The Jeep is Dead. Long live The Jeep.

I knew this day would come. I knew it was getting closer and closer with every mile I drove, but the inevitability of the Jeep's demise did nothing to stop me from becoming more and more attached each time I loaded it up, ready to set off on our next adventure. If it is possible to love an inanimate object, I loved The Jeep. That vehicle was as much a part of my college experience as any building at Dartmouth, or any dorm or apartment I've ever lived in. It was the perfect car at the perfect time, and I will miss it dearly.

This past winter the Jeep had a terrible time starting in the cold and altitude of Colorado. There's a chance I might be in Colorado this coming winter, and I knew the Jeep didn't have another cold season in it. The Jeep would not see 2010. This put the cost of repairs for it on a very short leash. This past week at its latest oil change the inspection turned up $500 worth of fluid flushes and leak fixes, and that was enough. The Blue Book value on the Jeep is about $800. I took it for a drive on Wednesday to get it over 190,000 miles, and then my mom and I traded it in for a new Subaru Forester. The Jeep was 15 years, 8 months old. Old enough to drive itself under adult supervision.

The Jeep was born in Colorado in 1993. It had an exciting early life with numerous trips to ski areas, off-roading in the Great Sand Dunes, and road trips to the Dakotas and Pacific Northwest. It spent the years 1994-2003 primarily in Oklahoma as a commuter vehicle, escaping briefly a few times a year on road trips to Colorado and New Mexico. In 2001 I learned how to drive in it. In 2002 I became the primary driver of the Jeep, and drove it to school every day of my Junior and Senior years of high school. It allowed me to commute to the other high school in town to take a class not offered at my school, and was often taken to lunch since it could hold 5 people a lot more comfortably than my best friend's Civic.

The Jeep surpassed 100,000 miles in September 2003 as my Mom and I drove up for my freshman year at Dartmouth. Sophomore year I took sole possession of the Jeep. The Jeep almost met its end in April 2005, but I convinced my mom to fix the transmission for 3 grand as opposed to buying me a new car. My sophomore, junior, and senior year at Dartmouth the Jeep attended nearly every tournament with Dartmouth Ultimate. It went on spring break. It hauled a pong table. It moved nearly the entire capacity of 311 Mid Mass in one trip. It drove between Oklahoma and Dartmouth 10 times while I was an undergrad. It carried me through snow covered roads on the way to Killington, Stowe, and the Dartmouth Skiway. It took me down to Boston to visit Tyke God only knows how many times. The Jeep could hold all the food, cones, and other supplies necessary to host a frisbee tournament for 30 teams. I'm willing to bet 4 out of 5 people who see this post have ridden in the Jeep for at least a few hours.

The Jeep moved with me to Wisconsin. It went over 150,000 miles in Madison in June 2007, and quickly became legend amongst the Pimpdags, especially those who spent 2 hours in it sitting in the parking lot of a porn shop in the middle of nowhere when the serpentine belt broke on Spring Break. It did the most serious off-roading of its life on the Como Road in August 2008 in Colorado. The Jeep spent its last weeks residing in Guadalupe Mountains National Park, before embarking on its last road trip ever to bring me back to Oklahoma.

In its life the Jeep made it to 43 of the states in this country, and reached the highest point in 6 of them. And the Jeep's life is not necessarily over. The Subaru dealer will sell it to a smaller auto shop, where it will be either scrapped for parts or sold to a new owner. My hope is that someone sees the Jeep as I have seen it, and it gets to live out the rest of its days on a ranch, or helping a teenager learn how to drive and maintain a car, or I can only hope, somewhere, anywhere, where it can face the west, the orange light of sunset glinting of its red hood, and imagine the mountains that must lie just past the horizon.

The Jeep is dead. Long live the Jeep. R.I.P. October 1993 - June 2009.