The Adventures of Hofman: #96 11 Years and 132,274 Miles

Janie, my beloved 1999 Honda Civic, is no longer mine. After more than eleven years together, I traded Janie in on Saturday. She put on 132,274 more miles after I got her in high school, but she was really starting to show some signs of age lately. So while the weather is still nice and before we had to put more money into Janie, whether for repairs or new tires, Tess and I decided to get another vehicle. (I know I've said in the past that I wouldn't look for another vehicle unless baby #2 was on the way. However, THAT IS NOT THE CASE. TESS AND I ARE NOT EXPECTING ANOTHER BABY. We just wanted to make sure Janie didn't die on our hands.)

I'm going to miss Janie. Eleven years is a long time. I finished high school, went through college and seminary, and got two years into my first "real" job with that car. I knew all her little quirks and perks. Deep in my bones I knew what parking spaces I could fit into and how much time I needed to get up to speed when turning onto a new road. I developed a keen sense of how much luggage I could fit in the trunk, and I'd recently become an expert at feeding the seatbelt through a carseat. Tess, Lanie, my parents, my sister, and several different groups of friends rode in that Civic. So many of my most favorite memories involve my first car. Janie's a car, an object, and yet she was something more to me. Janie was practically my friend.

Saturday was bittersweet, but saying good-bye wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be. Part of that is probably that I actually do realize that Janie is a vehicle and doesn't have feelings. But part of that is also that, as my grandma Susan said to me a couple weeks ago, that car didn't owe me anything. She lasted longer for me than she maybe had a right to. We had a lot of great times, but it was time to move on. Janie's earned a rest. So I took a few pictures to commemorate our final moments together: