Out With the Old, In With the New

In the space of this one day, we sold our faithful Subaru and purchased, what we hope will be, a faithful Suburban.

Barely an hour after parking the Subaru up on Elemendorf A.F.B.’s “lemon lot”, Bruce got a “hot” call from a prospective buyer.

The buyer is a serviceman out car-shopping with his parents, who were up visiting from California, and we going to buy him a vehicle. Our car was exactly what they had been looking for. So, after a quick spin and minimal dickering over the price, the deal was done.

During the course of conversation during the deal, Bruce came to find out that the California-dad is a pilot with Fed-Ex. He is a colleague of, and acquainted with, our friend and neighbor, Gus, who, if you’ve been following my blog recently, just taught Jack how to ride his bike. Small world. But hey, that's Alaska for ya. And, we also know his money is good. Ha ha.

So, for several hours, we were down to two vehicles, one of which we are also selling. We both startied to feel a bit under the gun about finding something to replace the Subaru and Explorer.

For the past week, since we decided to pursue the Alaskan dream and trade up to an SUV, and eventually purchase a travel trailer, we have been borderline obsessed with learning as much as necessary to make an intelligent buying decision.

What we found is though Suburbans and Tahoes are a dime a dozen up here (like, every fifth car on the road), very few on the secondary market have the wheaties we feel we need. (Admittedly, we don’t know what kind of towing capacity we’ll really need, but we wanted to err on the side of more power, so that we don’t needlessly contrict an already tight RV market.)

The few Suburbans and Tahoes we found in our price range either had ridiculous miles (hard-earned by someone else living the Alaskan-dream), or weren’t powerful enough.

So, I was cruising the internet checking out various now-familiar websites for new listings, shying from the dreaded 5.7 liter Tahoes (talk about a dime-a-dozen…) and eagerly coveting 5.3L.

I finally found a listing for a 2000 Suburban, priced slightly lower than others we’d seen, though still just a tad more than we wanted to spend. I told Bruce about it and he indicated that he’d seen it, it was perfect, but the dealer absolutely wouldn’t budge on the price.

So, we bought it. (See above picture. Isn’t it a pretty color?)

It drives absolutely beautifully. Its way nicer (in terms of bells and whistles) than I felt I needed (it has a sunroof and leather interior). I’m pretty sure it’s quite a bit smarter than I am, because there’s all sorts of buttons and lights on the dashboard that I don’t understand yet. But it least it doesn’t talk.

So, our next step is to sell the Explorer.

I guess when a person knows what path you want to go down, you might as well just go. You check and re-check your suitcase to make sure you haven’t overlooked anything, but I’m not sure it does much good hemming and hawing once you know what you want. Just do it. Right?

Well, tomorrow is Easter, and though I was sad we aren’t hosting or being hosted this year, I now feel relieved to look forward to a quiet day tomorrow. Today was enough chaos for a month.

Since we missed the church’s Easter egg hunt today, we’ll have to do our own tomorrow. I did have enough foresight to buy the kids treats for their baskets, and today, before I knew how crazy our afternoon would be, I made “bunny-buns” (loaves of bread in the shape of rabbits).

So, now that this phase of the “car thing” is out of the way, I can do what I really need to do – reflect on Easter, on the risen Jesus, and why, when it all shakes down, cars, kids, and “bunny-buns,” though all wonderful, still break, barf, and burn.

And so, good night.