Goodbye Fred, Hello Daisy

This post has been a long time coming. I was waiting for my parents to find a picture from when I first got Fred, but after much searching they were unable to find it. It was before the digital picture age, so I'm sure they searched through many many boxes of pictures. I swear I remember taking a picture - I didn't mean to send them on a wild goose chase!

I got Fred about a month after I turned 16 - so in April of 2002 which was also when I got my license. I wanted a blue Honda Civic, but I didn't want to drive around our family minivan anymore, so I settled on a green one. He was the 1999 model and had about 36,000 miles on him.

I was one of the first of our friends to get my own car and we were all sick of taking the bus. So I picked up Tiffany, Zack, Spencer, and Nate on my way to school for the last few months of our sophomore year of high school.

We originally called Fred the "Gangster Vehicle" because his windows were really tinted. For the first few years I owned Fred, it seemed like every year we did the safety inspection, we had to take a little more of the tint off, so he would pass.

I finally settled on the name Fred because my senior year Emily and I had imaginary boyfriends we would talk about when everyone else on cheer was talking about their real boyfriends. Mine was Fred and Emily's was Billy Bob. (Yes, I know this makes us sound really cool.)

Fred was our escape vehicle for many a devious adventure. On more than one occasion, we filled the trunk up with toilet paper and got all our guy friends' houses.

Fred was also the location of my first kiss. It was with Nate Edwards the summer after I got Fred.

The summer of 2005 when I was living in St. George, Fred was in a bad accident. I was driving to work and got hit while making a left turn. An older gentleman wasn't paying attention and totally ran a red light. His insurance company paid to fix Fred, but he was in the shop for over a month. They gave me a rental car, but they wouldn't allow me to take it up to BYU when school started. So I had to take my mom's minivan and she drove the rental while we were waiting for Fred to be fixed.

Fred was never quite the same after that. His gas gauge didn't go below the point it was at when I was hit. So even when it was totally empty and the gas light would come on, it still said I had 1/4 tank left.

Fred made lots of drives back and forth between St. George and BYU. And he made the trip to Laramie, Wyoming when a group of us went for the BYU vs. Wyoming football game my sophomore year of college. This is one of my most fond memories from college - such a fun trip!

Then I met Rog. He had a car of his own, but we almost always took my car because my parents paid for my gas. He even had his own key to Fred after we got engaged. This picture was taken when a group of us came to visit Rog in Colorado for the BYU vs. Air Force football game my junior year of college.

We returned Rog's car to his family (so Taylor could drive it when he got home from his mission) which made Fred our main vehicle. (We had Cliff too.)

The summer of 2008, Fred hit 100,000 miles!

When we got Meg, Rog became the main driver of Fred. About that time, the air conditioner broke which made driving Fred in the summer downright miserable.

Of course Rog did have to compete for driving time in Fred when Corby got big enough to drive. :)

Fred was a good car ! He had 129,000 miles on him when we sold him, so that's 93,000 miles and 9 years worth of memories. I will miss him and I will always hold a soft spot for him in my heart!

As we say goodbye to Fred, we welcome Daisy to our family. Daisy was my grandma's car. She's a 2003 Subaru with only 28,000 miles on her. (She was brand new when my grandma got her and she only drove her around Salt Lake City.) She has leather seats, cruise control, a sun roof, electronic everything - basically she was the top of the line when my grandma got her. So you can see why we jumped at the opportunity when my grandma decided to get a new car. And she gave us a GREAT deal.

(When I was finally putting this post together I realized I needed a picture of Daisy, so we went out and took this one. It was raining, so it's not the best picture. If you look closely you can see Corby standing in the front seat.)

Goodbye Fred! And hello Daisy!