Mid-Life?

I'm in Nashville (actually Brentwood) getting ready for MinistryCOM tomorrow.  Nashville is only about a 4-hour drive from Atlanta, unless you leave a few minutes later than you'd planned and get stuck in traffic and only make it about 30 miles in the first hour and a half of your trip, but that's not the point of this story...

Even though Randy Renbarger and Scott Logan are also here, I made the drive by myself and loved it!  First, I needed a bit of down/alone time and a chance to catch up on some listening stuff, so 4 or 5 hours of solitude was perfect.  But there's another little reason I loved this drive.

Quick aside: I have two young-adult children.  Two boys, one 19, the other 21.  Both in school, neither one earning a whole lot of money, each driving rather old and worn out cars, and (not complaining!) my church salary won't be buying them anything close to new any time soon.  So...I'm always on the lookout for a quality used car that has the important quality of CHEAP!

A couple months back, a former Perimeter staff member let a few of us know that she was pregnant (congratulations!) and as such, her 1990 Acura Integra had to go.  OK, 1990 -- that's nearly an EIGHTEEN year old car -- almost as old as my boys!  But...this was an extraordinary staff member.  A detailist.  A perfectionist.  She knows how to take care of a car.  The Acura had only about 154K miles on it.  And she had service records.  Not just a summary..she had EVERY receipt for everything that's ever been done to this car.  But wait...there's more...she also has a spreadsheet summarizing all those receipts, showing exact dates, mileage, and more details than most people would care about.  Bottom line...this is about the newest 18-year-old car you can imagine.

So...in case you can't guess, I bought it.  Now my plan, of course (really!), was just to have it for when one of the boys needed a car and I'd let them have it for even less than I paid.  And of course, I wanted to update it a bit, so I put a new CD/Radio in it (replacing the original Cassette/Radio, still in excellent condition) and did other basic maintenance that was due.  And I drove it around town just a bit to see if I liked it.  Oh my, did I!

I'm suddenly hooked on this little car and it's roll-down windows and non-power door locks and it's 5-speed manual transmission.  I never figured I'd have anything close to a sports car, and especially not anything red!  So..suddenly *I* am driving this little sporty red car and having a blast.  Wait...isn't there something about guys reaching some age and going out and getting a little red car?  OK, maybe this is my mid-life fun... (certainly not a crisis, right?)

   

Comments

[Jack]

Great story, Tony. Wish I could be in Brentwood with y'all instead of being on sick leave, even though I am volunteer IT staff, and my full-time IT job isn't with the church.

[Richard Dolan]

Well, at least you didn't get a little YELLOW car! I went to 6th grade in Brentwood, by the way. We attended Brentwood Baptist Church & lived right across from Brentwood High School (which was just being built when we lived there.)

[Bill Sims]

Congratulations Tony! I am still in the mini-van stage and dream of the day when I will be able to drive around in an 18 year old red sporty car. ;-)

[allen madding]

Now you just need to demo ride a lil red Harley :)