Only 12 of those miles were driven before Toy became mine. The nickname comes from my remark to the delivery man from the dealership: "You've brought me a new toy to play with". And it stuck. Here is a side view of one of Toy's relatives. You can understand why he's "The Toy".
Although I'm his regular driver, Toy gets driven by DH most weekends. He's also been driven by my sister on her explorations of Scotland and my friend Stephanie.
Excluding DH, Toy is my favourite travelling companion. Our regular daily commute has never been less than 25 miles each way; at one stage we did regular day trips to Worcester, Birmingham and Bristol (242 miles, 240 miles and 220 miles return respectively). For most of those, it's just been me, Toy and the radio (usually LBC) or books on tape/CD (mainly Terry Pratchett). We've listened to cricket matches and football games, classical concerts and rock CDs.
There have been trips to Scotland, day trips to France, and mad dashes to West Wales. That awful drive to hospital following the ambulance when my FIL died.
For a long time, there was a nose print in the middle of the back window from Sammy-dog, when we took him out to play. That was when I realised the back windows didn't open (it hadn't occured to me, since I rarely carry passengers in the back). Sammy slept with his head on my seat belt and his nose out the driver's window on the way home, half choking me.
There was that nightmare drive on the M25 in January 2003, when it snowed and the roads hadn't been gritted. We'd stayed late at work, so there wasn't too much traffic, but I'd had to chisel the snow out of wing mirror housings as well as scrape off 6 inches of snow. (I wish I'd had a camera that day.) That was the day we hit ice 500 metres from home and, at 5 miles/hour, drifted into the middle of an empty intersection. We were lucky, other roads closed and some were trapped in their cars.
Sure Toy's had the odd "digestive problem" recently and there is an on-going problem with the cowling around the gear selectors (it has one bolt holding it in place which gets lose about once every 20,000 miles making gear changing difficult), but I'm hoping to post the 200,000 mile photo some day.
Thanks Toy!
- Pam
2 comments:
I'll be waiting for the 200,000 photo. My first car, bought used, took me to 150,000+ before I sold it because of reliability issues that didn't work with a 120 mile/day commute. It was still getting 34 MPG when I sold it. The brand new car that replaced it gets about the same MPG; I was hoping for a bit of a jump, but oh well. :)
Now that I've ditched the nasty commute, New Car may be an antique before it hits 100,000. It's 8 years old now, and is just due for it's 35,000 mile checkup. It just doesn't get to go places lately.
Hmm... I thought The Toy was a Ka?
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