Back in 1958 we drove an old V8 and when it’d gone a hundred thou’ we got out and pushed it a mile<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
If I could have, I’d have gotten out of Charlotte today and pushed her a mile. She deserves it.<\/p>\n
I used to roll my eyes at people who were in love with their cars. A chunk of metal that burns fossil fuels? Puh-leez.<\/p>\n
My first cars were unnamed. I bought them to get from Point A to Point B. I didn’t even own a car for 17 years in Seattle. And that was long before Uber.<\/p>\n
My lovely lady in gray came into my life exactly nine years ago, June 20, 2007. She’s a 2004 Accord EX, five speed, a little fancier than I was actually looking for. But there were only two stick-shifts in the whole huge lot of used cars at the Honda dealer in Arlington, VA, and the other one was red.<\/p>\n
![\"Charlotte](\"http:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/IMG_6439-300x200.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
I named her Charlotte for two reasons: 1. We had come back from overseas\u00a0to live in the South, and it seemed like a good Southern name. 2. Charlotte’s Web was my favorite book as a kid, and the main character was grey and smart just like my Honda girl.<\/p>\n
She had 36,487 miles when I bought her. That means I have driven her 63,513 miles, an average of 7,000 a year.<\/p>\n
Although that’s\u00a0low mileage, it sounds like a lot when it’s all added up. If someone had told me then that I was being sentenced to drive 63,000 miles as a punishment, I’d have gasped, staggered and begged for the lashes instead.<\/p>\n
Driving Charlotte is fun. She’s got lots of pickup even though she’s only a four-cylinder. She’s the first car I’ve owned with heated leather seats, and the power adjustments make her comfortable no matter what condition I’m in.<\/p>\n
She’s also practical: She can hold eight-foot boards, chairs, and inconceivable amounts of groceries. Charlotte\u00a0carried Tom and I with all our many suitcases from D.C. to our new home in North Georgia.<\/p>\n
We’ve been\u00a0on some great road trips: Ohio, North Carolina, Florida, Tennessee, and all around Georgia. She does just fine on gravel roads in the Chattahoochee National Forest. She’s never let me down, and I’ve hardly spent a penny on her beyond new tires and ordinary maintenance.<\/p>\n
For a Honda, 100,000 miles is just a young ‘un. Go look at the photos on a Honda dealership’s board. There will be cars with 500,000, 700,000, even 900,000 miles.<\/p>\n
Charlotte is my third Honda. The first one, a Civic, was totaled when a driver cut me off on the freeway. Even though I went head-on into a retaining wall, my only injuries were\u00a0a few bruises from the seat belt. My\u00a0second Honda, an Accord, got stolen once in Seattle but I got her back intact; was sad to sell her when I moved to China.<\/p>\n
Charlotte’s my forever girl. I intend to drive her until one of us can’t move anymore.<\/p>\n
Today’s penny is a 2007, the year that Charlotte first brought me home safely.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My girl Charlotte turned 100 today. I’ve been watching the odometer and I kept thinking of the lyrics from that John Denver song, “On the Road”: Back in 1958 we drove an old V8 and when it’d gone a hundred thou’ we got out and pushed it a mile If I could have, I’d have … read more 100 grand<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8357,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[317],"tags":[18,733,1036,500,1037,219],"class_list":["post-8348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-beauty","tag-18","tag-car","tag-charlotte","tag-forest","tag-honda","tag-road"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8348"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8348\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8356,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8348\/revisions\/8356"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}