$2275.75

Next week, Geico will be handing my a check for $2275.75.  I will be handing them a piece of greenish paper and some keys.  They will load a 1999 Dodge Intrepid onto a tow vehicle and I will never see it again.

I should be thankful.  There's no way I could have ever gotten that much trying to sell her.

I'm not thankful, at all.  Not yet, anyway.  Because she's not "a 1999 Dodge Intrepid."  She's The Flying Dodgeman.  And she's mine.

When I got her, she had 49,000 miles.  Now, she has 169,000.  In those 120,000 miles:

She drove from Cookeville to Knoxville to Mississippi.  On one tank.

She took my wife and I on our first date.

She drove me to Austin Peay and back.

She got me from Chattanooga to Clarksville to home when I was falling asleep at the wheel.

She saw 110 mph outside of Athens, TN.

She drove my wife and I home from our wedding.

She made absurd numbers of trips from middle Tennessee to northeastern Tennessee as we moved from our first apartment to first house.

She brought both my girls home from the hospital.

For that matter, she brought my two dogs home.

The state of Georgia uses buycrash.com to give out police reports.  When searching for the pertinent report, I ended up having to punch in the other driver's VIN.  The result was a list of three.  Now, because of a driver who in the last 2 years has been in at least 3 multiple motor vehicle collisions:

She will not see 200,000 miles.  She was shifting hard, but I think she would have made it.

She will never see Lake Superior.  This August, she would have.

She will never see another country.  This August, she would have.

She will not be there to drive our next child home in.  I'm not sure when that would have been.

She will not see 120 mph (officially).  I intended to eventually take her to a street legal drag strip someday and try to peg out her speedometer.  I suspect I did it when I wasn't looking on the way to Mississippi.

So here's to a heck of a car.  She was faithful, even when I wasn't.  Sure, she shifted hard.  Sure, you couldn't roll the driver's window up straight.  Sure, her lights could do funny things.  Still, she got me from point A to point B far more times than she didn't.

This girl survived Chattanooga's drivers.  One of my fondest memories was dropping the hammer in an intersection one early foggy morning when an oncoming driver decided to go straight instead of turning left.  She roared to life, and pulled me through just before the moron could hit us.

She just couldn't survive Atlanta.

I hate this town.