there is no spoon

When I turned 16, my mom tried to teach me to drive her blue 1983 Honda Civic with manual transmission. I wore her already paper-thin patience even thinner by repeatedly stalling the thing and nearly sideswiping parked cars. My lessons were cut short and for the remainer of high school and college, I relied on the bus and the goodwill of friends to get me where I needed to go.

My first job out of college was in Trumbull, a small suburban town in Connecticut where having a car for work was an imperative. My good friend Jenn gave me a crash course in driving on her automatic transmission white Ford Escort. After a few weeks of practice, I got my driver's license two weeks before my 22nd birthday in the town where I went to college.

Before starting my job, Jenn's mother gave me more lessons on her Jeep Cherokee. Like Jenn, she was a good teacher. Confidence was high. I ran to the nearest Honda dealership and custom ordered a silver, 1997 Honda Civic EX to lease. The week I was supposed to pick it up, I called to check on insurance. I was devastated to learn that with only one month of driving experience, most insurance companies wouldn't even cover me. I became what they term an "assigned risk" and my insurance payments were to be about $500/month. I cried and called the Honda dealership to cancel my order. Instead of my brand spanking new wheels, I bought a gray 1986 Honda Accord with 133,000 miles on it from an obese woman who had tweaked the car's chassis by riding around on it solo for 11 years.

In 1998, I sold the Accord and bought a blue 1991 Honda Civic with 79,000 miles from a priest who usually walked to work. It's been a good car these past 7 years, but now it's time to move on.

My new job will require me to be on the road four days each week, covering my territory from beautiful seaside Monterey in the south up to our state's capital, Sacramento, in the north. I need a new car. It has to be comfortable, reliable, get decent gas mileage, not cost a fortune to insure, and be large enough to carry the product kiosk for work, but still small enough to park on San Francisco streets without causing my blood pressure to soar.

I've never owned a new car before. This is a pretty exciting process. I've spent the last two weeks surveying cars on the road; keeping my eyes peeled for something that meets my criteria and stands out. My sister Erica called me from the road the other day to say she was driving behind my future car: a Toyota Matrix. I still haven't seen one in person, but everything I'm reading on-line is giving me hope. It seems like it could be the one! Does anyone out there own one? Do you have a suggestion for something similar that I may not be considering? What would Click and Clack do?