The end of the road for Kyle.

I bought Kyle, my 1992 Honda Civic back in February of 2004. This was after my return from the land of Portland in a car that had traversed the nation twice, gone on many countless road trips to my homeland of Massachusetts, delivered many pizzas and rocked out to many tunes. The few months I spent mourning the death of this car were largely spent working two jobs to save up for the car we came to know as Kyle, a name I chose largely because I thought it was funny: “C’mon Kyle, you can do it!” Plus, while other more challenged men feel the need to assign female names to their vehicles, I also was okay with assigning a male name to mine.
Kyle was a two door white Civic, smaller than my first car but still the same old reliable brand. The previous owner loved it, telling me how much he liked the ease with which he could park, and how it never gave him any problems. I was ready to take it the minute I saw it. When the engine turned over on my very first try, I was sold.
First car, first love, they say it never comes again. But I grew to love Kyle, in spite of his many flaws (many of which were my fault.) Only a few months in, I was smashed into by a drunk driver at a blinking red light. The driver’s side was bent in, just behind the door. A foot one way, it would have been totaled. A foot the other, I would have been killed. I was so angry at the time at this irresponsible person who had ran the light, and even attempted to blame me for the accident, that I forgot to realize how lucky I was, and how lucky Kyle was to be able to drive away from the scene.
Later on, we broke down on the side of the road on the way to the racetrack. This would be the first of many breakdowns, and tows, the most dramatic being at a rest stop on the Taconic State Parkway, which forced me to blow over 1000 dollars on repairs, train tickets, a hotel, and left me without a car for three weeks. But he still kept going, as I kept making the repairs happen. I can’t complain too much--the little lady who drove me to the train station so that I could go back and pick up my car is the one who became my wife.
Later still, there was the time I was rear-ended on my way to (of all the fucking irony) Jiffy Lube. That was in fact my fault. This caused my hatch to be permanently closed on the bottom, but broke the latch on the top, effectively making my car a sitting duck for thieves to break in and steal my stuff. Someone stole my radio not long after this, by simply crawling in the back.
And then there was the many months where my door wouldn’t close, and I had to tie it shut with a rope. Ah, memories. It was during this period where I received my first notice for the Maryland Vehicle Emissions Test, which would soon become the bane of my existence….
I wrote a lot about this in the blog, about how my car failed the emissions test and then I had to keep coming back every month and try again. I did 16 of these $14 dollar tests and afterward I would fail and I would be given an order to re-test. At first I was really worried about what would happen if I kept failing. Then I just got annoyed. I vented my thoughts about the futility of the VEIP program, and how it doesn’t really keep polluting cars off the road, it just makes it a pain in the ass for people like me.
Then I went two weeks ago, where they told me that they could not test me because of a crack in my muffler. They gave me a two week extension for a test that was due over two years ago.
Lately, Kyle has been running poorly--stalling at stoplights, having trouble making it up the hills. So I’d hoped that maybe this muffler situation, if cleared up, would help the car’s performance. After all, the mechanic did say that Honda’s performance could be tied to the exhaust system; others in my circle indicated that my problem might just be as simple as this.
Alas, the call from my mechanic came back. Oxygen sensor, major tune up, spark plugs, muffler, right lower control arm…basically a plethora of problems, to the tune of $2000. For a car that cost me $1150 back in 2004. Whew.
I’d given up on Kyle many times over and watched him come back from the dead. But this was it. For one thing, even the cheapest of these repairs is more than I am willing to spend. For another, there is no guarantee that something else won’t break on an 18 year old car, even if it is a Honda Civic. And then there is the fact that I have been talking about going car-less for a while now--after all, most of my transportation needs now are very easily met with my bicycle. And it really all boils down to money. There was a time in my life when I would have barely thought twice about running up something like this on a credit card and just worrying about it later. But that time has past. With adulthood and corresponding responsibilities, so go my romantic notions of holding on to something beyond all reason. The adult in me says, Dave, it’s just a car. Move on. So I am. He’s getting picked up and brought to a better place. I hope that his engine and spare parts will bring happiness to a vehicle that still has a fighting chance.
I will miss having a car. I will miss having Kyle. I had a lot of good memories in that car--first dates with Michele, trips to the track (both painful and triumphant), strangers complimenting my car and offering to buy it, more trips to the homeland, the Davey G shows. On a day-to-day basis I don’t really need a car, but it has always been a security blanket, a way to supplement my biking, a way to stay dry on my way to work on rainy days. But as I drive it today, using up my last tank of gas, stalling out at every light, I tell myself: I won’t miss this. I won’t miss the emissions test or the inexplicable breakdowns.
But when you love something, it is still very hard to let it go.



NOTE: this post is still a work in progress--I’ll add more text and links and pictures later, I just really wanted to get this up now. Thanks for reading.