Ramblings From Justin Penney

My van is gone. It was pretty good to us. It only left me stranded once. It was fairly cheap and we drove it to almost 170,000 miles.

We replaced the van with an '06 Dodge Dakota Quad Cab. This is the perfect van replacement! It holds 6 people. It has a bed. It's black and awesome!

A small fuel efficient hatchback was in out future. Gas is high and we were able to nearly completely equalise the expense of a new car with the gas savings. The van had been getting 14 MPG for a while so beating it in gas wasn't hard. We were pretty set on getting a Nissan Versa or a Ford Focus wagon. Owning a home makes your vehicle choices different. We've got a lot of things in motion and it's always been a pain to get anything large home. Even hauling leaves and brush from trimming the trees was a pain. We would use the van but then there would be crap all over. The last time I hauled leaves I tried using drop cloths but those just got in the way.

We settled on getting a truck and we got one. It didn't take long to find this one and it's pretty much perfect. It holds all of us and will hold the future additions. It's got a reasonable bed to haul things in. I now know what I'm going to do when I bust out the concrete pad that was previously a dog kennel. I know what I'm gonig to do the next time I have brush. It's so liberating! I don't have to ask friends to borrow their trucks!

I've had a few people comment that they don't think of me as a truck guy. I guess a lot of them have never known me to own a truck. I always thought I was a truck guy. moving to the Focus from my Jeep Comanche was weird.

Anyway, we have a truck. It's awesome. I'm glad to have a truck again.

# posted by Justin @ 10:57 PM