Good bye old friend

Today we sold our car and as the french like to say: it is une page qui se tourne (a page that is turned)

Even if we didn't use it that often (once a month tops) that little Peugeot 206 sure brought us a lot of great times.

Going back to Puebla in early 2003 when my internship in France was over was very hard for both of us. So hard that right after I left André phoned me one day and told me he'd just bought a brand new car!! (and he dares to lecture me on compulsive shopping! ;))

Anyway, 7 months later I was back in France and to celebrate we took a two week trip to the south of France. We drove down to Bordeaux and the Pyrenées in that little car and it was one of the best trips we've ever taken. We spent the days driving in the countryside, stopping in the little towns all along the way and camping under the stars in the evenings. For both of us, it was such a joy to be away from Paris, enjoying the beautiful countryside, the mountains, or the shoreline (depending where we were) and eachother, all the time driving our little car listening to Nora Jones and Gerard de Palmas in the background.

Over the years there were several more trips that bring us fond memories, sometimes with friends (Marseille with Marion, Jean and Pierre-Marie; Lussas with Abbie & Martin, Brugge with my mom and Antonio) sometimes alone (Beaune, Epernay, Malsherbes) and always that little gray Peugeot silently taking us back and forth.

But it's true that even if those were great trips and that I loved getting into that car everytime (no matter how many hours we were going to be stuck in traffic), in reality our car spent most of the time locked up in the 3rd underground floor of our old appartment's garage for weeks at times. As you can guess, Paris is not really a city you want to spend your time driving in. The streets are narrow and infested with stop lights, free parking is almost non existent or else impossible to park without damaging your car, and public transportations usually gets you any and everywhere without much hassle and in a pretty decent time.

So when André's friend, Fabien, joked about our car being in such good condition he might buy it we took it as a sign that it was perhaps time to let go. We asked him if he was serious and it turned out that he'd been on the lookout for a car that he could drive everyday as he works out of Paris. In sum, on the one hand, because we almost never used it, our car was in a good enough condition we could still sell it for a decent price despite its old age (4 years!), and on the other hand Fabien was looking to buy a used car in a good enough condition to trust it for daily driving... I guess you could call this a WIN-WIN situation.

And lets not forget the essential thing: The car itself. I like to think that everyone and everything, even a little ol' gray Peugeot 206, has a purpose in life and so in the end we're glad our car will be getting its wheeles streched more often and providing someone with good and comfy means of transportation.

Good bye old friend. You will be missed.

Fned.