This post is a couple weeks in coming, but I was slow in getting the pictures. Now that I have them, here is the full story:
When I was getting ready to head off to college for the first time, my parents generously bought me a Silver 1998 Honda Civic. I loved that car greatly. There were many experiences I had in the car that will live with me for the rest of my life.
My best friend and roommate in college, Joe, also had Silver 1998 Honda Civic, but his was a grade higher. We used to have the best times driving in tandem. One particularly fond memory is of the two of us e-brake turning, sequentially, to park in front of our apartment. Good times...
At some point, either near the end of my time in college, or in the following years, Joe told me about the Honda Fit coming to America. It had been the Honda low-end Civic replacement that had been in circulation in (at least) Japan for the last couple of years. Ever since then, I've had my eye on them.
I debated between the Fit and a Honda Hybrid for a number of years as the eventual replacement for my Civic; but eventually I decided the Fit was a better fit for me - for a number of reasons. Towards the end of August, I decided it was time to act, so I began an adventure through Cheyenne and Northern Colorado to find one. Unfortunately, I happened to decide at precisely the moment that no 2008 Fits could be found, and the 2009's were still a couple of weeks away. So I waited...
Fast forward a little bit to September 6th, 2008: I had not heard back from the dealers in Colorado, so after a little investigating, I found out that the '09's were not yet in stock and that the only one available soon would be a base model. Which would have been fine, but I was looking for the Sport model, primarily for the Cruise Control feature.
On a whim, I decided to try the local Honda dealer, Tyrrell-Doyle (note: I had a bad experience with this dealer in the past, and was not particularly looking to do business with them), and to my surprise, not only did Tyrrell-Doyle have a 2009 Honda Fit Sport, they had three. I came to the dealer immediately, to test drive one, to see if it was everything I had imagined.
I was in love at first sight, and everything I saw seemed to be screaming that this was my car. For instance, an inspection of the engine revealed a praying mantis hiding under the hood. To be very clear what this meant to me, I have been very interested in praying mantises for a number of years, but I had not seen one in the wild since perhaps my childhood, if ever. They are very rare here because the climate does not favor them, however, for some reason, there was one in my car. The number of symbols is astounding.
After a test drive, I decided to purchase the car, and after some negotiating, worked the price to $18,181. I like the number for its palindromic appeal, however I later realized that the perfect price was $18,081. The reason for this is that there are a vast number of nines involved with this car. For example, the car lot number assigned to this vehicle by the dealer was "90009". It is a 2009 vehicle, and I bought it in September, the ninth month. 18081 / 9 = 2009. Alas, I realized this perfection too late; I guess I will have to try harder for a numerically perfect car the next time I buy one. Still, I got pretty close...
0 comments:
Post a Comment