Farewell, Kate

Posted on January 22, 2007 by Gene

I hate saying goodbye. Leaving family and friends behind in DC, sending my cats off to live with a new family… and now, selling Kate.
Kate is my Prius. My second generation Prius, to be precise. (I had a first generation model as well, it found a new home when Kate arrived off the ship from Japan.)
I met her on a rainy November 24, 2003. She was shiny and new and more than a little bossy — I named her after Kate in “The Taming of the Shrew”; she bossed me around via the navigation system, but I finally tamed her.
Now she has been sold, and will be leaving me tomorrow. Like every other goodbye, this one is making me question my actions — why am I letting her go? She’s been so good to me, so efficient and smooth, so satisfying for a gadget guy and so smugly green. She’s well-travelled, starting out in Japan, making her way across the ocean and through the Panama Canal, then on to New York then Washington, DC. In 2005, she made her way back across the country to California, where she lives now. Still, she has really low mileage for such a lot of travel!
I’ll miss her a lot. My new Audi is a kick on a sunny day with the top down; my electric scooter is perfect for short trips between here and downtown… but neither of them really fit me like the Prius.
I hope she’ll be happy without me. I’ll be inconsolable for a while. I’m weird like that.