Goodbye Elantra

Adam has been driving a little red Hyundai since I met him six years ago. When I first started dating him, I thought he was so cool because his car was only a year old and it had a manual transmission (ooo lah lah), plus it was bright red. Sometimes he would pick me up at my apartment, take me to get ice cream and then we would sit in the car, listen to the radio and talk with the windows down. When he graduated and moved to Baltimore and I was still in Newark, I remember working on schoolwork and looking out the window waiting for his little red car to turn onto my street.

Four years ago, when we took a family vacation to Hilton Head, he taught me to drive it so that I could contribute to the 10 hour drive (alot of people have attempted to teach me how to drive stick shift and I pretty much just hate it). When I took my turn at the wheel sometime in Virginia, there was bumper to bumper traffic, I stalled in the middle of 95 with a huge truck behind me and I was so freaked out that I couldn’t get it started again. After that, I never got behind the wheel of the Hyundai again.

Since buying the house, we’ve noticed that we sometimes have a need for a car that can haul more stuff. In January, we went to the car show in Harrisburg and checked out a bunch of crossover SUVs, but didn’t really get around to researching and test driving any until about a month ago. Last weekend, we decided to put the Hyundai on Craigslist to see if anyone would be interested. Luckily, we found a couple in Newark interested in it and yesterday, Adam signed over the title. Hopefully this weekend we’ll go pick up our new car.

Adam always says that I get too attached to inanimate objects (i.e. I was almost in tears when I traded in my Honda a few years ago), but after spending a lot of time in that car with him, I’m definitely going to miss it (and the lack of car payment).