In 2004, my dad and I went car shopping, and I drove off the lot with a 5-speed manual Toyota Corolla that I promptly named Luna.
Luna the Corolla was my companion on about 160,000 miles of adventures, but last year after she valiantly got me home and I had to give her a new clutch, I started to realize the end was near. Recently she’s had a number of systems fail, and her inspection/registration was due at the end of February, so I started looking for new cars.
Now obviously, in 2004 I was a college student. I had very different needs for a car than I do now, as a single adult, moving into a house, with two cats and a full-time life. So I settled on purchasing a small SUV – when I’m relocated back to Denton, I won’t be driving as many long road trips, and I just needed something larger, safer, and more suited to the kind of things I need in a vehicle.
I settled on a 2018 Mazda CX-5 or a 2018 Honda CR-V as my top choices, based on a lot of reviews, anecdotes, and reading and looking. Buying Luna was an ORDEAL (and not the good kind) so I asked my parents to come down to help me buy my new car, mostly for moral support. They arrived at 5 on Friday, and by 5:30 we were at the dealer to look at cars.
My top choice – a tricked out CX-5 – had sold out from under me the day before. So I ended up there, test driving a “diamond pearl” CR-V with only 25K miles and a practically pristine interior. I fell in love, and three hours of signing paperwork later, I drove off the lot, leaving Luna with a hug and a goodbye and a thank you for years of safety and good adventures.
The new car was going to be called Pearl until a friend on Facebook suggested Janice, for Janice Joplin’s album Pearl, and I immediately knew that would be her name.
So welcome Janice. I hope we have many thousands of miles of adventures to go on together.