2000 Ford Focus SE
I haven't posted more about my new car yet because I wanted to have pictures to show you.
I bought a Ford Focus. This surprises me. I am surprised that I now own an American car. I was only convinced to do so because everything under the hood is made by Mazda and thus less crappy than if it were made by Ford. That explains why the car has a lot of broken and scratched plastic parts, and chipped paint. Ford made those.
I am not disappointed with my car, even though it's not exactly what I wanted. It is probably the best I could get for the very little amount of money I paid for it. I paid cash, and I am pretty damn proud of that. Five months out of college, waitressing, in a recession, and I paid cash for a car.
Having a car requires me to re-train my brain. Yesterday I caught myself measuring my energy, unconsciously. I was estimating how hard and long I could work in order to have enough left to ride my bike home. Then I remembered I didn't have to save any energy to ride! Today, as I was making a to-do list in my head of all the things I want and need to do today (with time to blog, watch "House," and be lazy added in), I tried to decide whether or not to go to a concert downtown tonight. I was debating whether I'd have time to do everything and go to the show too. Then I realized that I don't have to decide until about 9 p.m., because I don't have to arrange a way to get there, or depend on anyone to drive me. I can be spontaneous.
The thing I like best about the new car, other than the fact that it is in fact a car, is it's stereo system. It's a 2000 Ford Focus SE. SE stands for "Sony Edition." 
This means that the whole purpose of the car is to sound good. And it really, really does. This thing is probably quite wasted on me, actually. Some tailgating Nebraska Husker fan really deserves this car. The stereo has a remote. This is so that you do not have to move from your lawn chair or your Bud Light in order to turn up the volume on the speakers and subwoofer in the trunk, which is of course open and full of coolers of bad beer. 
While I'm sure I will thoroughly enjoy the stereo system, it is probably wasted on my addiction to NPR and Lincoln's independent station, KZUM. It doesn't have a place to plug in my iPod. Once I get some blank CDs and burn some good music, maybe I can do the old SE some justice.
On the downside, the car has 112,000 miles. I'd hoped for something a little lower. And it's been in a pretty serious front-end collision. Then it was put back together rather shoddily so the radiator and the compressor are rubbing up against each other. If that causes problems, it'll cost like a thousand bucks to fix. But it might not ever be a problem. It's a gamble. At least I found a really great mechanic who is also very reasonable.
I still don't really believe in owning a car. It is a necessary evil for now, and I hope I will not always have to have one. I still plan to ride my bike to work when I can. Tomorrow, for starters. But today I am going to take all the recycling we have collected since we moved into this house to the recycling center, for which I definitely needed a car. So I suppose there are some good things about it.
I need to name my car. I think it is a her. I'm not sure if this is because I am sexist or what. My bike is also a girl. I think that cars are the modern-day dragon. Dragons, as we all know, are always the opposite gender from their dragon-rider. So my car should be male. But it just really feels like a girl. I can't refer to it as "him." It is a "she."
Suggestions? It might need to start with an "i" because my bike's name is Izzy. But I'm open to anything.
6 comments:
I am totally jealous of your sound system.
Too often i'm sitting at a red light listening to All Things Considered, and someone will roll up beside me in their bumping Escalade/Civic/Whatever with their windows rolled down. I would sooo love to crank up Robert Siegel and compete for sound space.
Your car is definately male, by the way.
bad. fucking. ass.
when i saw that i was a focus, i flexed the muscles in my neck and made a face like 'yikes'. then you said everything under the hood is mazda. that is good.
i am proud of you for this.
my bike is named ginger. it's a she. i don't ever refer to her as ginger. or my car as 'rambi'. i think 'rambi' is a boy but he's gay so i don't know. or lesbian or something. or just the nonchalance of casual sex.
it's a foreigner. i don't know.
I agree about the opposite-gender card/driver thing. I called mine "him" the other day, when you were there driving in it, and it just felt wrong. Up till then it had mostly been "she" (though she never had a name.) Or "it."
Strangely, "it" sounds the best. Perhaps my car is neuter. Which Ben Barber would think entirely fitting.
If your car were male you could call him Ishmael. Ishmael and Izzy. It sounds all right. I have a students named Irma and Ivana if you're looking for girl names. Ivana might be a nice reminder of our ice cream days.
Genders for bikes and cars are tricky. I once had a male car. He was fat and brown and would sometimes shoot flames or smoke from his belly. But Lucy, she was cute and blue and sometimes high maintenance, but once we figured her out, she was just fine.
My bikes were always strong men. Although I sometimes slipped and referred to them as girls.
oh! oh! Inyaki. It is foreign name and, really, could work for a boy or a girl. (I have such a wealth of exotic names here in Mexico.)
And I'm glad you feel more free to be spontaneous. :)
units are moving.
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