something old, something new

She breaks the lengthy silence...
We had obtained our passports in anticipation of a road trip to New York the first week in July. However, Saturday, June 21, those plans came to a halt. The morning started out like many a weekend, except that we were surfing the Web--ooo, suddenly that "surf" sounds archaic...does anybody surf the Web anymore? or take a ride on the "information highway," for that matter?--for hotel and car rental rates.

We decided to check into prices via CAA, and drove to the Kanata customer service centre. That was a huge waste of time: there were better offers online for both hotels and car rentals. Ultimately, we purchased insurance, stopped for lunch at Rockin' Johnny's (a '50s-themed diner), and were on our way home to book the aforesaid two items on our own, when James suggested we stop in at Tony Graham's Infiniti Nissan. (Little did I suspect this would actually lead to its obvious conclusion.)

Needless to say, in a matter of, oh, maybe 4 hours, it was good-bye, dear ol' Pathfinder which we've had for 7 years with a wham-bam-thank-y' ma'am! send-off (study the photo, you'll see what I mean, and just for the record, I was nowhere nearby when it happened)...

well done, thou good and faithful servant
1999-2008

...and hello, Altima. It's the car in the forefront--the other cars belong to other people. People have nicknamed the region where we live "Barbecue-haven," but I sometimes think it should be "Cars-by-you-haven." No getting away from them. You should see the streets on weekends, when everybody on the block except us invites friends and family over.

Not that I don't like the new car--I do--but I was a bit sorry at leaving the Pathfinder behind, since it's been the one thing that we've owned for a substantial period of time, and it provided a sense of consistency or continuity during our transitions. And it proved itself especially handy for carting things home from IKEA. Still, as James reminded me, the Pathfinder returned to Tony Graham's, the dealership from whence it originally came.

I like to tell the story of how we acquired the Pathfinder in the first place. It happened when we lived in Ottawa the first time around. It was sometime in 2001, about a year and a half since we'd moved, and we were finding it a bit of a challenge to coordinate our commutes to what amounted to opposite ends of the city. We were having a conversation about what to do about our vehicle situation over dinner at Kelsey's (back in the days when I still ate at that restaurant). I half-flippantly, half-seriously interjected, "Let's pray about it!" So we did. (It wasn't a gimme-gimme prayer; it was a "God, here's our situation, we're not sure what to do, so can you help us figure it out?") As we drove around the corner of our street in our little Pontiac Sunbird LE, we saw the Pathfinder with a for sale sign in its window. I rarely receive such instantaneous answers to prayers, but this was too serendipitous to be coincidence alone. Roger, the Pathfinder's original owner, had taken very good care of it for two years. I can't remember what other vehicles Roger said he owned, but the one car in his garage was obviously an expensive one, because he kept a tarp over it. We caught an impressive glimpse of gleaming metal though.

That was the beginning of the Pathfinder era to which we now bid a fond farewell. Thus begins a new era. Or as Robert Jordan would say, "The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend."