"We were green before it was cool..."

Just for the record, the title of my post is completely a joke.  There was a Vermont bumper sticker that said that.

When I started college, my parents gave me a Honda Civic.  I LOVED that car so much.  Her name was Genevieve.  She got great gas mileage and never had any problems!

When we moved to Vermont, Bech and I decided to sell good ole Genevieve.  We had recently gotten Bech a truck, and we only needed one car.  

That worked great for Vermont, where I could take the bus from Fort Ethan Allen to class every day.  But in Baton Rouge, we need two cars.  My parents let me use my little sisters Mazda.  It's a great car and we were really grateful to them--but the Mazda did not have great gas mileage.  Markeeta the Mazda was a little sporty, and her gas mileage was comparable to Bech's truck.  Not so fun with gas as high as it is.  

Bech and I have wanted to get a hybrid for several years.  I HATE to pay for gas, and I knew I would love a hybrid.  But hybrids are expensive.  So I have been looking at used hybrids, searching for the perfect car at the perfect price.

Thursday, I found it!  Bech was super annoyed that I wanted to look at a car at 5 p.m. on Thursday night, but it worked out.  We are now the proud owners of an '08 Honda Civic (name TBD, suggestions are welcome).

This is Bech and Vance with Markeeta the Mazda.  Vance was laughing during this picture.  I asked him if this was the first time a buyer wanted to take his picture.  He said, "No, but it's the first time someone wanted the picture with the car being traded in."

Can I just tell y'all--we are LOVING the new car.  We drove it up to Jackson Friday night, Oxford Saturday morning, over to Tupelo Sunday morning, then back down to Jackson then Baton Rouge the rest of Sunday.

Learning to drive a hybrid is a change.  The first tank of gas got me to school and back on Friday, then all the way to Oxford.  We only got like 33 or 36 (I can't remember) miles per gallon on that tank.  Bech and I were bummed and worried that we had made a bad choice.  

But then I looked up more about driving hybrids, and we both experimented while driving.  The second tan got us all the way home (6 1/2 hours) with almost a 1/4 tank left.  Average mpg for this tank--43.6!!!  It just took us figuring out what we were doing.

Here's a picture from mid trip.  We ended up getting a little better, but I didn't snap a picture of that.

I love my new (to me) car!