Thursday, June 15, 2006

Buying A Car

After nine years of toodling around the city on either public transportation or my bike, I've finally come to need a car. Laura and I are going to be moving of course and the rest of America does require a car. We're also going to be traveling around a bit this summer and fall, and with a dog in tow, it becomes a lot cheaper to actually own the car and pay for it now as opposed to renting one a couple of times this summer.

On the up and up, I just found out that I can apply for US Army car insurance on account of me once being an army brat. I find this mighty good news and rather funny. All I can remember of my father's army days is climbing in and out of a tank and spending a dusty afternoon watching a couple hundred paratroopers try to land on an X marked in the ground. That and the squat little three bedroom house we used to live in and the back yard I used to run around naked in. Apparently, we had very religious neighbors to the ajoining back yard and they put up a fence so that they wouldn't have to see my wanton 3-year old ass swishing around and shaking the figs out of our fig tree. If you bug my mom enough, she'll show you the pictures of it.

That image has little to do with me ditching my morals, going into debt just to jet around the highways, but it did make me chuckle to think back on. Though to think back on it, my second favorite thing to do in my back yard was to drive my three wheeler around. At least that stayed with me.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dude, if it's USAA, it's worth it, they hook you up with the insurance. Anyhoo, on the tip from my dad, at this point in our lives, skip the money down and go for the longer payments, but each situation is different. Good luck my friend, it does feel a lot better driving something you own. Oh, and I'll be contacting your mother about those pictures. I may file a private freedom of information act with her. Hi-ooooooooooooooooo!!!

Anonymous said...

Did you wear clothes while riding the three wheeler - cause that is an image that makes me chuckle.

Anonymous said...

Nakers fronk!

So the obvious question is what kind of rig? Gotta think in terms of $4 a gallon, you know. I just drove a Toyota Corolla hatchback up to Portland and back and it got pretty awesome mileage even with a cargo box on top.

Big Tom said...

my mom wants a volvo

Frank Robbins, LEED AP said...

Hey Josh,
It looks like I'll be trying to find a Volvo V40 station wagon. It's the smallest station wagon they make and it gets 22 city, 32 highway mpg. I kind of wanted to get something ultra small, but Laura is slightly worried about dying in a small car after getting in a wreck in a Honda CRX. I always find it a little disturbing when people tell you that they got their huge SUV for "survivability" in an accident. Supposedly the idea is that the guy in the gas saver will die horribly and the SUV person will live to pick up more little soccer players after paying a $1000 deductable and bringing it to the shop to have the dents and the blood taken off. I prefer to have a bunch of airbags to a ring of steel thank you, and it looks like this is a pretty survivable vehicle. Wish I could afford a Prius