Speeeeeeed........

I dreamed that it was time to get a new car. In the spirit of this, I went to a user car dealership. It was a small dealership, and his selection was very limited. Two cars caught my eye: one was a modified Nissan Sentra, and the other was a 2001 Ford Mustang Cobra.

The Sentra was a red hatchback. (No, the car does not come in a hatchback model.) I looked closely at it. Beneath one of the taillights was a dent, positioned in the same place as the dent that's on the green Sentra that I owned. I looked at the owner and asked him about it. He apparently knew the vehicle's history rather well. He told me that this was the same car that I had owned. Before I had time to contradict him, he told me it's full recent history.

The car had been stolen while it was sitting at Dane's. In an attempt to hide the vehicle, the thief had painted the car, but that wasn't good enough. Thus, he converted the back end into a hatchback. He was still caught, and the car was put up for sale here, because the rightful owner lived in the area.

Stunned into silence, I looked at my old car. Not wishing to go back to the ways of the past, I got the Mustang. A good friend of mine used to own one. I've driven a couple since then, and my interest in Ford's Pony Car has most certainly not gone down. I just wasn't sure how it would fit my lifestyle...

Anyway, I drove the car off the lot, and headed to Christendom. It was late in the evening, so I crashed at Dane's place. Early the next morning, I drove out to Old St. Mary's for a High Mass. The Mustang definitely cut some time off the journey. On the way back, I did more fancy driving, and I really fell in love with the car. My only problem is that there just wasn't enough room for people. Sure, small people could fit in the back, but it just didn't have the leg room that people my size would need for any kind of long drive...

With this in mind, I returned the car to the dealership. The owner wasn't there: instead, there was a sign on the door, saying where he was. Instead of driving the Mustang out, I parked it, put the keys away, took the keys to the Sentra, and drove it over to where the owner was.

We discussed the swap. He agreed with me: the Sentra would fit me better than the Mustang, mostly because it was more economical, and it had more room. I drove him back to the dealership, and we did the swap paperwork.

As I drove the car away, I continued to notice all sorts of cool stuff that had been done. The thief had taken the stereo, but had replaced it with one that was between the front seats. The CD player, tape desk, controls, equalizer, everything was on the driver's right, and conveniently located so that he didn't have to scoot forward to reach the stereo. The dashboard had been replaced: there was no spot for the old stereo anymore, just a slick new dashboard console that offered more leg room underneath. In the back, the passenger seats had the edges cut away, and in the place of where the fabric used to be were thin tower speakers. This provided the car with much better sound than it had before.

I tested the car's speed. It had improved since I drove it last, but it wasn't as good as the Mustang. I'm sure that if I wanted that, I could modify the engine to do just that, but for now, I was just fine with a more economical car.

As I drove to Christendom, enjoying the old made new, I woke up...