sunset

diary entry, 13 jan 2024

Eighteen and 2/3 years, 166,406 miles. The last of them today.

Thirty-two states and two Canadian provinces. I had no business buying the Element when I did; I had taken a package and decided to spend way too much of the severance money on what a co-worker pointed out to me was a depreciating asset, as I tried to justify the decision. I first saw one in person at the New York Auto Show, where everyone else was mocking its design and I was checking out the sunglasses compartment. It was unquestionably a mid-life crisis purchase. Honda knew what they were doing when they cast dozens of 20-somethings in ads for a car that mainly appealed to middle-agers.

Two alternators, two starters, two batteries. Buying a new car ought to be the most fun thing you can do, but the reality of it combines the worst qualities of root canal therapy and doing your own income taxes. So the first drive ought to be the most fun thing, but you’re pondering whether you could have gotten a better deal - maybe you could have talked them into a roof rack at cost - and you’re aware that twenty percent of the asset you just purchased will depreciate the moment you pass the curb in front of the dealership, and you’re convinced some fool is going to T-bone you in the first six blocks. The second drive is the actual most fun thing; you put your partner in the passenger seat and play with the mirrors and the sound system and honk the horn and roll the windows down and pretend the West Side Highway is the open road.

Two driver’s side mirrors. Its color was Sunset Orange Pearl. I had wanted green, but the green ones came with a hideous interior fabric, and then I wanted red, but the red wasn’t metallic and a salesperson talked me out of it. I came to love the color; it, in fact, glowed in the sunset. It took me a while to name my car; it was “the Element” for years. Finally I landed on Rocinante, the name of Don Quijote’s steed. At the time I thought it had something to do with the color red; in fact, it means “old nag.” The error was Quijote-esque. Over time, the name fit more and more, as will happen.

Three clutches. I insisted on a stick-shift; driving an automatic isn’t driving, it’s steering. One of the salesmen I talked to, when I told him this requirement, replied “I guess you don’t spend much time on the Belt Parkway.” No sir, I think we logged more miles on back roads in North Dakota than on the Belt. Once when I was driving a bunch of little-leaguers through Red Hook, a ten-year-old asked me, “Why do you keep moving that thing back and forth?” “What, this?” I said. “The gearshift?” I had to explain manual transmission to him. I maintained from then on I ought to have a discount on my comprehensive insurance since none of the kids were going to be able to take it on a joyride.

More trips full of theater crap than I can count. I began measuring the increasing elaborateness of our shows by the number of Element loads of scenery. It could handle an eight-foot ladder if you laid down the seats and rested the top step on the dash. Two windshields, because I thought I was smart and could fit a ten-foot 2x8 in similarly, and learned otherwise when I slammed the back hatch.

More trips crossing Pennsylvania on I-80 than I care to remember. It knew the turns by itself after a while. Too many stops in towns with names starting with “C” for a a lousy meal and a motel and eleven gallons of gas. One memorable trip carrying generators and sump pumps and two five-gallon gas cans back to a Red Hook after Hurricane Sandy. We rolled into town like Santa with a Sunset Orange Pearl sleigh.

And, of course, one trip of a lifetime, most of which has been well-enough documented elsewhere. I will only note that when we stopped for food - and I say “we,” even though I was the only person going - I always wanted to sit where I could look out the window at my car. (OK, I will also note that in Minot I bought a fleece in Rocinante’s exact colors, orange with gray panels, and when I showed up wearing it in Missoula my cousin concluded that gay men like to wear clothes that match their cars.)

Only absurd, rampant anthropomorphism could lead me to feel the way I’m feeling, to have said “Goodbye old friend” this morning, to worry over the likelihood that the next stop is going to be an auto salvage yard somewhere. But I’m not mourning a car, I’m feeling the passage of nearly two decades in which I went from no longer young to not quite old. And all of the things we did together, and all of the people we met along the way.

Four catalytic converters, including one installed by a friend of a friend of a friend that apparently had no interior components, and another bought on the cheap that ultimately brought us to today. Rocinante was rumbling badly at the end, stalling for the first few miles unless you let her warm up for ten minutes. She had depreciated from $20,100 to the $400 I agreed to today. Still, on one last drive to the beach yesterday, and down to the dealership today, I felt the thrill of hammering the gas off the entrance ramp, downshifting for a knot of traffic - it was the Belt Parkway, after all - rolling down the windows to feel the breeze off New York Harbor, and cruising under the Verrazzano to see the ocean one more time.