It hit me

It hit me pretty strong when I was typing out the last posting about El Paso not being the same. My cruising habits changed drastically. Back when I first started cruising out and about with Evelyn, we drove in her car which was significantly larger than my little two and a half seat Sunbird convertible. When her car became too much of a liability to the road, she went and bought a pickup truck. When it came time for me to choose a new car, I chose a sedan, instead of looking for a convertible like I wanted.

I liked the Cavalier I bought after the first convertible. It was an extremely reliable car and never broke down on me with any mechanical failure. Tires, it went thru like water, the rear brake made a weird clunking sound, but it never did anything to compromise safety. It also became the vehicle everyone wanted to go cruising in town in, since Evelyns truck was much too cramped for everyone to fit into. Up until she sold the truck for her current car, the four of us piled into my car and went for a cruise and enjoyed each other's company. In the three and a half years I had that car, Evelyn was the only other person to have ever driven it other than family, and I wasn't even in the car when she did.

Fast forward to June/ July of last year. Evelyn and Yolie packed their bags and left for Corpus Christi to attend school and to work. I now had a car that was too big for me. You might be saying "a Cavalier is too big for you?" and I can say with a definite yes that it was too big for me. It had 3 empty seats. Three places where silence was the only thing occupying their space. It was no longer the car I could jump into and expect to hear the unexpected, to hear the laughter and to be content with the strange sound of silence that only four people could understand and be comfortable with.

I found the Mustang on January 1st of this year. I bought it the same day I saw it. There was something cathartic about trading in the Cavalier for the Mustang. In one way, the Mustang was everything I had ever wanted in a car, name recognition, style, history, heritage, longetivity. It was also my dream car. On the other hand, it was a convertible. Most people think about convertibles and see the open top enjoyment that most people dream about, and that's true. I got the Mustang for an entirely different reason.

Back when I had my Sunbird, I loved going on cruises with the top down and the radio turned off. It was a way I could escape from what was wrong in my life, and that was my job at the time. I had a boss from hell and he loved to create doubt and made everyone walk on egg shells just to keep everyone on their toes. My escape had been the car, no one told me where to go, what to do, what to see, and it became sanctuary. Soon, I started to let people into my car and I would share my sanctuary with others and it just got too small, so I got the Cavalier. It also doesn't help that the [Sunbird] suffered a fatal timing belt break and was killed...

So the reason I opine about the Cavalier is because when I parted ways with it almost a year ago, I parted with all the memories and laughter it held within. The chocolate Yolie dropped on the seat, the coffee spilling in the center console, singing "The never ending song" with 5 people crammed in the car. In a sense, trading it in was a step towards change and growing up and moving on. I no longer need a multi-seat car to hold friends in, those days for now are over. I am back to a car that takes my worries, hassles and troubles and lets them fly free from the dropped top and into the openness of the road.