Ric Ocasek and Gary Numan

The first call of the day was from an employee letting me know that he witnessed a horrific accident on the way to work. The accident is on the main route to work, so he was giving me a heads up to take an alternate route to the office to avoid the backup. He then went on to tell me the details of an MTA bus hitting a Chevy Cavalier and car parts flying from the roadway hitting his vehicle. Yes, he was that close. He pulled over at the scene and was the first to call 911. He said the dispatcher asked the nature of the accident and if police, fire, or ambulance needed to respond - his answer "yes, all of them". When you think about it a public transportation bus can put a real hurtin' on a economy car. My first thought after hanging up the phone was that I should ride my motorcycle to work today. Then I opted for my car because I had a big yellow recycling can that had to make it to the warehouse.

This evening I found out that a close friend's BMW M3 was traded in for something new. When I think about other peoples car history it's always the same thing - I had MY Subaru when they bought that car NEW, and now they have another new car. Sometimes it's two new cars in the time span (Billie Jo). I do have a motorcycle which most people don't, so my cars use in 2010 was like that of a senior citizen.

I often talk about my Subaru because of it's age and mainly because it's never let me down. It's a 1996 Impreza wagon Outback. It's the smaller Outback, 4-cylinder automatic, really nothing fancy. I was happy when I bought it because it had air conditioning AND power windows. Over the cars life thus far I have replaced the battery, starter, tires, oil filters, and air filters, and timing belts. That is it over all these years.

The 1996 Subaru has 188,887 on the odometer tonight. I hope to see 200,000 before I have to let it go, it will be a sad day, but that day isn't here yet.