On June 5, 2009, I sent a very excited email to some friends. I had pulled up to a stop light right behind one of the Google Street View cars – you know, one of these:
This was only a year after they launched their first images of Austin, and I had never seen one in person before. I told my friends:
I saw the Google Street View car today! I drove right behind it at McNeil and Heinemann. I reached out the window and waved! Watch this URL in a month or so (I guess?), maybe I’ll be there:
I remember going back to that link a month or two later and not seeing my car. I assumed that they just weren’t gathering images at that moment or something.
FAST-FORWARD NINETEEN YEARS, and I came across that old email. I clicked the link again, used the “See more dates” link on Street View to switch to the June 2009 images, and there’s our old white Honda! When I clicked around a bit, I even found an image where my hand is out the window waving:
Hello from the past!