The end of an era, and hopefully the start of a new one.

In the year 2000, (hehehe, I miss the old Conan O’Brien show) Natalie and I bought our Grand Prix.  That car has been with us ever since.  The car has been to Disneyland, a few trips to Lyman Wyoming, also countless trips inside Utah including a few over the borders.  And that is just what I can think of at 5:30 in the morning.  We bought the car with 28,000 miles on it and 147,000 miles later it is no longer with us. 

A little over a year ago, the car started having problems and we just didn’t have enough money to fix it at the time, so it just sat until brighter days came.  Well brighter days came, but we just didn’t want to make the investment to get the car up and running with so many miles on it.  We debated on donating the car to Kidney Cars for taxes, but had already done that in the past with Natalie’s old car, and we didn’t really feel the benefit of doing it in our tax return.  A few months ago we looked into seeing what we could do with the car.  I talked to a friend of mine that I am in the bishopric with, who is a mechanic, and he came and took a look at the car.  He said that he thought the car was in decent enough shape and recommended trying to sell it on KSL.com.  Well I don’t have any experience doing that, but Nate did!

Nate helped us get the car listed, and even found a free battery that would get the car running good enough to sell.  Nate said that when he finished getting the car online, there had already been 14 hits on it.  The next day Nate called and told me that he had sold my car and that a guy was on his way from Idaho to look at it.  We couldn’t believe how fast it sold.  After the car was sold we decided to check out the ad online.  Nate hadn’t even had time to post a picture of the car, and it had received 88 hits.  A few hours after Nate called me, the guy was here from Idaho.  He walked around the car about 10 times, started it up, popped the hood, walked around it a few more times and wanted to sign paperwork.  The guy even paid in cash. 

It was so fast!  When the car had been driven away, I was just sitting there with the feeling of “what in the world just happened”.  I can’t find the title to the car, so on Monday I have to go to DMV and get a new one to send to the guy.  But after that it will be official.  No more ornament for the side of our yard!

It is amazing that 11 years later and 147,000 miles, I have a hard time finding a picture of the car.  Here are a few where the car is in the background.  These pictures were all I could find after searching for an hour, apparently I didn’t think it was a very good backdrop.

So with the end of an era starts a new one.  As all of you know I am ADDICTED to photography.  And I have wanted a better camera since I became addicted.  Natalie told me that if I sold the car, I could use the money towards my camera, so now my dream comes true, with my savings (thanks to everyone who contributed) and the money from the car, I have enough money to get my camera!!!!!  So tomorrow we are going to Salt Lake to celebrate Brian’s birthday.  Tucanos is his choice for his birthday dinner.  It’s going to be an even more exciting day because if everything goes as planned, we will be picking up a camera too.

It feels surreal, but after all the research, and all the ooogling and browsing the internet, now it will be my turn.  Sometimes I think the person we are afraid to let down the most is ourselves.  As I drove around tonight, I have been wondering if I will ever be as good as I think I could be.  I sure plan on trying.  With all of my studying I have ran across the tip that practice makes perfect.  I have ran into it more than once, but the recommendation is to keep taking pictures, and that as you continue to practice you will progressively get good and amazing images.

As I was thinking of this post, I found it kind of interesting that I sold a car that we put close to 150,000 miles on.  And now I am buying a camera that is rated at 150,000 pictures.  Hopefully it will last as long as the red car, travel as many miles, and help expand my talents.

Wish Me Luck!!