Woo, so my dad's van broke down today. The transmission totally pooped out on it. There's a fun grinding noise when you put it into gear. We were driving back from shooting some photos when it happened -- we were driving on my street when GRRREEASKDKDOKOAO{WEOOFDSOAKFEOAW. Luckily, we were able to pull into a parking lot before the thing just refused to go.
The events leading up to that were strange. My dad spontaneously cleaned out my car today. He didn't even know why he did it, but he felt that he had to. Basically, he just cleaned out a few things, removed some of the things I had stuffed in the center console, vacuumed the carpet and stuff, and took the loose change and pens out of it. When we were walking back to the minivan after taking the photos, I took a picture of the minivan for some inexplicable reason. It's almost as if it were meant to happen.
Oh well, at least he can drive my Saturn around. I'm not exactly going to need it (I'm not even going to take it with me to Maryland when I go back -- there's no point since I can use my company car for personal use; it would just wind up taking up another valuable parking spot at our apartment).
On the bright side, he did wind up getting $250 for the van, plus a tow. That'll be enough to put an exhaust on my car that doesn't make the engine sound ten sizes larger than it is.
That said, I took my Saturn out for the first time since I'd left for Florida in January. Oh maaaaaaaan, I'm going to miss that car.
It's just so much fun to drive. I love the fact that the pedal is directly connected to the accelerator and that I actually have gears. It just has a great feel to it.
I like my Five Hundred and all, but it's very obvious that it's built for comfort and work rather than fun. The accelerator is electronically controlled and it doesn't actually have gears -- it has one of those constantly variable transmissions. Very smooth ride, very easy starts and stops, but...it's not as fun.