It's Gone
From and including: Saturday, October 22, 2005To and including: Monday, February 21, 2011
- 1949 days
- 5 years, 4 months
- 168,393,600 seconds
- 2,806,560 minutes
- 46,776 hours
- 278 weeks
From excitement, anticipation and plans, to apathy, disappointment, and resignation.
From one career, through a void, to another.
From a life, a love and a home, to abject loss and starting over.
It had to go. Partially because of the ever-increasing deferred maintenance that I knew I had to pay for soon, partially because I was burnt out on it, but really, it was about her. Memories of her. I couldn't look at, drive in or think about the car without it ripping open every wound. I'm not exaggerating.... every article I've posted on this blog is full of memories of her. From the day I picked it up and drove it home to find that she had spent the day with him, until I drove out of our driveway for the last time on 6 August 2010, pulling a trailer of my stuff using the hitch I designed, it seems like the A3 was an evil talisman. I couldn't even post here any more because everything about it brought back a bad memory.
Thanks to Stephen King, people associate the name 'Christine' with bad automotive karma. For me, I'll never see an A3 without thinking Sandra. Both were money-sucking, soul-destroying Austrians who never lived up to their looks, or what people assume about them.
It's gone. I will miss some things about it. Maybe soon I'll find another car to get excited about, but for now I've replaced it with something less exciting but more satisfying. Less sexy but more reliable. Something I can trust. Something that hasn't yet broken my heart.
Here are the final stats for every single fueling:
When I was about to drive off in my new car, I couldn't. I got out and went over to the A3. Walked around it, caressed it. I got in. Flashed the bi-xenon lamps. Foot on the modified Ultimate Pedals clutch, I shifted through all the gears remembering the night I installed the Forge Short Shift Kit. As I glanced up at the sunvisor where I had removed the warning label, I saw the lady sales manager was watching me out the dealership window, smiling. I got out of the A3, into my new car, and drove away.
Even dysfunctional relationships are hard to leave behind.
Thank you for all the visits to this blog, and for all the emails over the years. I'll leave it up as a resource for the A3 community as long as people are still reading it.
Tschüss,
Len
Labels: Photos
posted by Len @ 23:55
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