“Touch me. It’s so easy to leave me.”

yesterday was an end of an era and i wasn’t there to experience it. i was, instead working, while this event took place and when i came home from work it was gone. the era which i am referring to is the 10 year and 2 month relationship i had with my 1988 Honda Accord Coupe. it is officially no more.

it actually ended four months ago when i bought my 2006 Civic Coupe. however, while i was driving my new car i was trying to think of what to do with the Accord. i knew that i wanted to donate it but i wasn’t sure to whom or to what organization. so the Accord just sat on the street waiting for me to decide what to do with it. when i got back from Peru, i knew that whichever way the donation went the proceeds or the tax right-off amount will go to the mission in Peru. the Accord wasn’t worth much. with the fact that it would cost more to fix the compressor and front suspension than its value (which is around $1000), i wasn’t expecting a lot. in fact i would feel rather guilty to sell it for more than a couple hundred dollars since the buyer would have to sink more into it to repair it. so i decided to drive it to the the local Pick-N-Pull.

but driving to the Pick-N-Pull suddenly became not an option because not driving it for a while has somehow messed up the starter. my dad and i took about an hour or so troubleshooting it and determined that there was no power getting from the battery to the starter. i think that we might have figured it out eventually. but i decided that the car wasn’t worth spending any more time on it. thankfully there are charitable organizations that will accept cars working or not and offer free pickup. so i gave them a call, made an appointment for pickup, and voilá! the era is over.

some of the memories i have with that car are:

• learning to drive manual transmission.
• taking the passenger-side mirror off against a chain-linked fence while backing out of a parking space next to the campus center at PUC. i think i might have been slightly distracted by my friends Janis and Judith at the time.
• washing it in the rain because i was too lazy to use a bucket and hose at PUC.
• driving friends Brian Wong and Kharla Rendon back to PUC after a weekend in San Jose. Kharla and i had this long conversation all the way back and i had just met her for the first time that weekend. we have been good friends ever since.
• driving back and forth to PUC after my graduation visiting friends.
• driving back and forth to Loma Linda after my graduation visiting friends.
• spinning out of controal on the freeway right after getting on it and ending the spinout facing the right direction with no collisions.