An important milestone

Hi all.

It is in this month that I am planning to go on my trip to Montreal. This month is also the 21st month of my car loan, out of 42 months. I’m just over halfway paid it. I can probably pay it off today, if I wanted to.

So where am I at with the car, my first ever car?

I am better off than I have been in so many aspects of life.

Financially, however, I am worse off.

The car is the last vestige of an old Cedric – one that believed life was an emptiness to be filled rather than a fullness to be discovered. It wasn’t the first car that I test drove, but I got it two months after I got my G2.

What happens when you jump on a car no matter how old it is? This happens:

• Battery – $80
• Brake line – $225
• Spark plugs and coils – $350
• Third brake light replacement – $390
• Rear wiper part replacement – $130
• Brakes and rotors replaced – $1400
• 4 control arms and tie rod ends replaced – $2100

Added up, that money could have gone somewhere else. 95% of my credit card debt are these expenses. I’m saying this because we are all adults here.

I have never had the opportunity to do regularly scheduled maintenance because shit needed to be fixed from the get-go. And it still does. The battery literally died on me the second time I tried to start it. I have had to take it in to a mechanic almost every month this year. It will probably never end.

You can say, but “Cedric, why did you buy this car like it was a fait accompli at a sketchy place and not check every single thing when this car was previously safetied at a not-well-liked mechanic and that’s on you” You’re probably right.

But let’s look at it another way.

What is this city that it led me to buying a car after trying to make “it” work for 30 years? There are people who will upload blame to Queen’s Park or Ottawa but communities have their own priorities and choices to make.

Why do self-professed full-time, lifelong Londoners treat this city as a fiefdom where nothing can change and balk at infrastructure improvements that help make life more affordable?

What is this city that I feel the need to drive out of it every weekend in order to kill boredom, and keep my life…whatever the opposite of stagnant is?

What is this city that I (among so many others) are not seen as a fully grown adult without my car, that people paternalistically believe we need to be saved?

I can take out my phone and go through all the pictures of my adventures that were made possible because of my car. But I’m not as happy as I would like to be. This is not a cry for help, but a call to understand that this should not be accepted as normal. Better should be possible.

Maybe I’ll walk all this back when I get my second car.

Just kidding.