Car Extravaganza

(image found through Google).
On April 17th, 2009 Dave's 2001 Nissan Sentra was t-boned while I was driving it to work. I was on turning from Conroy onto Thurston on a yellow light. The cars coming in the opposite direction were stopping and I thought it was safe. Obviously I was wrong as a Mazda Protege 5 smashed into the passenger side of my car bringing me to a complete stop. Somehow I managed to keep the car from hitting any other vehicle and then parked it on the side of the road. In an attempt to make this part of the story a little shorter, the man who hit me was extremely upset and unnecessarily rude. A witness came back and told me he saw the man run the red light (this witness had been behind me in the turning lane and obviously also thought it was safe to turn as he was right behind me when I was hit). The car had some pretty serious damage to it, but it still ran. The passenger side doors no longer opened and the back passenger side was smashed in so far the you could stick your hand through the opening.I went into work and my boss helped me find out what station to go to and how to get there, I really appreciated how helpful he was. When I arrived at the station I spoke with an officer, waited for another officer and called the insurance company. I also called my dad and asked him to come up and help me as Dave was in Toronto for work. After taking the car to a body shop and getting a rental car (a stupid, horribly designed Toyota Yaris), my dad took me back to Prescott where I spent the weekend trying to relax and figure out what had just happened.(image found through Google).

When I returned Sunday afternoon I had several messages related to the accident one of which was from the constable assigned to the case. He came over to the house and charged me with making an unsafe turn. The man who hit me wasn't getting charged with anything. My witness had changed his statement after speaking with the constable (in my opinion, he was scared out of it by the constable but I do not know exactly what happened). I was upset and angry. I have since decided to fight the charge and have a court date on July 6, 2009 at 1pm. I hope it goes well.
Later on in the week I learned that the car was a total loss. After quite a bit of deliberation with Dave about the situation, we decided to take the money offered to us by the insurance company and find a new car. We started looking for cars when he was home for the weekend and then while he was back in Toronto. We had quite a hard time with this as we really didn't have any money and were both extremely stressed. The leaders in the car search were: a red 2008 Honda Fit (sport) with ~50,000km (image found through Google) and two red 2007 Dodge Calibers (with ~80,000km and ~60,000km) (image found through Google).Later on we also thought about a new 2009 Pontiac Wave (image found through Google).
After about 2 weeks of car shopping, we came to an agreement to buy the Honda Fit from the dealership owned by family friends back in Prescott. We liked the look of it and felt it was a better fit for our lifestyle. It has tons of space inside (seriously - just wait until you see it, it looks tiny but inside it feels huge!) and has so many features we couldn't afford in a new car.
We went to Riverside Saturday to purchase the car only to find more stress. Someone had the car out on a test drive! I was very upset (again) and was afraid that we were going to lose the only car we both liked and felt was the right price. We went back to my parents' house and made a few calls to some of the other dealers we had been talking to and were able to make a deposit on the car. Eventually we were able to go and test the car out again and we luckily saw that we hadn't built it up too much. It was still great so we purchased it. I got a courtesy car to drive, a red Pontiac Pursuit, until our car was ready as it needed to have a safety and inspection done to ensure it was up to the standards of the Riverside Pontiac Buick dealership.(image found through Google).
I picked up our 2008 Honda Fit on Tuesday and am absolutely in love with it. Dave will be home on Saturday (he is back in Toronto for work) and I can't wait for him to come home to our new car. It makes me so happy to have our own set of wheels again - ones we got to pick out and buy.