After dating for just about six years, I got engaged to my now-fiancée, Kara, with about 20 minutes to spare at the end of 2025. It was a wonderful and joyful moment we shared as flurries fell in Washington Square Park. Considering our families don't live in New York, they obviously weren't there to share in the occasion, which meant a few weeks later we had to head out to her folks' house near Scranton, Pennsylvania, to celebrate.
To get out there — in a nasty snowstorm, mind you — I was behind the wheel of a Polestar 4 Dual Motor. You know, the one without a rear window. It was very well filled with the two of us, our three cats and everything we could need for a long weekend somewhere between the Poconos and Scranton. Packed cars are a bit of a recurring theme on these trips, and while that used to be something I found a bit annoying, I've grown to love it.
Full Disclosure: Polestar lent me a 2026 Polestar 4 with a full charge to do with as I pleased for a freezing cold week in January.
Andy Kalmowitz / Jalopnik
We do a lot for love. We work at it every day, but it's good work — work worth doing. I'm sure there are people in your life who'll tell you the same. Hell, you probably feel the same way, and if you don't, I hope you find that soon, because you deserve it.
In any case, I've been thinking a lot about what goes into love lately, mostly because I've been listening to a lot of Cameron Winter. If you're not in your 20s or live in New York (or you didn't catch SNL a couple of weeks ago), you may not have heard of him, but his breakout song is called "Love Takes Miles." In the song, which is a single from his album "Heavy Metal," one of the first things Winter talks about is how "love will make you fit it all in the car," and damn, did that hit me hard.
I can't really tell you how this happens, but every time my fiancée and I head to her parents' or mine, we somehow end up bringing back more stuff to our New York City apartment than we left with. Now, don't get me wrong, we also bring plenty of stuff with us to their houses as well. Oftentimes, I'll do five or six trips up and down the stairs to whatever car I'm driving that week just to fill it with whatever is coming with us to Pennsylvania or New Jersey, and it was no different with the Polestar.
This time was supposed to be different, though. We were bringing back some old clothes she wasn't wearing anymore, so I was actually sort of excited, and I thought to myself, "Surely, we will not have as much to bring back to New York this time." It meant I wasn't going to need to trek up and down the stairs over and over just to unload the 4's trunk and frunk. Welp, that didn't happen, and I've got this gorgeous antique washstand to thank. If you're ever in the area, head to Plains Antiques and Home Furnishings. They've got some killer stuff.
Andy Kalmowitz / Jalopnik
While I might have been my usual calm, cool and collected self on the outside, internally I stressed for about a day trying to figure out how I was going to get our newly acquired piece of turn-of-the-century furniture back home, along with a lot of laundry (we had a bit of a month problem), groceries, our normal luggage, and some other shopping we picked up along the way. Oh, we also had our three cats and all of their accoutrements.
I knew the trunk would have to be packed to the brim if I ever stood a chance of getting everything in here, so it was kind of a moot point that there wasn't a rear window. At 190.5 inches, the Polestar 4 is not a big car, so you can see why I was stressed.
Here's the thing, though: everything made it back home, and other than having to find new and creative ways to fit 10 pounds of crap into a five-pound bag in the freezing temperatures of her parents' driveway, it was fine. I won't say it was easy or particularly fun, and my life — at that moment — would've certainly be much easier without that washstand in it.
But the way we talked about our plans for this little piece of furniture — where it was going to go in our apartment now, where it could go in our home in the future, how we could fix it up and make it truly ours — made every second of the car loading I've done over the years worth it, because love will undoubtedly make you find a way to fit it all in the car.
