For those of you (meaning, uh, two readers) who don't know me very well, I'm pretty good in the Denial Department of life… a.k.a., sailing down DeNile. My dear Subaru Impreza is a good source of prompting those sailing expeditions, as it's getting up there in years and I am NOT ready for it to die.

This weekend it finally got above 45 and I decided to wash my car. My original project was to install the remote starter, but after realizing the "easy to install!" claim on the package was really written in Opposite language, I decided to kill that idea. So, my car finally got a much-needed bath, as it still had a good dosing of salt all over it from our last "snowstorm" a few weeks ago.

Unfortunately for me, doing so forced me to take a good look at how well the body is REALLY holding up after 15 years. As a whole, it's not too bad, but when I took a closer look at some spots, I went . As I've mentioned, northern Virginia has no idea how to deal with snow. So therefore, they dump a crapload of salt all over the roads whenever there's evidence of a single flake falling from the sky. Salt + exposed metal = rust. There's a spot where the rear wheel arch meets the rocker panel that's really bad… to the point of where I was using my fingers and literally breaking off chunks of rust from under the rubber seal. Basically, both lower rocker panels are starting to show signs of rust… not cool. Fortunately, it's not immediately obvious unless you are 8" tall.

Anyway, I cleaned up the car best I could, applied Permatex to the scary parts (fortunately, there's only one that's actually visible from eye level - Bondo and I will be spending some quality time together when the weather warms up), and tried to shove the image of my car slowly eroding from my mind… a.k.a. Denialand.

The next day, I started up the car and thought, "Hey… this isn't idling quite right." I look behind me to see a nice plume of blue smoke coming from the exhaust… awesome. Evidence of the car burning oil only happens once in awhile during really cold weather and only a tiny puff of smoke will appear… but this was a [now defunct] family turbodiesel Volvo-worthy cloud. Gross.

So, of course, I attribute the sudden smoke cloud from having parked on a slight decline overnight. Otherwise the car is fine… just dying a slow death from the inside out.

To make matters worse, Dad continually reminds me that I will eventually need to replace my Soobie and that I should probably actually start thinking of what to buy as a replacement. He's pretty good at throwing down the anchor from my DeNile sailboat. :finger: