Vroom vroom!

On Tuesday, Kimi and I zipped down to the dealer's and picked up Deliverance 2. D isn't pretty. He's not fast or sexy or exciting. D's like the math geek in your class, the short fat one with the thick black rimmed glasses and a pocket protector, who was too shy to ever talk to a girl in case his tongue got caught in his retainers, and who wore clothes his mother bought for him. And still does. In other words, Deliverance is a Hyundai. A 2-door 1.5L Hyundai with barely 65 kW to his name. The engine bleats rather than growls and the exterior is about as sexy as a dead shrimp. It has the world's chinkiest seat covers and a gawdawful sticker decal. The last owner was a woman. I know, because I can still smell her perfume. Not just a math geek, but President of the Chess club, is Deliverance.





But it's cheap to run, I won't feel like I've desecrated the Mona Lisa if I scratch the paintwork and I can remove the crappy seat covers. Having no power steering, power windows, electric mirrors and one hell of a stiff hydraulic boot system also means that I get to Linda Hamilton my biceps every time I try to park.

Getting Deliverance home was a bit of an adventure, considering that I forgot my street directory and Kimi's GPS system went berserk and insisted that I lived in the middle of the highway. We were driving along the arse end of nowhere for an hour before I realized that the roads were looking suspiciously familiar. I got us home in the end with the road map Kimi had in his car (but which he refused to consult).

I kow, it's so boring to get the puny little car, especially after all of you enthusiastically egged me on to buy a sexy Slinky carriage. But I'm kind of glad that I opted for the practical-for-now-car option, considering that it would have been horribly embarrassing to have been driving the sexy roadbeast of my automotive wet dreams in the five days I've been driving when I:

a) Caused a traffic jam on the highway, thanks to a poor split-second judgment call and an idiot who refused to backup
b) Took about five tries to parallel park along a busy road -not bad, considering I hadn't done it in two months
c) Had to call Kimi sheepishly to ask him how to open the petrol hatch
d) Circled the petrol pumps for a good ten minutes because I kept forgetting which side my petrol tank was on - spatial recognition is not a strong point for Slinky
e) Spent five minutes in the carpark after work trying to figure out how to turn on the headlights.

I think my seductive little coupe can only come after I sort out ll my driving teething problems.

Despite the lack of aesthetic and mechanical sex appeal however, it is an unbelievably heady feeling to be able to get to uni and work and back in fifteen minutes, and to buy whatever groceries I feel like and not be handicapped by however much weight I can carry. So much as I mock Deliverance 2, I am infinitely grateful for my first car. To commemorate the occaision, Kimi surprised me with this:



Kimi also says he’ll teach me to drift Deliverance while I wait to get my Holy Grail car. At least until I get my Silvia...