Grace rides again

We're up-to-date, official, and entirely legal. There was no work on Friday thanks to the company summer party (God, whatever else it's been, this has been the summer of the 4-day work week), so I took Grace to get inspected. This week was the long-awaited final switch-over to Mass. registration and plates. My truck and I are now completely titled, taxed, and registered in Massachusetts. No vestiges of my Georgia residency now remain. Props to the state of GA for allowing me to remotely register a vehicle in their state that has not been there for the past two years. But I figured that was long enough to be riding dirty, so I got everything taken care of this past week. Everything went pretty painless and I was pleasantly surprised to find out that my insurance didn't go up but a few dollars. I was a little worried that this was going to be the point where my insurance noticed that little incident 3 years ago and decided to gouge me, but I am apparently the man of the phantom DUI. All in all, it was a nice weight off my shoulders and it felt good being called Mr. Dunce Cap Marvel by insurance agents and government employees and being all grown-up and responsible and shit.

Yesterday, I took Grace out for the afternoon just like the old days. Haven't done much pleasure driving for a long while with gas and all, but we had an enjoyable few hours out tooling around Essex County. We took the country roads up to Newburyport and took in a very scenic drive through little Massachusetts villages and farms. It's really wild how close you can be to some of the bigger towns and highways and -- relatively speaking -- Boston, and yet be driving through some very rural areas tucked away and looking very much like the countryside from Shawshank.

We made it over to Plum Island and discovered some really nice beaches that I'll have to check out again. Also saw some great farm stands (hot, buttered sweet corn...mmmm) and some nice cemeteries that I made mental notes of. It was just nice and very relaxing to be able to take a scenic drive, listen to folk music on NPR, and not have to worry about anything like money, health problems, or juggling future travel destinations for the next month. It was a far sight from two months ago, when I thought Grace was tot to the extreme.

I had jumped in one afternoon after leaving work to go catch a train to catch a plane to Minnesota and she basically blew up in my face. The engine wouldn't turn over and everything electrical in the vehicle turned into a carnival funhouse from some B-rated horror movie. Auto locks going up and down, radio turning on to blare for a couple of seconds before shutting off again, dome light on, and chime ringing incessantly in my panicked brain. The ignition tried to eat my key and it took me valuable minutes to finally wrench it loose. I left Grace there in agony, unable to do anything for her, and still almost missing my train. It turned out to be a very expensive battery replacement, but I got her back from the dead. And now her we are: papers all in order and finally legal residents of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. It's good to be home.