Silver Lining

As you can tell from our previous blog post, the legacy of the Subaru has come to an end. I'll get to that later.... but first, I'm going to go off on a tangent. There are very few places you can live that don't cost you something. For instance, living in California you have to deal with expensive real estate, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Scientologists, and earthquakes, Utah has a SUPER long winter, bad drivers, and BYU...... Austin has hot summers, traffic, and I-35. It's a price we pay for living in such a cool city. Interstate 35 runs from the Mexico border to Chicago, it's one of the main pipelines of goods from Mexico into the United States, therefore it also has an enormous amount of eighteen wheelers. Going 75 mph down a two lane interstate in the rain between two eighteen-wheelers is scary enough, but then the road gets worse. Once you hit downtown Austin the interstate splits to the lower and upper deck. The upper takes you across Austin with no exits, while the lower deck takes you across Austin with exits. Well, I wouldn't call them "exits".... more like a driveway at 75 miles an hour that yields onto a busy Austin street. If you don't like the lower deck (and the high fatality rate that comes with it), you can take the upper deck. Unfortunately the upper deck isn't wonderful either, like I said, it has NO exits, so if you happen to encounter traffic you are stuck with nowhere to go. And it just so happens that Austin has some of the worst traffic in the nation, so more then likely, you'll be in it (but you have a good view!).

(a picture of the upper and power deck.... look! No traffic!)

If you happen to make it past this horribly designed portion of I-35 then you come to the exit for 183 (toward our house). This "flyover" (as they call it), elevates you over all of the other roads (really, really, high) and puts you on 183. Since the flyover is so high up, the incline causes people to slow down.

And here we are at the point of all of this. On her way home from work a couple of weeks ago, Madelyn slowed down for the incline, as all the cars in front of her had, but the women behind her did not, and she came plowing into Madelyn and the Subaru. This wasn't just some "fender bender", police and an ambulance were called to the scene and the women who hit the Subaru had to get towed away. Luckily, Madelyn was fine (besides a sore neck, and bruised knuckles... and nearly giving me a heart attack) except for getting a little shaken up. The Subaru was able to drive home, where I snapped this picture. The damage doesn't look bad, but it was an older car, and the accident bent the frame. It was a sad day.

(Poor Subaru)

But there is a silver lining! The Subaru went out as a hero! First, it absorbed a bad impact and left Madelyn with nothing but some sore knuckles and neck. It was able to drive away from the scene, and most importantly...... the car was still worth some money! We got a NICE check from Geico for the retail value of the car, even though it had a few imperfections (sunroof was broken, had some front end damage from previous accidents, etc). In the end, getting totaled was a good thing (ah, the sliver lining part) because we were able to get way more money for the Subaru then we could have ever gotten if we had sold it and put it towards a new car. After lots of internet searching, late nights of driving to every car lot in town, and fighting off car salesmen, we are finally able to welcome our newest member of the our fleet....... ladies and gentlemen..... I give you.... SATURN VUE! Or, as we have started calling it "Blacky" (a tribute to Daniel Fowles).

(our fun new car!)

(It's a view of the VUE)