Day 26 - My First Car

My first car was this beaut right here.

A 1996 Honda Accord. Gosh, I feel so old.

My mom loves her Hondas something serious and has never owned (since I've been around) anything else. Now I drive one too, but in between I owned a Chevy and a couple BMW's. Not her, she's a strictly Honda girl. Anyway, I inherited this baby from my mom and no, it wasn't given to me. If I remember correctly, I had to give my mom $3,000 and my dad had to chip in the other $3,000. She took crazy good care of it, so it was like new and had all of the amenities. Leather seats, sun roof, alloy wheels, the whole thing. I started driving in 2001, so it was just five years old. AMAZING! Of course back then I thought it was ghastly and was embarrassed to be riding around in it. Crazy. Anyway, I decked this thing out with Roxy stickers and tacky pink princess seat covers, steering wheel covers, and even had the annoying pink hearts hanging from the rearview. Barf.

It met it's demise when I was happily traveling to New Smyrna Beach with my bestie at the time during our first year of college spring break. I had just found out my long time boyfriend had been cheating on me with one of my other best friends. I was traumatized and needed some time at the beach to clear my head. We were blaring Britney Spears with the sunroof down on a two lane highway. Cruising along and enjoying the fresh air and sunshine. We had dotted lines (meaning we could legally pass) and a super slow VW Bug was in front of us, so I went to pass. As soon as I did this, they sped up like crazy and the car behind me moved into where I was. I was trapped. A semi was coming straight for us on the horizon in the oncoming lane and I had nowhere to go.

Y'all, my life seriously flashed before my eyes.

We spun several times, fish tailed a few more, and landed in a watery revene off the highway. As soon as I saw all of the muddy water come rushing over the front windshield, I knew for certain we had landed in a pond. I was FREAKED out of my mind. Crashing into a body of water has always been one of my biggest fears. Thankfully, it wasn't the case and we climbed out of my sunroof to safety. None of us were hurt, though my friend was going bananas. The semi kept going and the VW stopped for a brief minute and sped off. Naturally.

Looking back, it was seriously a God thing. You have no idea. There must have been INCHES between the front of that semi going full speed and us. The highway patrol even said it was a miracle we didn't flip or hit any electric poles lining the road.

The car despite lots of mud and grass looked perfectly fine, but water had crept up in the engine and completely flooded it out. She was dunzo. So not only did my boyfriend of 3.5 years cheat on me, but I got into a car accident and totaled my car too. Talk about sucky life. I was miserable, depressed and without transportation. Eventually, I scraped some money together from the insurance company check and got this awful beast...

...but that's a story for another day ;)