ode to the echo.

It's taken me a few days to be able to write this. Remember when I wrote that post about how much I love my car when it reached 100,000 miles and I said how I hope that I'm in the Toyota commercial when we reach 400k together? 

Unfortunately, that won't be happening. My car didn't even make it another 6,000 miles before a neighbor's tree fell on it while Andy and I were away for the weekend, and it's totaled. A random healthy-looking tree, no storm, no wind, no nothing. We were visiting Andy's parents when I received a call from my landlord (who also lives on the property).

It's so hard to write this because I feel like it makes it true. I keep thinking I'm going to wake up from this horrible nightmare and i'll just have my car back. 

The Echo served me well for nearly 9 years, from helping me (and several of my cousins) get a driver's license, to carting me (and all of my stuff) all over the place for several summers, to being the best little car with excellent gas mileage that still could comfortably hold 5 people and a trunk full of stuff and still fit in ANY parking space out there (even when both cars on the sides are over their lines). Not sure how Toyota made that possible, but unfortunately they decided to change it up, and the Yaris just isn't the same.

Needless to say I'm devastated (to the point of being irrational) and dreading a new car purchase (not exactly something I need financially right now either).  I wasn't planning on giving the car up any time soon. I know that it could be worse, but it's just an "Act of God" as they call it, and unfortunately I have to foot the bill for now and for the length of a car loan for the next several years. 

I feel it's ironic that my chosen path is to protect nature and the environment. The echo has never been in an accident; however, this is the 2nd "Act of God" to attack it. [freak hail storm back in March 2003 was the first] One friend told me "No good deed goes unpunished." I guess that must be what happened.

Well, for now, I suppose I will just leave you with pictures.

Andy's truck is usually parked to the right of my car. It most likely would have been totaled too.

I had to pull 3 traffic cones, a cooler, knee boots, hiking boots, several bottles for stormwater samples, and crate full of other work equipment out through the backseat.

windshield + wipers out of commission.

So please bear with me if I don't post a lot in the upcoming days/weeks. I was really looking forward to posting about the trip out to visit Andy's parents, but I think it will just have to wait.

i miss you already, my little spaceship.

six figures!

no, not my salary. but my car! my echo has finally reached 100,000 miles.

i've been with my echo since before i took my driving test (i used it for my test, as did several of my cousins. you can parallel park this baby ANYWHERE). my parents purchased this car for me in july 2002 with just about 30,000 miles on it. i wasn't in love with it when we got it, but i have no intentions of letting it go until it falls apart. 

i essentially didn't drive the echo for five years while i was in college/grad school, but i did drive it over the summers in between (which was a lot of driving--summer classes that were an hour away, driving to and from camp, driving to and from visiting andy every weekend when we were 2 hours apart in summer '07, etc). it took me where i needed to go when i had my AmeriCorps job (which was all over the state of NJ--and the first week of the program i had a flat tire at the end of our first week of training...).


the echo and i have had some adventures even though it's only been in two states (at least while i've had it)--NJ & PA. it's been covered in snow and has gotten pretty beat up on occasion--in march 2003, i encountered a freak hail storm while driving and my car looked like a golf ball for quite a while. and now with my long drive to work, i've had some tough encounters with salt trucks. andy is going to touch up some paint this summer though, so it will be beautiful.  it's carted me and my stuff to live in various places over the summer, and sometimes it has felt like i lived out of my car. 

in 8.67 years, it's been 70,000 miles. minus the time at school (we'll keep a year in there for all the summers combined), i'm averaging 15,000 miles a year! [hold up, have i really been driving for nearly 9 years!?]

i may not have power windows or doors, but i've got me a tape deck and a CD player and this baby gets 35-40 mpg. 

here's to another 100K more! 


(ps: there is a toyota commercial out there that talks about how many miles people have on their toyotas, and there is a guy who has over 400,000 miles on his. i want that to be me and my echo.)