Maybe it was my nostalgia for the way back of my childhood station wagon. Maybe it was a loathing, completely irrational, for SUVs. At any rate, when my clutch knee gave out, we rented a minivan while we looked for a car with an automatic transmission. And, “dear reader, I married him.”(Literary allusion for the literary types.)

So one afternoon in April, I wandered over to Timberline Dodge to “look at” minivans. And of course they just happened to have an excellent deal on a green/blue minivan that just happened to be in the showroom that very day. And for a “very reasonable” monthly payment, I could own it. We had never bought a car on payments, and of course I had loudly bragged about that fact. But I called my husband at work to come over and “check out” this van and hear about the “very reasonable” payments.

He could tell I was smitten, and we left that day in a brand new 2000 Dodge Caravan with three rows of seats, a great stereo and automatic transmission. Best of all, I could see out all directions when I drove, no longer hunkered down in a regular car. I am only 5’4″ and had trouble seeing clearly out of our littler cars.

Now all we needed was a long distance trip to take it through its paces. Which we embarked on the next February. About which more tomorrow.