Part 1 : April 17 2007 - April 19 2008
A Tribute to the car that got away :)
It was a great evening, the air was crisp with anticipation, but I was not very interested, I was going to test-drive a used car, yet again. The owner was nice enough to come to my place and pick me up for the test drive, and commute post Sep 19 2005 was never the same again. The owner turned out to be one of those people who own a house in Palo Alto, and was selling the car only because 5 cars in a 3 car household was too much to take!
the car turned out to be a well tended one, and I was given lots of warnings and advice on maintenance by the lady of the house, who'd owned it and loved it for the last 5 odd years..
I prolly listened to that with half an ear closed, or open , which ever way you see it ;-).
Loan details completed, I finally owned a ride and spent the next month traversing the main road - Stop Signs, traffic lights et. al. for the pure pleasure of it.
An year, and 12000 miles sped past by, with a lot more memories, accidents, spills and scrapes associated with it :-) .. Life was moving on with my 105 HP friend, and I had no complaints whatsoever -- well, except perhaps that one time I had to replace some A/C valves, send it in for maintenence, fill up gas ;-) .....
Part 2 : The getting away :
It was April 19/20 th, 2008. Coincidentally - the first anniversary of its insurance :D, I got back home after dinner on April 19th, the next day there was a barbecue at another friend's place.. I'd gotten into the habit of leaving my purse in the car.. but since I had to renew insurance, I needed my credit card details, so , what turned out to be the silver lining here, I took my purse from the car as well..
The next day, I had no reason to go down to my garage till about 7:30 in the evening.
What do you do if you see that something that has been a fixture suddenly just disappears, vanishes ?? For about 5 seconds I couldn't believe it -- interesting things like huge objects being stolen only happened to other people, not me.. but incredibly, or so I thought, this did happen..
What was more extraordinary was I'd just heard from D that she'd gotten into an accident, and that her car had been totalled, this must definitely be some curious coincidence.
Well, thoughts apart, I had to inform practically everybody connected to the car about its theft -- the insurance, the bank, the police, the DMV, (did I miss someone here?) and every one I talked to... and also state specifically that the car was locked and that I had its keys :-(.
Part 3: The return of the Civic :
It took me astonishingly little time to get used to the fact that it wasn't getting back, and now my focus was on what next ;-) . There was this book at work - "What cars to buy - The car buying guide 2008" . Being a complete complete neophyte at buying anything "automotively inclined", I started reading up that book , and like an Achcha Bachcha, and taking into consideration gas prices that were going way beyond my modest income level , decided on buying a hybrid Prius. I ask D for her opinions on things (not that I take it anyways ;-) ) and she firmly disliked the hatchback model. Not really caring too much for her opinion, I went ahead and took an appointment for a test-drive -- and -- also checked out the new BMW 128i -- it looks really sexy! so went ahead and took an appointment to test drive that as well! There was a mini showroom right next to the BMW showroom, didn't think it would harm taking a look at the weirdly shaped Mini Cooper, so added that to my options list as well :-).
The (un) expected happened, I totally fell in love with the mini, loved the way it was compact so perenially bad "parkers" like me wouldn't have issues, loved the way it would respond to the lightest touch -- basically fell for it big time :D.
Went for a test drive that day, the day after that, and then another day after that :-), I was pretty much decided and one fine wednesday evening ( May 7 2k8 to be more precise) went to the showroom again armed with the specifications I wanted, and almost booked a car.. the only thing that held me back then was the 1000 dollar deposit needed and that was something I didn't have right at that time due to various financial transactions that I had the privilege of doing at that exact time ;-) ..
Told him I'd be back the next day, and announced in my break room about the new car -- got a mixed response all over, by then it had become a standing joke at work about how I didn't want the old car back at any cost.
May 10 , 2008 : I was in the middle of debugging something, and I receive a call from some unknown number, thinking it was one of the many car dealers I'd been talking to, I say hello, and the person says "Hi Ma'am, I'm from the sunnyvale police department ... " and I went (in my head ofcourse ) -- ayya!!! :-( , it was the inevitable call saying my car was found in some godforsaken place in South Dakota..
California se gira, aur jaa jaa ke Dakota mein atkaa!!
I took the easiest way out, and handed over the towing responsibility to the insurance guys. It finally came back to the area sometime last week.
Current Status : In the body shop, insurance adjuster on vacation till monday, so can fight with him about the resale value/damages only on monday, and yes, the cooper is still on !
I thought this car episode would be a case of quick death, but has turned out to be a classic Ekta Soap! I even know the title!
"Kyunki Civic ka Khwaab Kabhi 'K'ooper bhi thaa"
--To be continued
