goodbye

originally uploaded by pr9000.

I had to say goodbye to my beloved little red convertible yesterday. I know it sounds horribly snooty to bemoan the loss of a BMW -- like I need to pahk the cahr on haaahvahd yaaahd snooty -- but that car was very special to me.

I took it on a long road trip last fall, going from Minneapolis to my parents' house in Ohio, then across to Dayton, up to Chicago and back to Minneapolis. I think I knew that was my last, best chance to open it up on the winding roads of Appalachian eastern Ohio, so I took advantage of a lax employment situation, an understanding wife and gas prices below $3 a gallon.

We bought it in St. Louis, not long after Amina had a harrowing experience on an airplane that convinced her that life was too short not to enjoy it in the present. It was our "wedding car," and I still have the "Just Married!" sign in our garage ... my best man, John D. Carroll, and I "laminated" it with dry cleaner plastic the day before the wedding. We drove it to the Ritz in Clayton after the wedding (we = me and Amina, not me and John) and later went all over Missouri's wine country in it, with the top down and the heated seats turned on.

It was a good car, but more importantly, it represents a great part of my life. I'm sad to see it go, but its departure marks the beginning of a new chapter, and I'm terribly excited about that.