Day 8 - Transportation

I'm taking an online class to help me with my writing. Every morning I get an email prompt about the topic for the day and I write what I can/want, with the intent to go deeper than just the basics and to capture the details of my life. You can learn more about the class here: 31 Days For the fun of it, I'm posting on my blog what I wrote for the previous day's assignment.

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The Cars of my Life:
1979: Datsun B-210, college car
1984: Honda Civic, newlywed car
1991: Ford Aerostar XLT, family car
2002: BMW, what was Doug thinking?
2004: Honda Odyssey, family car #2
2007: Toyota Tundra, Pretty-boy Truck


Observations:
1. We seem to like foreign built vehicles.
2. I really liked our Ford Aerostar, it had so much space inside. We went on lots of fun family trips in that van. Lots.
3. We don't try to re-sell our vehicles. We tend to drive them to death.
4. After living in rural Utah for many years I couldn't help myself and I kept nagging Doug about getting a Pretty-boy truck. That's a truck that a person uses just to look good in; not needed for real truck purposes.
5. I found out from a Honda technician that they like to get at least 200,000 miles out of a Honda. We had about 130,000 on our Odyssey at that time. I told my  family we were keeping this van until we put 200,000 miles on it and then we could get a new vehicle. The odometer turned over to 200,000 on March 16 of this year when Abbie and I were on our way to Gramma's. I pulled over and took a picture. The van is still driving fine. We'll just keep going. Until we can't.


Philosophy:
I bought my first car, the Datsun B-210, in 1979 after I had spent the summer on Long Island as a nanny, or Summer Girl- as they said. My parents had moved from Panama to Monterey, California for language training before they moved to Portugal. I jumped at the chance to live in Monterey and I moved home to work before going back to school.


My Dad helped me go car shopping. This is what he said to me: "Basically a car is used to get from Point A to Point B. That's all. You decide how much money you want to spend to do that."


Kind of keeps it in perspective.