I’ve been think­ing about buy­ing a new car for mostly the wrong reasons.

Petty rea­son #1. My Civic has a ter­ri­ble amount of road noise. Dri­ving the local roads in Seat­tle, even at a pal­try 25 mph, it’s like rid­ing a coal mine cart in an Indi­ana Jones movie.

Petty rea­son #2. My Civic has a cas­sette radio and play­ing my tunes through my cas­sette adapter is, and always has been, like lis­ten­ing to a live record­ing on a card­board speaker.

Petty rea­son #3. I love rid­ing my bike with Elle, but I can’t get bike rack that fits through my apartment’s garage. I need a car that can effort­lessly fit a big and small bike.

Petty rea­son #4. My Civic has a great turn­ing radius and is small enough for city dri­ving, but improv­ing on both these dimen­sions would be even bet­ter for the nar­row Seat­tle roads. It would open up a whole new world of park­ing opportunities!

Petty rea­son #5. My Civic is aging and approach­ing the high main­te­nance phase of its life. Who wants to spend time replac­ing a tim­ing belt here, tires there as it slowly falls apart? Bet­ter to rid of it now and save that time for some­thing more enjoy­able, like eat­ing cheap eth­nic food on the Ave.

I sup­pose the only legit­i­mate rea­son I have is that I feel sur­rounded by emblems of my bro­ken mar­riage. I live with the car, the fur­ni­ture, the bed, and the kitchen­ware of a failed 8 year rela­tion­ship, and as shal­low as it seems to gripe about things, it’s really hard to move on when I’m liv­ing and using things from my painful past. I don’t know how much that’s worth; I don’t think I could put a price on it. But surely a $150 monthly car pay­ment is well below its value.

So what do I want? I’m look­ing at a Black­berry Pearl Honda Fit. They’re small, fuel eco­nom­i­cal, with extremely ver­sa­tile space for peo­ple and things. I’m used to Hon­das, their usabil­ity is one of the best in the car indus­try, and they’re pretty cheap. As much as I hate cars, I do spend a lot of time com­mut­ing back and forth to Kirk­land, so why not have a nice, com­pact lit­tle car that can zip around those Lake Wash­ing­ton curves? The Fit wouldn’t be dra­mat­i­cally bet­ter than my ’02 Civic, but would be an incre­men­tal improve­ment, in a petty sort of way.

In fact, it hates every­one, espe­cially other iPhone users. Six hour text mes­sage delays. Voice­mails show­ing up a day later. In some cases, I’ll never even get the mes­sage. It’s dri­ving me crazy! I had sit­u­a­tions where peo­ple email me ask­ing why I’m not pick­ing up, and I’ll call them, but they won’t get my call. This is the best phone I’ve ever had, except for the phone part.

That said, I’m on the phone with Apple and AT&T right now, and they’re pretty awe­some. They know what they’re talk­ing about, they’re clear in their instruc­tions, and the qual­ity of the call is great, with­out any dis­tract­ing back­ground call cen­ter noise. Now if only they can fix it…