I’m not sure that I’ve kept anything I’ve found long term. I move too often and don’t have a general sense of my own inventory. Things drop through the cracks. I still cannot find several important things to me after the move from Houston, but I’ve just moved on.
I can think of a few cool things I’ve found that I no longer have, though. I really miss all the rocks I collected from the Columbia River Gorge, and the next time I go to visit Bryn I’ll have to get a new one. I just like worry stones, the size you put in your pocket, so I’m not worried about getting it home.
I once found a gas station attendant shirt that said “Butch” at a Goodwill and I wore that bitch for three years straight. I got sued for false advertising, but that’s neither here nor there. I was at a club about two years after I got it and this gay man said he’d trade me his shirt for it. I was having a good time, so why not? I regretted it in the morning.
In Baltimore, I mostly find old coins, sometimes a few keys. And of course, by “old coins,” I mean they were around when I was a kid. Not exactly antique, just old. Baltimore doesn’t have a lot of treasure laying around, but it is beautiful in its own way. I’m not a fan of the brutalist architecture downtown, but I do like the fall colors and how the brown of the buildings blends into the trees.
Driving down to Virginia just blends all the fall colors together around stunning bodies of water. In order to get to Tiina’s, I passed the Inner Harbor, the Potomac, and the Rappahannock. All of them were stunning this time of year, bright red leaves dancing across the sky. I found peace and stillness to take with me to Tiina’s because even being caught in traffic was being caught in all that beauty and getting to look at it longer.
I’m still trying to think of something cool that I’ve found along my travels and kept, but the things I’ve kept I’ve usually bought. For instance, I needed sunglasses and I found the perfect no-name brand at a gas station that will be impossible to find again, so be careful and don’t lose them.
So far, I have managed to keep them in the car without taking them inside, and I consider that a victory. I also moved my spare pare of glasses into my center console, because I sometimes do forget my glasses when I’m leaving the house. I don’t think there’s a marker on my license that says I need my glasses to drive, but anything helps.
I just don’t want to be without my glasses and keeping a pair in the car is an easy way to keep me on the straight and narrow.
I found my car along the road. Aaron was driving me around in his car and we passed a dealership. I saw several cars I liked and I asked the dealer which one was the cheapest. Then, I made Aaron crawl all around it, I test drove it, and then I wrote them a check.
They had been burned before, so I had to wait at Aaron’s until my check cleared to drive home.
I would not have bought the cheapest car on the lot if it hadn’t been good looking and Aaron hadn’t approved the purchase. I’ve put some money into it since then, and I’m still happier than I’ve ever been with a car, because my Jeep didn’t have seat warmers or a backup camera.
I like my car so much I’ve already decided I’d like to keep finding them. My next purchase might be another Fusion that’s a hybrid or an all wheel drive instead. I’m not unhappy with my car, I’d just purchase a different version to add features. I think it would be cheaper than trying to swap out the engine.
I’d like to get a few more years of driving experience on my Progressive app before I commit to buying a different car, unless it’s a lateral move in which I only need a little cash. I do not want a car payment because my insurance is very high. I haven’t driven in 10 years, but I’m on track for savings by being a good driver.
I still don’t get why hard brakes are bad because sometimes things happen fast on the road. I leave plenty of space in front of me and people take advantage of that, thus hard braking to avoid a collision. Lack of planning on their part causes an emergency on mine.
I’m just going off on a tangent because I do not like how Progressive calculates my risk as a driver. I looked in the app and I had seven events of hard braking on a road trip. Six of them were my adaptive cruise control hard braking because the flow of traffic changed so suddenly, but the cruise control leaves three car spaces in front of it so that if it has to hard brake, there’s very little risk of rear-ending someone. I leave the cruise control on even in heavy traffic because it manages distances better than I can. I have no 3D vision, and I would probably be following the driver in front of me too closely.
My adaptive cruise control has taken a star from me in the Progressive app, and I am forced not to care because I wasn’t the one driving. My car was.
I am defensive about someone picking on my baby. 😉
I lean on my car so much because of those adaptive driving controls. I need the technology because again, no 3D vision. I make it where the car is doing as much of the work for me as possible. Things like blind spot assist are wonderful, and I wish I had some sort of heads up display that did the same thing. I could use a dot to alert me of obstacles upon movement.
But that is a whole other entry.
Stories That Are All True 