Farewell Spicy Valencia

The time has finally come to say goodbye to my faithful (well, at least it has never really died on me) blue beast, the '91 Chevy Blazer, lovingly known as Spicy Valencia (my old roommate helped me come up with the name).

On Monday, Rich and I will be traveling Spokane, Washington, to spend some time with this family. While we're there, we're going to buy a car from a man in Rich's family's ward who owns a car dealership. This means that the Blazer is going back to my parents on Saturday.

This was the car I drove in high school, and then it came down to BYU with me. This really has been the only car that I've considered mine, and it's been mine for over 5 years.

And yet, I'm not really sad to see it go.

Why? Well, the picture might say enough. But, to back up my case a little better, here is a list of just a few of the things I am NOT going to miss about Spicy Valencia:

• The complete lack of air conditioning. It is the worst car to drive at 3 PM on a 97 degree day in stop and go traffic.
• Along with no air conditioning, the necessity of driving with the windows down on the freeway in the summer.
• The way the windshield wipers turn on when I signal. It always happens more often in warmer weather.
• The way one of the headlights points almost completely sideways and is threatening to fall out.
• The passenger-side speaker in the front seat only working about 25% of the time.
• The oil leak and how much oil the engine burns.

• The clear coat coming off the paint so that it looks like the car has leprosy.
• Never being able to roll down the backseat windows since the day my family bought the car.
• The window to the back hatch squeaking so obnoxiously that you just want to tear it out, also a problem from day one.
• The back seat's squeak that developed in the past year.

• The complete lack of a rear bumper. I am not exactly sure what happened to it.
• The way you run out of gas at 1/8 of a tank, or somewhere around there. It's never the same everytime.
• How the tinted windows just trap in the heat in the summer, making the car an oven.
• The glove compartment front that falls off when you try to open it. Every time.
• The spare tire sitting in the back, rather then underneath where it belongs.
• The way that it sounds like the engine is going to fall out when you go over any sort of bump, even bumps that you don't notice at all in other cars.
• The handle to roll down the window on the driver side falling off when you pull on it too hard.

This car has been through a lot. All of my siblings drove her car at some point, and it was both Tyson's and my first car. It has been backed in to a lake, driven cross country from Kentucky to Utah, towed our boat countless times, and been through who knows how many trips back and forth between Ogden and Provo. Really, it's just been a well-used Fredrickson family car. That's enough life for any vehicle. And still Spicy Valencia has not gone kaput. Rich and I are getting rid of her while we can.

She's putting up a good fight. I don't think she'll ever die.