Emily1 and Her New Aveo

yes, i know. i've been remiss. i'm a bad blogger. i've been a bad blogger all year, but i have a story to tell today. last week, my saturn died in traffic. i left the repair shop expecting to get a call the next day about a clogged fuel line. instead, they tell me that the timing chain snapped and utterly destroyed the engine. this is the second car to have egregiously expensive failures within the last year and a half. my dear, old, much-missed geo's radiator and heater core kacked last year.

now that i belong to the happy, chattering crowd of full-time white collar workers, i decided that it was time to secure reliable transportation. the mbta kindly chopped the hartwell avenue stop, so public transportation now involves walking down a road with no sidewalks and traffic traveling at more than forty miles per hour. so, in comes the aveo -- chevy's very cheap entry level car. i got a good price from the Honda/Chevrolet dealer on Freshpond Parkway in cambridge, whom i highly recommend. they didn't blow a lot of smoke up my butt and actually offered me a firm price over email that no one else beat.

today, i stopped at burger king and couldn't get the car into reverse. having already had an exhausting week, i was seriously flustered. i walked down the street in search of a pay phone, without even thinking of going in and asking to use burger king's phone. so, i call the dealer, and they came over to demonstrate how to shift into reverse. there's some sort of guard that you have to pull up on, probably to prevent the driver from shifting into reverse when they mean to shift into first gear. but, i have no experience with those idiot-proof devices, having driven my geo exclusively for fourteen years, which had a slightly different configuration.

i probably should have test-driven the aveo with the manual transmission first. i tried the automatic during one exploratory car-shopping trip last week when i hadn't yet settled on the aveo as the car i wanted at the time. i decided on the manual transmission because they're slightly more fuel efficient, and i never felt like driving the saturn was really 'driving.' automatics feel weird to me, and it's easy to zone out because driving them requires so much less attention.

the aveo is nice, zippy little car. the passengers are also elevated higher than in other small cars, so you don't get that 'sinking into the road' feeling when you're surrounded by urban assault vehicles. The manual transmission feels light and jumpy, so it takes some getting used to. it's definitely not a sports car, but the acceleration is acceptable. the handling on the sedan is a wee bit tighter than the hatchback in my opinion, but the difference was barely perceptible. the back seats flip forward on the sedan, giving you a surprising amount of cargo space for such a tiny car.

the thing that surprised me was the amount of nervousness and fear i had about driving it and parking it on the street. this is the first brand new car i've owned. my co-workers tell me that the anxiety is normal and that it will pass as soon as driving it feels like second nature. i certainly hope so. it's rather nerve-wracking to have this major investment that i have to operate at 50 or 60 miles per hour. my geo was only about a year old when i got it, but i was sixteen and stupid. when you're not on the financial hook for something expensive, your relationship to it is different, i guess.

so, yes. i just bought my first new car. i'm an adult today.