Cars, A Necessary Evil

"Cars are necessary evils." Quote from my mother.

We heard this often growing up. I think the evil part comes in the expense and maintenance of vehicles. Here are a few of my memories and thoughts on this topic.

When I was in the fourth grade our family was about to grow to five children. My parents were looking at cars and purchased a brand new gray Volkswagen Van. We named it "charcoal" (we named all our cars growing up.) I thought it was the coolest thing, they had to go all the way to the coast to get it and it had gray and black checkered fabric on the seats! It was so roomy and just plain cool. Of course I told all my friends at school. I could always hear the van approaching a block away and for some reason I liked that.

My parents have always been wise shoppers and back then cars with niceties came at a price. Thus, the van came stripped....it was a stick shift (not just any stick, but the really tall kind, like a bus has), no power steering, no air conditioning, not even a radio-my dad later installed one with a cassette deck, thank goodness because we have some good memories of singing along to Kids Songs! This van served it's purpose well on taking our family on numerous road trips and vacations. Yearly trips to Utah and one summer a trip to California...yes we drove through the Mojave desert with NO air conditioning! And that trip to Yellowstone where we had enough room to pick up a European hitch hiker.


Flash forward seven years about the time I was suppose to get my drivers licence and the gray van wasn't so cool anymore. That was the vehicle available for me to drive. There was no way this was going to happen, I was not going to drive that huge van, it was basically a bus! So what happened... I didn't get my licence until a year later (note: I never drove the van). My vehicle of choice at that time was our family Jeep truck (this vehicle deserves it's one post at a future time) and my parents finally gave in, but we still had the van aka, Charcoal and times Euro-Van. A couple years past and a new caravan replaced the family car but my younger brother got his licence and inherited the Charcoal. By this time it was getting pretty beat up and he drove it with no mercy, he was the one who gave it the inevitable name, "Euro-Trash" it was literally run into the ground leaving behind twelve years of good service.
(Picture above: Me with my Granddad in front of the van. Probably about the time I actually did get my licence.)

As you can tell as a teenager I wasn't to keen on vans. I made that secret vow as everyone does...I will never get a minivan.


(Grant 3 years old, Sumner, WA)
Flash forward another 15+ years and I'm completely happy driving around our Audi Allroad. Bigger cars never crossing my mind. Until we start thinking of getting a new car for Mark (he's been driving our Volkswagen Jetta, the car we bought when we were first married). So, we started thinking....get another small car to replace it or get a bigger family car, etc. After vacillating back and forth many, many times we decided to take a look at vans. The things we liked about a van: automatic doors and trunk, way more space for just about everything and everyone, gets better gas mileage than SUVs and comfortable.

I'm sure you can see where this is leading...and as not to make this my longest post ever I will get to the point. I heart my new Honda Odyssey van! Just this morning I took the kids plus Grant's bike plus the jogger to the trail and there was room to spare! If you come visit, we'll take you on a road trip!