Fitness

Well, I said that I’d drive my Accord until the wheels fell off. Eventually, one did. In a 21-year-old car, some infirmities are to be expected. So, I have a cute little new car.

I waited too long. Buying cars all the time is a terrible waste of money, but I internalized that to mean that putting up with unreliability, discomfort, and a certain amount of hazard was a good idea. It’s not. The new thing moves better. It brakes a lot better. When you turn it on, it just turns on: no muss, no fuss. It’s got airbags, and it’s got airbags for the airbags, and it’s got a color TV camera so you can admire your parking prowess. In the morning, it sees my cell phone in my pocket, they have a brief chat while I'm fastening my seatbelt, and they arrange to pick up my audiobook where I left it last time. (I know, you folks know this, but nobody told me!)

Buying a car is a pain in the neck. I spent eight weeks learning too much about cars, and noticing cars. I don’t usually notice other cars, but now I see Fits and iAs and Mazda 2s and Yaris’s. The other day coming home from Eastgate, I paused in Medford because a car was parking outside the pizza joint – a boring white car, actually, doing a very timid and poor job of parking, except this time I noticed that the car was a Maserati and if I were parking a Maserati en route to picking up a pizza in Medford Square, I might not make a stylish job of it either.

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I don’t know anything much about cars, but I do know a bit about computers. If the computer you use every day is more than 3 years old, it’s time to start thinking about replacing it.