apple juice

I recently posted to my facebook status: “my real life is getting in the way of my digital one,” and that’s not such a bad thing. So much is new since I last posted. It may be the longest gap in blog posting since apple juice’s inception back in the early oughts. Let me bring you up to date on one area of my life.

One of the original themes of the blog was my car, a beloved 2003 Golf TDI. Dear friends, Bogey is no longer with us. Yes, sadly on the commute to work two weeks ago, I was in a car accident. Luckily, I am fine. Bogey didn’t fare so well. I rear-ended a pickup and his bumper became entangled with my engine. (No, I was not on my phone, fiddling with the radio, picking my nose, etc. I checked my blind spot to change lanes and when I looked back, traffic was coming to a complete and utter stop in front of me.)

The car was declared a total loss by my insurance. Thus, the search began. I’d love to have just walked into the VW dealer and bought a new 2010 Jetta Sportwagen TDI. They are looking quite nice. However, it is a bit more money than I had to spend.

After driving a few gasoline fulled 1.8T Jetta Wagons, I decided that I simply had to find a diesel. I find explaining diesel cars like explaining Macintosh computers to people in the late 90s. Until you drive one, you just won’t understand.

Nothing was showing up in Minnesota, so I widened the search. Other metro areas were canvassed, the eastern seaboard was searched (thanks, Jean!). I was ready to hop on a plane to Denver to investigate one potential vehicle when I found a 2005 Jetta Wagon TDI in neighboring Iowa.

I have the car back in Mpls now, and I’m hoping this one picks up where my Golf left off. It has a slightly more powerful 100HP engine (whoa, triple digits!), and I’m guessing slightly lower highway mileage. It only 87,000 miles, and like my Golf, I’m hoping to achieve at least 200,000 miles with this car. I’ll get a picture up soon. It’s beige, but not in a bad way. Manual transmission, heated seats (key in Minnesota).

It’s so silly to become attached to things, I have to remind myself of that. However, cars become such a part of our lives, (what car did I drive wife and daughter home from the hospital in? The Golf) and you can’t help but weave their stories into yours. I’m hoping this new (old) Jetta weaves a few new stories into our lives.

Sidenote: If you know me at all, you know the nerd inside of me. I just signed up for a new site called Fuelly, that helps track your fuel usage. They have a simple mobile site accessible from your iPhones, Blackberries, Nokias, etc. Enter the odometer and fuel amount when you fill up. Easy as pie. See neato badge to the right. Join and we can be fuelly friends. Seriously, it’s like the new twitter and facebook rolled into one.