A Saturn's Farewell

I am a little sad about this.
Our poor, much-used Saturn is officially dead now. We haven't driven it for quite some time, and it has a few new parts that apparently will never be used.

Let me back up a bit....
This Saturn was the third new Saturn purchased by my father. He bought it in 1995, for his birthday. For those of you who don't know, he runs the tires of off cars for a couple of years and moves on to a new one. Literally. He had this one specially delivered with no power anything....that includes no power steering. None of us are sure why. Anyway, I paid him some money for it and got it right before I got married, it had just under 200,000 miles on it at that point. I brought a Saturn to the marriage; Will brought a hot, red eclipse.

That car has made the trip from Alabama to Utah, or the other way around, more than any one single vehicle we've done the trip in. I would guess somewhere around 14 trips out and back. That car could have gone around the world a number of times. I'm sure it feels like it has. The odometer sits somewhere around 330,000 miles. I'm not exaggerating. I really thought we would teach Nolan how to drive in it.

So, on with the story:

Will and Calvin were out working on it today when they discovered (with the help of our neighbor) the fatal blow.
You know, Saturns don't have timing belts. They have this timing-chain sort of thing. Apparently, at some point, this chain sort of imploded/exploded. I'm not sure which term you would use. But, it's in many pieces and the pieces are in many places. What a bummer!!!! Will says we could replace the entire engine....but we won't.

So, there goes another piece of my "young" life. Just another memory.

Man, how old am I now?????