Oops

I have to say right up front that Heather and I did not wake up yesterday morning and say "Let's buy a truck today!" But that's what happened.

We had been thinking about a new vehicle for a year or more but had no incentive to act: we have two perfectly serviceable vehicles. A 1999 Subaru Outback (Thanks, Mom) and a 1992 Nissan truck. Both of these are pretty old, but both work and most importantly, both are paid for! We have been looking towards the future knowing that eventually we would need a new vehicle of some sort, and we have played the game of "what would be ideal for us". We had even gone so far as to look at new a Honda Element, and a couple of mini-vans. But we were not really serious in any way. Last week during one of these games, Heather said "What about a new truck?". As we thought about it there were some advantages. We have had our current, ultra-dependable Nissan truck since 1996 (really?!?) and when we got it it was very well suited to our intended purpose - an Adventure Truck. But things have changed in the last 14 years.

1) Cailan's car seat will only fit in the front seat, forcing Heather to sit in the sideways facing rear jump seat. (the jump seat is possibly constructed out of coarse sheet metal...) Since Heather is prone to car-sickness, this was less useful.

2) Our lovely old truck is black. We now live in a very sunny desert.

3) Our lovely old truck has no air conditioning. This added to #1 means that longer family trips are not very comfortable for Heather, and if they are not comfortable for her, they're not comfortable for anyone.

4) we now have Utah. He is horrible when driving. He is so excited to get out and run somewhere that he whines and yelps the entire trip. We solved this in our old truck by mounting his crate in the back where he is still very noisy, but not right on top of us.

5)Our lovely old truck is 2 wheel drive and this plus #3 means that there are about 4-5 months of the year we won't take it anywhere because of safety or notable discomfort. That means we were using the Subaru for lots of adventures, which is all good and well, but because of #4, we either weren't taking Utah, or we weren't going at all due to the amazingly annoying experience of having him IN the car with us.

These things made Heather's "What about a new Truck?" comment start to make sense. But we are not really in a good position to buy a new vehicle. We did browse the Denver Craigslist and I visited a Nissan dealer here to look at new trucks. And I have to admit they had some appeal for us.

Enter Yesterday

It's Spring Break at Mesa State. This means that Heather and Cailan keep their normal schedules and I get to clean and go biking a lot. In the case of yesterday, the weather was not good so I went by the Nissan dealer and looked at used trucks. They had one. I shyly called Heather and told her about it, asking if she would want to see it. She did, so we took a work break to test drive it. By 5pm it was in our driveway...


We are ridiculously excited to take it camping, and snowshoeing, and biking, and etc