Almost exactly seven years ago my Geo Prizm chugged up the Dumbarton bridge in rush hour during the height of the dot-com boom. She never made it back down. The backup supposedly went eighteen miles, three traffic helicopters were eventually circling, and I’m told I was on the evening news. It was a fitting end for my first car – we drove across the country together, the speedometer broke and I drove for six months with no idea of how fast I was going, and I learned about car repairs since I didn’t have the money to fix things at a shop.
The Prizm was replaced in 1999 by the Suby – I picked the car out based on the fact that I could stretch out full length in the back to sleep. During our time together the Suby and I took a 13,000 mile roadtrip to Alaska, we traveled all over the western United States, and as of yesterday we’d spent over 145,461 miles together. The Suby took great care of me and deserved an end at least as glorious as what happened to the Prizm, but I’ve gotten older, and the idea of breaking down in the middle of the desert a hundred miles from civilization was too extreme for my 31 year old sensibilities. As a result the Suby will soon be in a new home, and the Son of Suby is parked in the garage. More than likely SoS and I will be off on our first road trip shortly, and hopefully junior will live up to the grand legacy of his predecessor.
