Cars (Part 2)

I don't quite remember the exact sequence of events, but at some point Carl and Rachel generously gifted us their red 2003 Oldsmobile Alero (which we still own) and we traded in the Caravan for a tan Dodge Durango. And for a while, those were our two vehicles. I believe Jeanell primarily drove the Alero and I drove the Durango.

My least favorite memory of the Durango was an occasion where we had traveled to Salt Lake for the Tabernacle Choir's annual Christmas concert and were staying overnight. I assume we were headed back to our hotel after the concert but I'm not completely certain. What I do know is that the Durango died at a busy intersection downtown. A Good Samaritan got out of his vehicle and helped us get it pushed out of the way and we were able to call a tow truck to come and get it and eventually got it fixed. But having it die at that intersection was not a fun experience.

I also remember spinning out in the Durango on Rocket Road in Tremonton, but fortunately (undoubtedly due to righteous living), it spun right into a little driveway and came to a stop. I just pulled back onto the road and continued my trip, perhaps a bit more cautiously.

The Durango eventually began to leak oil. I remember I would take it to get the oil changed at Walmart and every time they'd make me sign something because the initial oil level was too low.

We decided the Durango had run its course and that we should probably just get another car since we were both commuting and weren't driving with all seven of us much because the boys had moved down to Grantsville to live with their dad.

So I drove over to Hansen Motors one weekday in 2011, told them I wanted to trade in the Durango, and that I didn't really care what car I got. I just wanted it to run and wanted to be able to pay it off fairly quickly. By some coincidence, Thurl Bailey was there when I went to do this and I got an autographed picture and took a pic with him.

And then I drove home in a 2006 Chevrolet Impala. And as seemed typical for the vehicles that I chose without Jeanell's input, Jeanell hated it. I do remember the water pump went out not long after I purchased it (which Hansen replaced and didn't charge me for it). But just as happened with the other car I brought home that Jeanell hated (the Camry), fate intervened.

I bought it in October. One morning before the end of that year, I had just dropped Lila off at her babysitter's home in Honeyville and was headed down Highway 38 to work in Brigham City. The roads were not good that morning and sure enough as I went around a gentle curve, I slid right off the rode, down a ravine, through a fence and into the middle of a field. Fortunately, I was unhurt. I called dispatch because I wasn't sure what to do. Since I didn't know exactly where I was, I had to call them back using 9-11 so they could locate me. While waiting in the field for the police to arrive, two other cars slid on the same curve where I had. I also remember the farmer who owned the field coming over to me and making sure I knew that I would have to pay for the fence. Then he asked me if I was okay.

The police came and after making a report, I was able to simply drive out of the field and continue on to work. But after filing a claim and beginning the repair process, the car was declared a total loss. After only a couple of months, Jeanell was once again free of a car she despised.

Once we got the insurance check and paid off the loan, we went back to Sherm's Store together and purchased a white 2004 Infiniti G35 with 83K miles on it. It was the first "higher-end" car that we had owned and we both really liked how it drove.

But not too long after we purchased it, we were headed out to Grantsville and while headed west on I-80, a cinder block appeared in front of me on the road. It happened pretty fast and I don't know if there were cars around me so I couldn't swerve around it or if I just thought I'd clear it, but I just tried to drive over it and with the low clearance of that car, it did not go well. It tore up the car pretty well and after another insurance claim and being without it for a good while, we got it repaired and back. We drove it another seven years and 90K miles or so before we donated it to the Kidney Foundation in 2019.

Just before we moved back to Grantsville for Elwood, we found a black 2003 Acura MDX being sold by a private seller. We bought it, fixed it up a little bit with some help from our friends and Archibald & Sons, and brought it out with us when we moved.

So we made the move to Grantsville with the Alero, the G35, and the Acura. And those would be the three cars we used for the next four and a half years.

In June of 2018, we decided it was time for another car. Jeanell and I looked around and decided on a 2017 Land Rover Discovery Support with about 6K miles on it. We drove that car for the next five years, got it paid off and other than it being somewhat of a magnet for rock chips, never had any real problems with it.

That changed shortly after we paid it off. The check-engine light came on and we took it in to the Land Rover dealership in Lehi to have it looked at and learned that the needed repairs would cost $10K. Around the same time, one of the tires failed and all four had to be replaced. But we loved the car and decided it should last us quite a while longer and we wouldn't have a car payment so we decided to make all the repairs.

Shortly after, Jeanell was stopped at the stoplight at Maverik headed east when she was rear-ended by a commercial truck for an HVAC business or something. Initially I don't think the company thought the damage was too extensive and wanted to cover it without going through insurance, but when a repair shop came back with the estimate, they decided we would need to go through insurance. And as luck would have it, it ended up being a total loss.

We looked for a bit to see if we could find a replacement that we could buy outright with the insurance check, but it soon became obvious we weren't going to find a car of the same quality. So we used the insurance check to pay ourselves back for the repair costs and went out and bought a 2023 Mercedes-Benz GLA.

So far, our luck has been pretty good with this car. We have had to replace the windshield twice already, but we opted for the windshield insurance so that's worked out.

So today, Jeanell primarily drives the Mercedes, I drive the Acura (now 20+ years old with nearly 230K miles), and Lila and Caleb more or less share the Alero (now 20+ years old with about 190K miles).

And there you have it, the history of the cars in my life to this point.

Cars (Part 1)

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).

We drove the Expedition and Grand Caravan for a while, but at some point, Jeanell was perusing the Sherm's Store inventory online and a shiny red convertible Ford Mustang caught her eye. I don't remember if I was opposed to it or not and if so, to what extent, but suffice it to say, we traded in the Expedition and drove away in the shiny red Mustang.

My main memory of the Mustang was that it did not do well in the snow. We bought winter tires for it and put them on every winter, but I still had multiple slide-offs in that car. One night we left Grantsville fairly late to drive back home to Ogden and spun out on I-80 and ended up in the median, blowing out one of our tires. We finally made it back to Dave and Carol's about 1 AM.

Our garage in our Ogden home was not very deep and as it turned out, neither the Mustang nor the Grand Caravan would fit in the garage so we parked them in our driveway. We went out the morning of Devin's baptism to find that someone had smashed out both the front and rear driver's side windows of the Mustang. Since that happened we rarely lock our cars and just don't leave anything of value in them. Figure we'd just as soon someone open the door and find there's nothing in there and break the windows and find there's nothing in there.

The Mustang is the only car we sold to someone. I remember meeting the guy in the parking lot of the Brigham City Walmart to deliver it. And that he brought his brother (or friend) with him to pick it up and that as soon as I turned it over to them, they put the top down and drove off. Later, I realized we still had the winter tires for it in our garage. I texted the guy and asked if he wanted them. Never got a response.

I didn't intend this topic to extend to multiple posts, but this has turned out to be longer than I anticipated and I still have twenty plus years of cars to get through...stopping here for now.