New Wheels

Ladies and gentlemen, meet my new wheels, which I have named the Cherry Bomb.

Some of you may have read Karen Elmquist's post last week about her new car purchase - which is pretty exciting, as she just got her drivers licence and this is her very first car. She got herself one of those very cool PT Cruisers, you can read her post here: http://karenelizabethelmquist.blogspot.com/2010/04/meet-peewee.html.

Like Karen, I too have a new car. It's not my first but I'm pretty darned excited anyway. It's a 2010 Nissan Versa and I had so much fun picking it up today in Lindsay (an hour and a half's drive away, where I had picked it out on Easter weekend), having lunch with my mom and then driving it back to Toronto. Even driving through snow showers did not discourage me - I focused on how pretty the white clouds looked with the dark grey snow clouds behind them.

My new car is a beautiful cherry red colour and I'm looking forward to bombing around town in it (hence the name). Taking delivery of a new car also means you get presents - in this case, pretty flowers in a Nissan mug and a Nissan hat. Unfortunately, I did not get to take home the cute little springer spaniel puppy they had at the dealership this morning but wouldn't that be a great promotion, "free puppy with every car!"? Okay, maybe not. (Karen, make sure you get the free gift(s) when you pick up your new car - it could be flowers or a bottle of wine).

Ever notice how much stuff you have in your car? Even though I try very hard not to use my car as a storage facility, there still seemed to be a lot of stuff I had to remember to take out of the old car - car mats (which needed to be cleaned before they could go in the new car, I scrubbed them last night in the bathtub), road maps and map books, emergency blanket (in case your car breaks down in a snowstorm), grocery bags, kleenex box, umbrella, windshield washer fluid, CD's, ownership and insurance info, transponder, parking sticker for home, parking pass for the office. Phew! That's a lot of stuff.

The best part about my new car? The fact that you can plug in your iPod in the little compartment right above the radio on the dash and use the radio controls to scroll through the iPod menu as you are playing music. Okay, maybe this isn't a new idea and on deluxe model cars, they even have the controls on the steering wheel, but it's new to me - my old car didn't have this feature. Ever since the introduction of the handsfree law (no talking or texting on your cell phone also means no fiddling with other devices like iPods too, did you know that?), I had to settle for plugging in the iPod at the start of a trip, tucking it away and letting it play whatever song came up. Which is hard - even with playlists set up, sometimes you're just not in the mood for a particular song or artist. Now I can just zip on by something I don't want to hear. Sweet!