It’s just a car, so why am I crying?
It’s just a car. I didn’t have it very long. I leased it. And, I am not exactly someone who obsesses over what type of vehicle I drive.
Then, why, as I drive out of the dealership parking lot with a brand new, shiny leased Toyota am I crying as I look over toward the forlorn 2016 blue Scion that served as my transportation for the last three years?
The Scion I dropped off was the third one in a row I had leased for three years a pop, and never in my two previous drop-offs did I shed a tear. Always, I was just grateful to survive the gauntlet of car salesmen, inspections, credit score pronouncements, and contract signings that wipe out any trace of sentimentality.
But this time was different. Oh, the process was no picnic. But after three leases, some of the sales reps remembered me. “ When I saw you, I knew you looked familiar, and so I looked it up,” said one salesman sitting nearby as I spoke with another.
It turned out that he had sold me my first leased car, and after he brought it up, the memories came back. My husband reminded me that we made him take a photo of us in front of the shocking red Scion, me in my jean skirt and flip flops. Before that, during the first five years we lived in California, my husband and I had shared a single car: A no-frills black Toyota Corolla that had carried us more than a decade and across America three times. We were newly married, and living in my native Connecticut, when I bought that car for $15,000 on a raw, rainy Saturday. Of our two cars, it was bigger, and therefore the one that came with us when we decided to sell our CT home, and move to California after coming here temporarily for my husband’s nine-month fellowship at Stanford.
We were proud of the five years that we had lowered our carbon footprint, sharing rides, riding bikes and traveling on trains, but we had grown tired of coordinating every weekend and, plus, we could finally afford a second car after navigating the shock wave that every transplant to Silicon Valley faces: stunning real estate prices. So I decided to lease a car.
Driving to the dealership in the third Scion since that first one, my husband following in his car behind me, we passed through all those old places we frequented when I leased the first one, the side roads where we pedaled our bikes when we both worked at the San Jose Mercury News, the townhouse where our beloved first cat together is now buried, the road leading to the weekly farmers market we walked to nearly every weekend, the university that gave us a new chapter in life, and where I eventually worked for five years.
Earlier in the week, I had even suggested that we try the one-car routine again. But, I knew deep inside that I was kidding myself. So much has changed with the passage of 13 years. My husband has an EV, and even as the range of the Nissan Leaf has improved over the years, it is still not the best option for long road trips. We live in Half Moon Bay, where hopping on a bicycle or train is not as easy as it was when we lived “over the hill” as the locals on the coastside call it. And, who am I kidding. The days of bicycling half the way to our jobs on crisp, sunny mornings is over. I am older. I work in San Francisco, not San Jose.
Munching on dealership popcorn in the idleness that dominates making a car deal, I remembered my second Scion. That one, also red, we called “The Scion of Palo Alto” after it was christened that by a passerby during one of our best road trips through the Canadian Rockies. The bearded man in his late 60s, seeing our California plates framed by a dealer moniker from Palo Alto, called out the name when he came up to our car as we sat along a two-lane road trying to figure out where to stay for the night. He explained that he used to live in Northern California until he escaped the draft during the Vietnam War to this haven. A happy, artsy, hippish place, the small town felt like an escape even all these decades later. He offered us up some kayaks in case we wanted to venture out, but unfortunately, we were just passing through.
Waiting to finish the car deal, I tried to recall our last big road trip, where every turn brings an a-ha moment. We are still big travelers, even having gone to Siberia last year. But those weekends — or weeks — of looking at a map, and deciding to take off for a day or two are more rare. We both have big jobs, and they take their toll, leaving us more tired in our down time than we used to be. And, living on the Coastside with its beauty and mellow, surfer vibe, sometimes it is just easier and more relaxing to stay close to home.
At some point during my wait, a bell rings. When they sell a car, they ring a bell, not unlike a dinner bell, and everyone applauds. I glanced over to see an elderly couple standing under the bell smiling. And in that instance, I realized that I was much closer in age to them than the salesman patiently waiting for me to fumble through my cards to find my drivers license. And this time, before signing the contract, I consider a question, I never asked before. Purely theoretical of course. What happens if I retire before the lease expires and we decide to leave California? That’s fine, says the 23-year-old reviewing the contract details with me.
During the test drive, the salesman shows me the blind spot technology. A light and a beep in your side mirrors to notify you when a vehicle is in your blind spot. I think about one of my best friends in high school, who stood in her driveway, and walked in such blind spot, while I sat in the driver’s seat of my parent’s car. I marveled as I looked in the side mirror as she appeared, disappeared and reappeared again, like a car passing. How many times that lesson must have saved both our lives through the decades. She was the same best friend who gave me a birthday card for my mother that would become part of my family lore when I drove into a guard rail just a couple days after getting my driver’s license. Luckily, I was going slow, and did not get hurt, but the hole it left in the bumper remained there for years, and in my ego. I had been leaning over to pick up the birthday card which had blown off the seat onto the floor on that New England summer evening, when I swerved into the guard rail. But, I was so embarrassed by the truth, that I lied to my parents and told them I was distracted, adjusting the car radio, as if that was a better excuse.
I have lost track of that friend after all these years.
The next day, with the contract signed, and my new car in the driveway of our home, I decide which items will go into my new car, passing on the ones that will get no use like my pile of CDs. Blanket , lighter and jumper cables go in for safety, along with an extra bottle of water. And, there’s the usual: sunglasses, FastTrak, a pen, phone charging cable.
And then, I come to the rest: two road atlases, a handful of maps and tire chains.
The last time we used those chains, we were 10 years younger in the Sierras in the winter. And, we’ve let friends borrow them for their ventures. Do I really need them? I put them in and vow to finally take that skiing trip I have been promising myself.
As for the road atlases. Who needs two of these things, including a well worn U.S. atlas with detailed maps of every state? GPS and smartphones lead us everywhere. I have used them so little I could hardly find them in my previous car.
After returning from the car dealership and dinner in our old stomping grounds where our California dream began, my husband and I did something we had not done in a long time. We threw some cushions on the rug in our living room, plopped down and spread out those maps and atlases.
We looked for nearby places we had never been. Look, a ghost town with the same name as my former Connecticut home. A wildlife reserve, a mini Cape Cod in Bodega Bay, an island with no obvious access, the home of a famous naturalist. Is that lighthouse still there?
Netflix off, phones set aside (well, mostly), we mapped out a plan for a road trip.
That next morning, I carried every one of those maps and atlases into the car. And, this time, I made sure they were in plain sight.
