Heart's Desire

Our car, which has been making grumbling noises about being moved out of her cosy garage and parked outdoors, made to drive incredibly long distances, and navigate roads very much unlike the 401, is becoming temperamental. Laurens and I look at each other every time we hit a pothole and wonder, "Will it make it another trip into town?"

Next month the snow flies and we will have to buy winter tires (first time ever- it's always been all-season for us city dwellers) and the front end of the Metro definitely needs a substantial bribe to stay running through the cold. So we decided to pull the plug. We have been discussing it for 2 years and now have done it.

We bought Auto Trader and leafed carefully through each ad. We had to curb dreams with the reality of budget (like everyone else) and sort through a different list of priorities than a month ago. Suddenly my heart's desire (Mazda 5) wasn't even on the radar- totally impractical. Instead we returned to an old wish that we were sure in Toronto was our of range- Subaru.

It just so happened that there were three used Subarus advertised last week. So we made some calls and did some surfing online. We discovered that there is one Subaru dealership in Winnipeg, Manitoba (the only one for hundreds of miles) and they just had received a trade in (2003 Forester).

Long story short...

It was our heart's desire. Now it is sitting outside our little home. We had great fun test-driving and negotiating price. And are really enjoying the extra legroom and a CD player. When we sat down to set a value on our car for trade-in, we realized how bare-bones she was (not air, cruise, CD player- just the base model) and were even more tickled at being able to 'graduate' to a car with all those bells and whistles (I know- some of them are standard today).

For the first time it was a pleasure to drive the Grassy road home and not fear flying off the road.