The challenge for this week is to get the 4Runner we bought here in California, to Texas. Renting a car every time we visiting was getting expensive. And we’ll need another “daily” car once we move. Our current cars (yes they all have names) are a 1992 Toyota Camry called the Swampmobile. It’s really Swampmobile II. Our prior car was a 1990 Camry that had been left in the rain with the sun roof cracked open and… well it was a swamp when we bought it; and the Blue Max – a pristine 1985 Mercedes 350 SEL, bought from the proverbial little old lady from Pasadena (only she was from Los Gatos) who only drove it on weekend jaunts. We bought it with only 89,000 miles on it about 3 years ago. The little old lady had picked it up at the factory and had every single piece of paper related to the car, including the ads from that year for the car and a little note from the factory saying “if you arrive at the factory before 10am, please feel free to have some breakfast in the employee’s cafeteria.”
We figured we needed a bigger car for running errands etc. And we tend not to buy new cars. Given that Ed’s father once owned a Chevrolet dealership, there’s a long culture war story about cars, if y’all want some family gossip, and when I have time, I’ll share it. But a used 4Runner seemed a good idea.
We bought it here because we have close friends who are car people, and we figured we would get a much better deal and be able to fix it up for much less if we did all that here, and then shipped it. My spreadsheet figured out that we could actually save money that way. So right now I’m waiting for the shipping company to put me in touch with a truck taking cars from California to Texas.
As we have excellent adventures… and can make some recommendations of the service providers we’ve found, I will post names and links.
Oh and the 4Runner’s name is Mongo. And yes, it is just a pawn in the game of life. And yes, there is a story behind that too.
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