News from Jules | 02.26.2025 | A Big Deal

I had to dig deep.

Last Thursday was my first trip up to Portland, Ore., since July because stormy driving over the mountain passes between Bend and Portland wasn’t ideal for my 2008 Volkswagen Rabbit. And, my car had been acting up since the fall, including an intermittent check engine light and strange noises from the passenger dash that a local mechanic said, “Sure, it’s driveable but may not be reliable.”

Even more so in the last few weeks as more random things started to break. The sunroof opened itself and wouldn’t close. The dashboard would go blank. The ceiling upholstery was sagging. As if the car itself was saying, “I’m done already.”

I knew this day was coming since my car broke down in January 2023—unexpectedly but perhaps inevitably after driving 15,000 miles cross-country twice the previous year. While I waited for the tow truck that day, I called to consult my buddy who had worked at CarMax. We agreed that I had to spend the money to fix it, but once I was out of crisis mode it was time to start looking at new cars.

At that time, I was still in between housing—housesitting or crashing at friends between seasonal gigs—and I couldn’t imagine selling the one consistent thing in my life.

So, for the past two years, I talked to everybody about buying a new car. And many offered to help. But I procrastinated. For so many reasons.

Partially because big, technical purchases are overwhelming for me.

Mostly because this wasn’t just a vehicle transporting me around town to a job or the grocery store, my car was the holder of so many memories—the ups and downs and everything in between.

When the car door got keyed during the first month after I bought it. When I was rear-ended while traveling in Upstate New York. When I forgot to turn off the headlights and needed a jumpstart too many times to count.

All the times the father-son specialty car mechanics quickly turned around my car repair or loaned me a car, dropped everything to change my headlights or key battery when I stopped in unannounced, or answered my calls to reassure me about dashboard indicator lights before I was out of cell range in the middle of nowhere.

That one time, my 5’8” friend and I awkwardly tried to sleep in the back before our sunrise start backpacking the Timberline Trail around Mount Hood. When my CarMax buddy helped drive my car from Philadelphia to Denver because I was still recovering from surgery.

We had been on so many adventures together—whether solo, with friends, or the occasional random hiker who needed a ride to a trailhead—including countless local trips to my family’s former cabin, the Oregon coast, the Columbia River Gorge, and Mount Hood, plus several big road trips around the West and across the country.

Unlike all the homes, jobs, friends, lovers, and communities that have come and gone in the past 14 years, this car was in my life every single day. It was more than just a car. My constant companion and my sense of home, keeping me safe and enabling my freedom, so cute and fun to drive.

I loved this car.

Hence, I procrastinated for two years until everything was breaking.

And I probably would have waited longer if my bestie and her husband, the one who worked at CarMax, our mutual friend who currently works at CarMax, and my Dad hadn’t stepped in to help me figure out financing, narrow down a search, and make an action plan for trading in the old car and committing to a new car by Feb. 20, on the way to the coast for my annual beach retreat.

After 14 years together, I traded in my 2008 Volkswagon Rabbit for a 2017 Honda CR-V.

See photos of our adventures over the years on Instagram.

Before the drive up last week, I uploaded my documents, got an online trade-in appraisal, cleaned out my car, and updated my Favorites list from cars on the lot. I was prepared but I was still a bundle of nerves as I took the exit toward the CarMax dealership out in the suburbs of Portland last Thursday.

Because big, technical purchases are overwhelming for me. Because I dreaded letting go of my trusty steed and starting over. Because I planned to drive off the lot with a new car but that depended on finding the right one. Because this ended my three-and-a-half-year streak of being 100% debt-free. And this was my first time buying a car “all by myself.”

It was a big deal for me.

I had to dig deep.

As I followed Google Maps instructions into the CarMax lot, I took a few deep breaths to find, tucked underneath all the nerves and emotions, that unshakable place that gets me through things. That strength to stay present, to ask for help, and allow the support I desperately needed.

As soon as I walked in, I was relieved to see my good friend, the dealership general manager, walk over to welcome me with a big smile and a hug. She kept an eye on me the whole time, checked in periodically on the sales process, let me take all the time I needed, and even hopped in for my first test drive when she saw me just sitting in the parking lot pushing buttons for five minutes.

I’m pretty sure everybody at the dealership was cheering me along.

It took four and a half hours of looking at six cars, test-driving three cars, calling four friends, and crying in the bathroom three times—from overwhelm, from sadness, then from relief—before they handed me the keys to my new car.

A 2017 Honda CR-V LX with four-wheel drive, all-season tires, and plenty of clearance for accessing backcountry trailheads and driving up to the mountains.

A perfect fit for my lifestyle.

And the start of a new chapter.

May you dig deep this week.

Love,

Jules

P.S. Clearly I have a hard time letting go. We couldn’t find my Volkswagen key before I left the dealership but figured it would turn up. It was probably just in someone’s pocket. The team searched everywhere. The next morning, when I went out front of my Dad’s house to load up my CR-V for the drive to the beach, I beeped the key but nothing happened. I looked down and saw my Volkswagen key and special Grateful Dead keychain dangling in my hand. Oops.