A Farewell to My Adventure Buddy

Anyone who knows me knows that I loooooove my Honda, Bernard. He is a beautiful white 1998 Honda EX. I named him after Bernard from The Rescuers and The Rescuers Down Under.

After the winter of 2015-2016, Bernard's issues trickled away. However, in 2017, they ramped up again. While my mechanic's service has been...less than satisfactory in recent times, a large part of things was that Bernard is just getting old. He turned 20 in May.

Anyway, during December and January, he was in and out of the shop. Every cold morning that he wouldn't start or didn't drive well was a sore blow to me. I had to get to work. Taking the bus was freezing, added one to two hours to my commute time each day, and required planning so that I could get up suuuper early and leave work a bit early, too. Taking one of my parents' cars was only possible on the days that their spare car would start (said spare car doesn't do well in the cold).

It was frustrating. I was not happy. And one January morning when my parents were kind enough to take Bernard to the mechanic for me, they called me to tell me that he needed $900 worth of repairs to fix his radiator and keep him from overheating.

Now, Bernard's not worth very much these days. We stopped insuring him shortly before this. So hearing that he needed repairs that far exceeded his own value made my radiator break down. In a matter of speaking. I was certainly overheating from irritation and a bit of anger. This was the fifth or sixth time I'd brought Bernard to the mechanic in the space of not very many weeks, and I was tired of pouring money into my beloved but dying car.

In a moment of impulsiveness, I burst out, "Then tell them not to go ahead with the repairs, because I will be buying a new car!"

I will tell you more about the car-buying process later, but for now, I will merely say that I miraculously managed to obtain a new car that same week. It's the quickest turn-around I've ever had on a big life decision.

Once I had a new car, the next natural step was to get rid of Bernard, right? Well...I really didn't want to! I had plans to donate him to a high school shop program (since his resell value wasn't enough to try to find a buyer, although in November I'd bought him new snow tires, which I had removed since they were worth more than the entire car). But the shop teacher was rather busy/flaky—I was pretty busy/flaky besides being reluctant—so it took four months to finally part with my sweet, sweet Bernard. He's only been gone a couple of weeks, and I miss him dearly.

Goodbye, my beautiful Bernard. We had many good times together. I'll never, ever forget you!