When I told Jeanell about this potential blog topic, her response was "Bo-ring!" And it probably will be. But I felt I/we had had enough adventures/misadventures with our various vehicles through the years that it was worth documenting.
I believe I've made some mention of some of the vehicles my family owned growing up. But the vehicles we had when I got my driver's license were a forest green Ford Taurus and a bluish-gray custom van that we called the Komfort Koach (or KK for short).
I have no idea the actual make and model of the Komfort Koach. I believe it actually had the words "Komfort Koach" somewhere on it. A couple of things I remember about the KK was 1) that its roof sloped upward from the rear of the vehicle and came to a point right behind the front seats (this became a problem when we drove it to Vegas to visit my dad and pulled it into a parking garage at Circus Circus) and 2) it had a very small television mounted in it. I remember sneaking out of church one time to watch the end of a Ute NCAA Tournament game (I'm thinking the Josh Grant years). The KK's other claim to fame was that it was the vehicle I was in when I was driving people home and took Jeanell home last shortly before our relationship started.
The Taurus was what I was driving when I was driving Jeanell and her then-boyfriend Dave around on New Year's Eve our sophomore year. My other memory of the Taurus came my senior year when I was driving to my friend Aaron's house and was blinded by some oncoming headlights and turned at the wrong spot and went right up over the curb at a pretty good clip. I didn't think too much of it, but the Junior Prom was shortly after that and even though I was a senior, I took a date and we went to Salt Lake in the Taurus. I noticed it wasn't driving quite right, but I didn't think too much of it. The next week my dad asked if I had hit anything (I think I told him I couldn't think of anything. I don't know if I ever fully came clean) and then went on to inform me that the alignment had been screwed up and all four tires ruined during my drive to Salt Lake. Oops.
My first two years of college I didn't own a car. Looking back I'm not sure how that worked. My friend and roommate George had a car and I'm sure that helped, but I guess I had to rely a lot on other people to get to the grocery store and whatnot. Seems like I still managed to get home nearly every weekend.
The summer before my junior year of college, I finally bought my first car. I don't recall the year, but it was a Mercury Sable that we bought from the owner somewhere in Tooele. That's the car that got me to and from Logan while dating Jeanell. After I got married, the car went to my brother Scott and he took over the payments on the loan. That didn't end up going too well for Scott. I don't remember all the problems it had, but I do recall Scott giving me a ride from Logan back to Grantsville at one point and the heater had stopped working. I remember Scott bundled in a big coat and these big winter gloves on. That was just how it went. I always said I'd buy him a car at some point to make up for having him take over the Sable. That hasn't happened yet.
When Jeanell and I got married, we used her vehicle, a Nissan Altima. It was a stick-shift and while I can/could drive a stick, it wasn't something I would claim I was particularly good at. Not too long after we moved up to Logan, we decided to upgrade our vehicle. We went and looked and found a Subaru Outback that Jeanell really liked. We decided to purchase it, but I was a little stressed about the payment, which was over $400/month. I have no idea what the interest rate or term was. I don't remember where the dealership where we purchased the vehicle but they had some kind of three-day return policy. We took the car home, but then I got cold feet and decided we needed something a little cheaper. So I took it back and got a Toyota Camry, a Toyota Camry whose previous owner was a smoker. But I didn't realize the smoke-smell when I test drove it so I signed the papers and took the Camry home.
Jeanell wasn't happy about the switch to begin with because she really liked the Outback, but when she got in and smelled the smoke, she was understandably even less happy. I decided I'd go get the car detailed and see if they could get rid of the smell. I found a place up in Logan and took it to get detailed and while I think the smell was a bit better, it still wasn't great.
Just after getting the car detailed, I got a call from the dealership and they asked me to come back in. I went back and I remember walking in and the salesman telling me, "I've gotta put you back in the Outback." I've never understood exactly what happened, but I guess in trying to work out the financing for the Camry, they noticed things like that Jeanell had put Soelberg's as her place of employment, but we lived 100 miles from Soelberg's. I didn't understand why that wouldn't impact the loan for the Outback, but I guess since it had already been approved, we could take the Outback. So we did. We exchanged the freshly-detailed Toyota Camry for the Outback, which is the car Jeanell wanted anyway.
We drove that car for a few months, but Jeanell became pregnant with Caleb and we realized that we would need something with six seat belts for our growing family. I believe it was New Year's Eve when we went to a Ken Garff dealership where Terry Baird and Bob Butler were working at the time and Bob sold us a forest green Dodge Grand Caravan (if I remember correctly, he said it was the first car he had sold). I don't know that I really understood it all at the time, but we were hopelessly upside down by that point (especially since we'd only driven the Outback for a few months) and I believe we were paying like 11.9% interest or something ungodly like that. Jeanell had never wanted to drive a minivan (and that was the only minivan we've ever owned) but it was the vehicle we needed at the time.
Time went on, Caleb was born, I finished school and got my first job and we moved to Ogden. Jeanell decided she wanted to work. She interviewed at the Walmart within a half mile of where we lived (we were in the Pinebrook Apartments at the time, but when we bought our first home in early 2002, we moved less than a mile, just to the other side of Washington Boulevard) and at the Old Navy in Layton. Both offered her a job, but Walmart offered $10/hour based on her experience in retail. Old Navy offered her $6.25/hour. She really wanted to take the Old Navy job, but between the difference in pay and the commute, she ultimately went to Walmart (she would work at Walmart for 12+ years and in three different stores before finally returning to work at Soelberg's).
Anyway, with Jeanell working we decided we needed and could afford a second vehicle, but we did not agree on what that car should be. I found a nice little Nissan Altima that had lower miles and would have been a lower payment. Jeanell found a blue-green Ford Expedition. I tried to convince her that we didn't need two vehicles that would hold 7+ people, but to no avail. She was going to pay for the new vehicle with her earnings so it was her choice. We went with the Expedition, the first of multiple cars that we would buy from Sherm's Store in Ogden, and the occasion of one of my most infamous photos (To be fair, I believe the Gilligan hat was given to us as part of the sale. The rest of the outfit is all me).
