Higher mpg here we come!

We traded our camping trailer


for an economical car.


Sad, but true.

We were looking at getting a Geo Metro for the great gas mileage, but we ended up being able to trade our trailer for a Honda Civic instead. Much better!

Here it is.

Check out the low profile tires with fancy wheels. If you're between the ages of 12 and 25 you're probably drooling over them. Do people over 25 with kids even care that much about their wheels, other than the amount of tread left on the tires? The only people I see with tires like this are teens or college kids. Oh wait, we're about to join the college kid crowd, so I guess we'll fit in better with this car!

I feel very juvenile with tires like this. I mean, what responsible adult throws away good money on something as ridiculous as fancy wheels and tires? Please. Well, at least we'll go up a few notches on the "sick" scale with Dallas and Weston, right?

Now, before you go thinking, "Hey, cool car!", let me show you the stupid things about the car that drive me crazy. I just drove it out to Idaho, and after that long of a drive, I have no desire to drive it ever again. I prefer our 15 passenger crummy over it.


(FYI: in case you're not a lumberjack or an Oregonian, a crummy is a van that transports the loggers up to the jobsite. Hence the mega winch bar welded to our front bumper.)


The windshield is terribly cracked, which is lame to look through.


The tinting is peeling off the driver window. We'll probably get pulled over for it being too dark anyway.


The back window tinting is so bad that it makes it look like you're looking through water or a SUPER dirty window. It's seriously frustrating.


The driver's door handle is broken, so you have to hold it just right in order to open the door.


The automatic lock on the passenger side doesn't work.

The driver window rolls down, but when you roll it up (it's automatic), it makes the most horrific noise and won't roll up entirely unless you have a second person manually shove it up while you hold the up button. That means at drive-through windows you have to open your door instead of roll your window down. VERY lame!

The stick shifter is a slick metal racing one, which is cold and...slippery. Super annoying. I like the ones that are fat so you can just grab it easy and flip it around, not have to actually grab it with your entire hand to move it.


The pedals are racing pedals, which is the lamest thing in the whole wide world! For one, they're slick, so if your feet are wet or your shoes don't have traction, your foot slips off too easily. Secondly, when you push on the brake, the gas pedal is so close that half the time I end up pushing the gas with the brake and then it makes a horrible high revving sound shooting the RPMs into the red. It took me a while to figure out that problem. I've NEVER driven a car where my foot would hit both pedals. SUPER LAME!


The right rear lights collect water in them.


The stereo is annoying since it has a rainbow of colors that flash all night long unless you turn it off completely. I didn't take the time to sit and figure it all out before driving.


The odometer doesn't track real mileage because the fancy-shmancy wheels are actually too big, so the mileage is off. We found that out on our way out to Idaho. We had to rely on Jeremy's mileage. (Jeremy is the crummy because our installer, Jeremy, drove it and our kids think we're driving Jeremy's rig...so we started calling it Jeremy.)

But of all the lame-o things wrong with this car, the thing that grosses me out is flipping down the visor when the sun is in my eyes only to find disturbing mystery spots staring at me. Is it blood? I don't know. I DO know it creeps me out! I'd rather have the sun in my eyes!


The thing that makes me so mad is that we ended up paying an extra $400 on top of the trade to get this car, and each new lame thing I find infuriates me even more that we paid money for it. Hyrum keeps reminding me that we personally didn't pay cash up front for the trailer in the first place (long story how we got it), the trailer was leaking like a sieve and thus had major dry rot, and the fridge didn't work, and a couple windows didn't work, so he thinks it was still a fair trade. Plus, we didn't give the guy the rack Hyrum built for the back bumper, but instead sold it to our neighbor for $250, so Hyrum says we can consider that we only paid $150 for the car. I just say he can drive the dang thing from now on so I'll stop getting mad at it!

BUUUUTTTT...
Even though this car drives me crazy, one thing redeems all the negatives: IT GOT 40 MPG ON THE WAY OUT TO IDAHO!!! WAHOO!!!!