And Another Car Bites the Dust

After 12 years I finally decided it was time to say goodbye to my 2008 element (which has become a

money suck the last few years). Didn’t want to deal with a private sale and not purchase another car, so Carmax it is. 

I honestly feel I got a good deal and now there is more room in the garage

 I remember buying the car in January of 2012.  I wanted an Element because 1) Katness had one and she recommended it and 2) I had visions of Nightingale and I throwing our bikes in the back and hitting the trails.  We did that...once.  If you add in a few times that I took the car in for maintenance and used my bike to get around then it comes to about half a dozen times.

when we moved down here and I was forced to get a Mississippi license plate, I went with a vanity.  A variation of Chicago Forever.  My BIL Confederate Jethroy gave me a hard time because the abbreviation could be something else. By something else, only an inbred illiterate or a person trying t get a rise out of someone would think it meant.

In MS, your tag is based on some formula of how old your car is and how many miles it has.  The minimum is $50.  even with the vanity option, my plates cost less than standard in Illinois (1 point for Slytherin).  it was $83.85 that first year.  $67.65 last year.  I don't have the year in between but assume $8 more.  

When I returned my tags I got a whopping $8.50 that can be applied when we renew our next tags, likely the minivan.  I had to release the vanity plate but I'm positive no one is gonna take it in the next decade let alone five months before we renew our plates.

Sometime last summer, I forget the exact dates because time no longer has any meaning down here, 

The passenger side window on my Honda Element stopped working, in the down position.  The part only costs $30 but the Level of Effort is substantial.  I didn't want to take it on myself so I paid a local mechanic to fix it.  Of course, he charged me 3X the price of the part.

Then my muffler on the Element bit the dust.  it was fine on the drive to Home Depot but apparently, I hit something on the shitty Mississippi roads and it caused problems.

To keep this long story less long, I ended up at Midas.  They took me to the cleaners.  Nightingale pushed that we get new tires and brakes even though I wanted to wait.  It turns out, if I had waited a couple weeks, we could have sold the Element as is because her parents bought their neighbor's Honda CRV and lent it to us.

They bought it because they thought their Michigan Daughter wanted it for their kid.  There is some dispute over who said what and what level of commitment there was.  The Adamas could have backed out but didn't feel it was the right thing to do, because reasons.

So we have had three cars in our garages and driveways since last summer.  Until this weekend.  When the driver's side window stopped working, along with the windshield wiper, I just had to surrender.