goodbye, Grey Baron

Before we could pick up our new baby, we had to drive the old Grey Baron to the lot to trade him in. I took a ton of pictures of our last drive - I won't bore you with them all. Most of them are up on Flickr, if you're interested.


Climate controls, radio/tape deck, cup holder... all the important stuff. I added a photo gallery of friends and family - closeup of that below.


Anytime I took sticker pictures with anyone, I'd stick one up here. There are funny stories behind some of these. I took 'em all down and stuck 'em in a notebook. Now that this gallery is no more, I want to recreate it on Lucy's dash. I love being able to look at pictures of my loved ones while I'm stuck in traffic or sitting at a red light or something, and getting that warm fuzzy feeling.

Those sticker picture machines aren't as common as they once were, tho', so I'm probably going to just print out photos and stick them up with tape or something. There is an old-style photo booth at our closest K-mart, however... maybe I will have to drag all visitors over there so I can use those photos for my gallery. Hee!


See that crack in the windshield? A little souvenir from the vandals who took him (bastards). That's Johnny squinting in the rear view mirror.


Me in the side mirror. Note that all the windows are down - this is no place to drive around in a car with no air conditioning.


One last shot of the dashboard before we turned him off for the last time. 82,937 miles on him. I'm guessing at least 50,000 of those were put on by me.


Such cushy leather seats, very comfy for long car trips. I can't even remember how many road trips I took in the Grey Baron. He's been up and down the East Coast so many times, and then of course, there was the great cross-country road trip of 2001.


You'll note I did not steal the hood ornament. I was good. In retrospect, tho', maybe I should've taken it. It wouldn't have made him look all that much more beat up. He really was a nice car when he was new, but 16 years will take their toll.


Goodbye, Grey Baron. You were a great car - even if no one else misses you, I do, and I will always remember you.

(His trade-in value: $200.)