it, and that’s probably what this was like.  One day, I was driving down highway 94, and it went into the noise, and it just would not stop.  Nothing I tried was working, and I was in traffic, and it just wouldn’t go away.  I was about to eject myself from the vehicle when I realized, the only time it wasn’t buzzing was when the blinker was on.  So, I pulled an 80-year-old-lady and drove the whole way home with my left blinker on and the radio up.  That night, we took it to the Atkinson wedding, and on the way home, the same thing happened.  We punched and smacked and yanked and nothing worked.  After we got home, John took it apart and fixed it (!!!), which was great, because we may have had to kill her otherwise.

     Speaking of repairs, we hardly had to get any.  With the exception of oil changes, I bet we put less than $500 into it the entire time we owned it.  She truly was a wonderful stroke of good fortune.

     After we decided to retire her from use as my regular vehicle, we planned to sell, but John decided the Rav4 made the perfect “utility vehicle” for our budding home rental business.  (I think we just weren’t ready to say goodbye.)  After I got a newer car, the Rav4 made trip after trip to North County, to help us fix up the foreclosed homes we were buying.  During this time, the Rav4 got very, very smelly.  One time, John decided to put some old trash bags in the back to take them to a dumpster.  The smell, and flies, lived in there for about a month afterwards.  Actually I don’t think the smell was ever really the same.  Over her time in North County, she’s picked up lots of things, like a big paint stain on the seatbelt (and probably a bunch of other places), weird smells, and just taken a general beating.  But she still keeps truckin’.

     Now that our business is becoming a real property management company, we needed something bigger than the little SUV.  Though we’ve hauled plenty of doors, planks, poles, and pipes with the Rav4, we felt it was time to stop driving around with a piece of lumber hanging out the window, before we behead someone.  So, last weekend, John bought a true repairman’s truck, and that leaves no room for the Rav4. 

     I always thought we’d have her ‘til the end, but it looks like her destiny is to be with someone else for a little while longer.  I’m not meant to be the last owner.  A father just came to look at it for his soon-to-be 16 year-old daughter, as a surprise.  I can see that.  Maybe in a few years, when the Rav4 just can’t go any further, another girl will be writing the end of the story, about her dear first car, burnt orange and full of spunk. 

Update:

             I could never have imagined this end.  If you can believe it, the Rav4 is heading for Haiti.  Yes, Haiti.  The country.  A Haitian man came tonight and bought to car to ship to and sell in Haiti.  It’s tough to get cars there, so even though it will cost $2500 to ship, he will still make money reselling it there.  Speaking of money, we sold it for $2200.  That’s $600 less than we paid over 5 years ago, which means it cost us a little over $100 per year, besides repairs.  What a deal!  I’m just thrilled.  Imagine what sorts of adventures she’ll have in Haiti!  The roads are barely paved, people drive with twice the number of people as seats, and cars are driven until they literally will not go any further.  I’ll have a wonderful time picturing all the crazy things that the Rav4 will be doing in Haiti, and someday I’ll go there and see if I can spot her.