June 11 - Transportation
I had hoped to get a picture of the military aircraft that fly over my home, but other than 1 large DC-9 (I think, what the heck do I know?), yesterday morning that I missed, the skies have been pretty quiet. The fighter jets are way too fast to catch on film, but oh, how I love when they fly over!
So, you get a picture of my van. It's a 2005 Nissan Quest. Oh, the stories this van has.
We had lost our Nepal adoption and $9,000 that went with it.
Jay had lost his job in Nebraska.
Jay had moved to California to start a new job while I stayed behind to sell our house.
I had emergency surgery while Jay was on the West Coast.
I was recuperating from said surgery when Jay called from California saying he had been in a car accident. Our old, paid for, perfectly running Toyota Corolla had been totaled. Jay was okay, but the car was beyond repair. It went to the junkyard.
When I got out to California that fall, we shopped for cars. We looked at minivans because we knew we'd need a bigger car for our growing family and wanted something with better gas mileage than a large SUV. A friend of ours from the church owned a Honda dealership and had this used van on his lot. We took it for a test drive. We prayed about it. A week or so later, it was ours, with a not so nice car payment to boot.
During an adoption, the financial bottom tends to fall out underneath you.
I became a minivan mom.
It's only for a season.
This car has been my nemesis. I hate it. We call it the Ghetto Van. It has a fan belt squeal that no one has been able to fix. Three people have looked at it, worked on it, to no avail. I drove for a year with a cracked windshield thanks to a rock that flew at me en route from California to Texas. It needed new tires long before the dealership told us it would. I've had to replace the catalytic converter, thankfully at the expense of the warranty (mostly). The odometer and digital readouts on the dash went out too (a problem with Quest) and that was also fixed under warranty. It recently ate a CD (another problem with Quests) and you'd have to take the whole entire dashboard apart to get at the stereo to remove it, so I leave it be and listen to the radio.
If only someone could figure out that fan belt squeal before my warranty runs out in another 10,000 miles! If someone could fix that and the warranty would cover it, it would probably lose its nickname, "The Ghetto Van." I wouldn't mind my CD back either.
I hate that this van has been such a pain in the rear and I hate even more that I'm still making payments on it. STINK! But….
It serves it's purpose.
It seats our family of 5 with room for dogs and a guest or two.
It gets us from place to place.
I'll drive it until it's dead….. knock on wood!
