{"id":674,"date":"2008-12-03T19:28:19","date_gmt":"2008-12-04T03:28:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/norwitz.net\/blog\/?p=674"},"modified":"2008-12-03T19:28:19","modified_gmt":"2008-12-04T03:28:19","slug":"goodbye-old-car","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/norwitz.net\/blog\/2008\/12\/03\/goodbye-old-car\/","title":{"rendered":"Goodbye old car!"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Goodbye old car!\u00a0 Thanks for taking good care of us all these years! We’re going to miss you!”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Miriam repeated words like this many times today.\u00a0 I don’t know why I get sad when getting rid of a car.\u00a0 Am I doing the right thing??\u00a0 How can we just leave it here to be scrapped after it did so much for us?\u00a0 Fortunately, I get over it pretty quickly.\u00a0 Miriam on the other hand is maybe scarred for life.<\/p>\n

This old car means more to Michael than it does to me.\u00a0 It was a gift from his grandparents back in 1989.\u00a0 Six months later, he moved to London for grad school and had to sell it.\u00a0 The friend who bought it never kept up with her payments to Michael so, when they reconnected about 10 years ago, she just gave him back the car.\u00a0 We were glad to have it.\u00a0 My car was a stick shift (which Michael can’t drive) and his van was giving out.<\/p>\n

Two years ago, the car failed its smog test.\u00a0 We spent $700 getting it fixed.\u00a0 It passed the smog test and, a few weeks later, one of the 4 cylinders died.\u00a0 It wasn’t worth fixing at this point and we bought a used car as a replacement.<\/p>\n

We found out about a program California has to take older cars off the road.\u00a0 If you fail a smog test, you can turn in the car and get $1000, which is about what this car was worth running decently.\u00a0 Unfortunately, you only qualify at the time of registration.\u00a0 We spent two years kicking ourselves for not doing this then.\u00a0 All the while we kept the car registered and insured and Michael drove it every month or so to keep the battery charged (he still had to jump it a few times).\u00a0 Although you register a car yearly, you only do the smog test every two years, so we had to wait.<\/p>\n

Our chance came a couple of weeks ago.\u00a0 Michael took the car in and it failed massively, as we expected, and was labeled a gross polluter.\u00a0 That’s about when we learned that the state doesn’t buy cars just for failing smog, they have to be gross polluters, and this car was not one two years ago.<\/p>\n

Last night we stripped the car of anything loose and Michael removed the radio this morning.\u00a0 Then he went to the DMV, turned in the plates, and filled out forms.\u00a0 Miriam loves to ride in the car so Michael transferred her car seat and gave her one last slow ride up to Windsor, about 30 minutes away, while I followed behind them.\u00a0 After endless paperwork, we got our check.<\/p>\n

As we drove away, Miriam called out her final goodbye and insisted we each do the same.\u00a0 Goodbye old car and thanks.<\/p>\n

\"1989

1989 Honda Civic Sedan<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Goodbye old car!\u00a0 Thanks for taking good care of us all these years! We’re going to miss you!” Miriam repeated words like this many times today.\u00a0 I don’t know why I get sad when getting rid of a car.\u00a0 Am I doing the right thing??\u00a0 How can we just leave it here to be scrapped […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[24,25],"tags":[51,79],"class_list":["post-674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family","category-house","tag-photos-family","tag-photos-household"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/norwitz.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/norwitz.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/norwitz.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/norwitz.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/norwitz.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=674"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/norwitz.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":676,"href":"http:\/\/norwitz.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674\/revisions\/676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/norwitz.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/norwitz.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/norwitz.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}