A week and a half ago I got in my first car accident as an adult.

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A car traveling in the opposite direction turned left into my front tire/door frame, and then I scraped along their front-end before coming to a stop. The driver was an undocumented immigrant and eventually fled the scene when I called the cops to file a report. The police were apparently super busy that night and took just over three hours to show up.

My door frame was bent enough to keep the door from fully opening, but it felt like mostly cosmetic damage, so I was shocked when insurance totalled it after just sending in preliminary photos. Luckily, I have good insurance which covers uninsured motorists like this, so I got a good payout, and I then also received generous gifts from both my parents and my in-laws.

So today, we said goodbye to my 2010 Toyota Prius I bought back in November 2009, just over 15 years ago.

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Then… I upgraded to a 2018 Kia Soul.

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It was a weird feeling when I came home from the dealership and the Prius had already been towed to the junkyard (only 2 hours after I released it to them).

It has been a hard couple weeks as I recovered from the shock from the accident and then additional shock from the insurance decision to total.

I have grieved my Prius more than I thought I would (real tears!), though maybe I shouldn’t have been too surprised.

It was a good car, and had served me well with not a ton of stress (though lately a fair bit of burning oil).

It has seen me through my whole post-college life up until now, across 3 jobs and 2 states.
It was the car my (then) girlfriend, my parents, and I took to Washington, DC in 2019.
It was the car my (now) wife and I drove away from the church in 2020.
It was the car we brought my son home from the hospital in 2021 (this quick sequence of life events is why I didn’t blog much for a bit!).

Goodbye, Prius.

Thanks for all the miles (178k), all the smiles, and all the memories over the last 15 years.

On to the next adventure…


Incidentally, this is not the first damage I had on the Prius and not even the first time that front driver’s side got hit! My sister backed into my car (which was parked across the street) as she came out of my parent’s driveway in 2013.

Siblings, man…