Transportation tunrover

A long overdue good-bye took place on the first weekend of March. Our dark green 2004 Toyota Sienna minivan had served us well and it was time to bid it a fond farewell.

It was time. The side sliding door had lost its ability to fight gravity and it would close itself if the van was on an incline.  There was more than once when I physically got squished and pinned for an uncomfortable moment before it recognized my presence and reopened. This was a minor inconvenience and we made a point to park in a way that had gravity work with instead of against us. Then a hole formed in the exhaust and the van got louder and louder over the past year. Amazingly it did still pass emissions tests. I am vainer than I thought and found myself embarrassed to rumble up our street. In August the week before we went to Lake Gaston, NC for a family vacation with the Arciaga's, the AC died. We had it looked at and replacing the compressor for over a grand just couldn't be justified. We managed through a very humid drive amidst a terrible rainstorm on the way there and then we sweated in the summer heat on the ride home. It reminded me of so many childhood road trips in the back of our station wagon, and the nostalgia eased the discomfort. Then in September I got hip-checked while driving by a large deer on Rolling Road and the rear passenger panel sustained a dent and the taillight cover broke. We taped up the taillight and it continued to do it's job. In December the door sensors started to malfunction and despite being secure the door ajar lights would flash, the interior lights would come on and we had to turn off the interior cabin lights to not feel like we were at a disco. Then the door sensor began to trigger the alarm. On windy nights it would go off over and over. Our poor neighbors.  The alarm issue wore down the battery and we couldn't start it. I drove my Mom's Buick in the meantime. Luckily the battery was under warranty, so Jim traded it for a new one and got the Sienna moving again. We couldn't disable the alarm so we had to leave the van unlocked at all times.

The thing was: the van still ran. This van always did it's job. It got us all to and from the places we wanted to go. It hauled our stuff and our family wherever we needed to go. Car seats rotated from spot to spot as our family grew, and then the seat boosters began to be thrown over the back seat when they grew up. The DVD player played an important role in our many road trips as we adventured around the country, all with the Zukus magnet on the hood. The van took us to beaches in MD, VA, NC and SC. We drove in it for a Philips family reunion down in Louisiana. We drove it on multiple trips to Wisconsin. And we even made the long haul out to Colorado in it. We took a lot of shorter road trips to places like Philadelphia and Washington DC and to Shenandoah National Park. We had a great system of storing and serving lunch out of the cooler by the side door. I nursed many a hungry baby in its back seats on those trips. It took us up and down Frederick Rd and Edmondson Ave countless times. It got us to our appointments, through errands and to Mass every week. This van served us well and facilitated so many family memories.

We had that memory making in mind as we looked for a new van. The new van search process made me grateful for the find that our Sienna was. The Sienna had kid friendly features that do not come in the standard packages and we realized that most of the standard packages focus on things that weren't important to us like leather and moon roofs and fog lights. We wanted back windows that opened and an entertainment system without all of the other electronic systems that tend to fail and are expensive to fix. Jim and I test drove a lot of vans and spent time online and at sales peoples desks. We loved the easy process at CarMax but we were won over by the value that the Kia Sedona offered and found a dark blue 2015 at the local Kia dealership. It doesn't have the rear opening windows or entertainment system but we can get a portable one for our summer road trips. The van runs smoothly and looks good and has more than what we need to get around. I am enjoying the back-up camera and heated seats. It has lots of the newer tech features. We are grateful for reliable transportation that has a great warranty and the opportunity to make many more memories together.