buriedinfibre.com

I have a very special love/hate relationship with my car.

I love my car. It’s small, fast and I can take the roof off when then sun comes out. Not to mention it’s wonderful fuel economy.

BUT

It leaks. And it’s that charming shade of Honda red that fades like a mofo if you look at it funny. Someone’s looked at my car funny a fair bit.

These things in mind and factoring in that the monkey sort of hates my car and has done since I bought it, we went car shopping.

The monkey has a 3 year old Mazda and the dealership was having what we laughingly now call a “SALE!” for previous customers only. We thought this might be a good opportunity to buy a new (or new to me) vehicle and forgo a winter of me whining about the horrible frozen state of the interior of my car.

I spent some time online researching certain models I was interested in and narrowed it down to two. Two incredibly different cars, but just the two. The Kia Soul and the Mazda 3 Sport. We started at Kia sans appointment and were almost immediately whisked into a Soul of the model I wanted and off on a test drive. I almost to hate to admit how much I loved it. I loved it a lot. It was much bigger than I thought it would be but it drove and handled like a very small car. It lagged a bit on hills, but this was the very base model and I haven’t had an engine that small for a very long time.

Then we were off to Mazda, where, despite our appointment, we had to wait. Quite a while. Then we had to wait some more for the car (not the model I wanted even) to be gassed up. Now, don’t get me wrong, it was a nice car. Very peppy, really responsive, almost too responsive for my taste. It was what I refer to as, “twitchy”. I’m not used to twitchy and don’t much care for it. My car has power assist steering and that’s fine with me. Before it, I’d had armstrong steering in all my other cars. I don’t mind showing the car the way. The brakes were equally twitchy. I almost put the monkey through the windscreen at one point.

And really, I was already in love. With the Soul.

After surviving the bit of pressure the salesman tried to apply, we went home where I decided to sleep on it.

The decision I came is this: I’m going to fix up my car. Disassemble the rear end and fix the leaks and repaint it. I’m thinking of doing the painting myself. I’ve sprayed auto paint on guitars, this is just a larger surface which actually makes it a little easier.  Pretty sure I can manage it.

I’ll give my car the winter and see how it does and then decide on a new car or not. The 2011 Souls will be out by then too. Maybe they’ll have a new model with a DOHC 2.5L engine…

On a completely different topic…

I have simply lovely friends! Feeling pretty lucky today as this arrived in the post:

An awesome knitting bag, beautiful fibre and hand balm that smells good enough to eat. I managed to get a pic before I drafted the fibre and started spinning it with my Whirling Dervish. Stuff feels just amazing!

Thanks Leslie! I can’t wait to see you at Black Sheep. Where I might be making another wheel acquisition…