April 18th, 2008
Seriously, how can one little car be such a pain in the ass? I know Husband loves it (it was his gift to himself after finishing his first graduate degree) but I am already planning the nice, comfy sedan, complete with back seat, that we will buy as soon as this car bites it or we have a baby. You can’t have a baby in a Sprite Car. You should have it in a hospital! Ba-dum-bum!
Anyway, today I was driving to Chilliwack during what I didn’t know at the time is the coldest April since 1964. I know we’re in Canada but we’re in the south west corner of it and we don’t get any winter here! We certainly don’t get winter in April! So imagine my surprise when it started to alternate between snow and hail on the highway. I immediate freaked out because, as I go on and on about here, the stupid car weighs like three ounces and has summer tires (I know you’re thinking, buy some all season radials, woman! but who would think you’d need them in VANCOUVER in the fucking SPRING!?). I’m terrified of dying in a horrible snowy crash, not only because the car slides if you breathe wrong but also because it is a convertible and I always imagine flipping over and something hard and skull-crushy coming through the rag top. (By the way, we do have a roll bar of the proper height, but what if the car flips and lands right on a rock?)
So I slow down, and turn on the wipers, and WHOOSH, the driver’s side windshield wiper rips right off and flies away.
Then I crapped my pants.
And then I drove reeeeeally, reeeeeeally slowly down the highway from Langley, where the Sprite Car fucked me yet again, to Clearbrook Road, which is the first exit that has humans and therefore the potential for a garage which stocks wiper blades for my car. Because the whole assembly flew off. All that was left was a metal bar sticking out from the place the wiper arm originates, just naked with its hooked end with nothing on it even slightly capable of pushing snow off a windshield.
I kind of panicked and kept the wipers on anyway, watching the little stick that was left scrape back and forth across with windshield, and give credit where credit it due, I must say it did a great job of clearing the snow off a strip of glass about forty centimetres long by about .3 millimetres wide. Alas, my ocular endowment is not so powerful as to take advantage of the narrow window of visibility and I basically drove blind, squinting and trying to “look past the snow” the way you “look past the lights” of oncoming traffic at night when it rains.
Also, I was trying to not have a major regressive meltdown and just cry, because, hello, this car obviously has it out for me. But then who would steer? Ha ha, maybe someone who could see?
I finally make it to Clearbrook and got lucky (not literally… wait, is “get lucky” a literal reference to sex? If it’s a reference it must be figurative. Okay, I literally got lucky) and there was a garage right off the highway that had a wiper assembly they could sell me, which went on with no trouble and I didn’t even get charged for labour.
I did however pay in years off my life because can you imagine anything scarier than driving blind in a snowstorm on summer tires in a car that will lose the inertial battle with any other car it hits? Gah!
Okay, there are plenty of scarier things. They are all very serious and you know them all anyway so I won’t make a list but the point I was trying to say is, I am very, VERY sick of finding myself in danger while engaging in routine activities (driving) in what are supposed to be safe conditions (Vancouver after March).
So here is my list of requirements for the next car we get, whenever that may be:
1. A sedan. Four doors, back seat, trunk big enough to put more than two little carry-ons wedged in tight. It will have a good solid weight and tires that don’t morph into skates when on snow.
2. Has air conditioning (SC does not)
3. Has a smooth ride. I want to feel like I’m driving a sofa. SC feels like you’re driving a vibrator. And not in a sexy way.
4. Has good visibility. Not only is SC very low, but it has a strangely engineered body shape wherein I never feel 100% sure of what is around me. I drive much more conservatively in this car as a result.
The only thing I’d keep is the great responsiveness of the wheel – SC jumps when you twitch the steering wheel, and that has probably saved my life twice. But that’s it! The rest is so gone!
Gone I tell you!
We really love our Kia Spectra 5. Any of the cars in its class would be a great choice — the hatchback and fold-down seats come in handy way more often than you’d think. I haven’t looked at this year’s models, but I know both the Mazda and Toyota ones are quite popular. We’ve been happy with Kia and mostly went with that choice because the ride was the best and they offered a 5 year warranty to match the length of our car loan.