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Pique n' your interest

Guilty pleasures of a new car

By some strange twist of fate, I happened to buy my first car during Whistler’s Commuter Challenge.

And I’m writing this column about buying my first car on Monday, Sept. 22, also known as International Car Free day – as if I don’t already feel guilty enough. I even won a bus pass for entering the Commuter Challenge, valid from Sept. 22-28, and still I drove my car to work this morning.

Believe me, I don’t feel good about any of this (although I did get to sleep in an extra 40 minutes this morning!) and to tell you the truth it’s ruining the pleasure of enjoying my first automobile.

I’m riddled with guilt every time I see a bus cruising down the highway. There are moments of chilly panic when I think about tallying up my points at the end of the challenge, knowing I’m surely at the bottom of the list. And of course, there’s the depressing knowledge that I’m a big hypocrite, who goaded some colleagues into the Commuter Challenge as I mocked their trucks and SUVs.

Why, oh why, couldn’t I have bought this car guilt-free at the beginning of October?

I’ve been in the market to buy a car for the past two months now. By that I mean I’ve been telling everyone that I’m looking to buy a car but I haven’t actively done anything about it; no research, no comparison shopping, nothing.

It was all just so overwhelming that I preferred not to think about it, leaving it instead to the luck of the draw or the hands of the gods.

What that actually means is that I was leaving it for my dad to take care of, as he always does.

So dad swooped in and suddenly my $3,000 budget for a car quadrupled in an instant. He had all these requirements like safety in the snow and reliability and age. I had one requirement – it needed to get me from point A to point B.

Through family connections, dad brokered a deal from Toronto and the next thing I knew I was in Vancouver looking at a car to call my own.

"It’s sooo cute!" I exclaimed in the car lot.

Salesmen’s ears from miles around perked up as my boyfriend gave a weary shake of his head.

"Poker face," he spat out through clenched teeth, as he examined the car from all angles.

He went on to ask a series of questions about the year of the car, accident history, gas mileage etc. while I lovingly ran my hands over the hood. I just couldn’t help it. The car was so much nicer than I had imagined.

I had been warned not to say anything before we went to look at the car. My boyfriend reminded me of an episode from the Cosby Show where Cliff, a doctor married to a lawyer, dresses in a tracksuit and a baseball cap to make the car salesman think he was poor to ultimately get a better deal on the car.

It would seem that he wanted to be Bill Cosby and more importantly he wanted me to keep my mouth shut.

I knew I should have been playing it cool, acting as though I couldn’t care one way or the other if I got this car, but I couldn’t help it. This was going to be my first car! I could picture myself in it already, cruising down the highway, wind blowing in my hair.

The three of us piled in with me behind the wheel and took off for a test cruise. My exclamations about how wonderful this car was only grew louder as I made my way through the traffic.

I was sold. This car would be mine.

Since I made the deal only two things have dampened my enthusiasm for the new car. The first happened at the dreaded insurance company.

Even though I’ve been driving for 12 years with a clean-as-a-whistle driving record, ICBC saw fit to charge me $710 for three months insurance. My jaw dropped onto the counter and I began to think that maybe I wouldn’t be able to afford a car after all. The lady said that ICBC only recognizes me as a one-year driver because that’s how long I’ve had my B.C. licence.

The car salesman, proudly born and raised in Vancouver said, "Well that’s what you have to pay to live in God’s country."

Are you kidding?

I’ve got my fingers crossed that this is all going to turn out to be some kind of a sick joke. Apparently I can get my very clean driving record sent from Ontario and get a discount from ICBC. We’ll wait and see what happens. Fingers crossed that I don’t have to live off Mr. Noodles just to own and operate a car in beautiful bank-breaking British Columbia.

The other downer of course is the Commuter Challenge. It was so easy for me to do the Commuter Challenge last year because I always took the bus or carpooled to work. In fact, I pretty much did the Commuter Challenge every week. Maybe I can bank all those points from the past year?

With that in mind I had convinced myself on Monday night that I had already done my part over the past two years. I’ve taken the bus, hitchhiked, begged rides from friends. Yep, I’ve been pretty environmentally friendly I thought, patting myself on the back and feeling OK about the situation.

And when the hell did I suddenly develop a guilty conscience about driving a car? I never once gave it a moment’s thought when I lived in Toronto and I was practically choking on the smog, gasping for a breath of fresh air there. Why do I suddenly care so much about this now?

Then I came into work this morning and the first article I read on the Toronto Star Web site was headlined: ‘Massive Arctic ice shelf breaks up.’

The story goes on to tell us that the largest ice shelf in the Arctic is breaking up and Canadian polar scientists are putting the blame on accelerated regional warming. Gulp.

Well, as if I wasn’t feeling bad enough – there was the astronomical insurance, the Commuter Challenge and now the Arctic is falling apart. And I’m zipping around in my new car feeling really good about myself.

Except, I don’t really feel that good.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not exactly feeling bad enough that I want to trade in my car and get another bus pass.

But perhaps I’m feeling guilty enough to leave my brand new car at home until the end of September so that I can say I tried to actually make a difference this year? Ask me at the end of the Commuter Challenge. And ask yourself what you’re doing.