Photo Taken With My iPhone

My red Tacoma is no longer MY red Tacoma. She had 59,000 miles behind her when we met. We travelled 5 years and 63,000 miles together. I bought her the best whenever she needed it. I creeped under her to change the oil every 3 months. I pulled her plugs and changed her rotors myself. We had a relationship that few people still share with their cars. But it was time to go. Last summer I asked the family mechanic to go over her and tell me what she needed. Do the things that I don't have the tools for. Al sat me down and said to me what I needed to hear. Al said he knows what my standards are and it would be close to Eight Grand to bring it up to my standards. It would be $4,000 just to keep it going another couple years. For 2 months I waffled over whether or not to trade up or fix up. When my Taco lost $1,000 in trade in value after labor day weekend I went shopping. It breaks my heart to let her go. I feel like I've betrayed my wife. I feel like I've shot 'Old Yeller.'

I did love my truck. Years after I bought it I would still sit on the steps just looking at it. The same way I would sit looking at my boat. Proud to have something so nice. Happy. In fact, one of the neighbors offered to buy it from me last week. He's seen me change the oil quarterly and wash it every week for years and figured I must have taken care of it.

I'm really going to miss that truck. So will Marty. I knew sooner or later someone would call me about borrowing the pick-up truck to move something. I didn't think it would be less than 12 hours after surrendering the keys to the dealership but I'm not surprised who called. If I had to list the top 5 people who would ask to use my truck Marty would be on it. Dude, sorry about that. No truck moving for me anymore. It's just as well. I'm still going to Physical Therapy twice a week for my ankle.

Big Blue there is by coincidence the colors of the school I teach at. It wasn't planned that way, it's the only color the FJ Cruiser comes in that I can stand. I didn't want another burgandy colored truck. My Taco was special. The new truck is 4,300 pounds. It is loaded. List price was over $37,000. It sat on the lot for 11 months. I paid nowhere close to that. Negotiations were rough. They pissed me off at times but I got what I wanted for a price I can live with and 60 payments that don't crush me. $13,000 over base model will get you the following toys:

Power Everything
Racing Exhaust
Billstein Shocks
Custom Seats
Subwoofer
Roof Rack
Rock Rails
Skid Plates (under carriage armor plating)
Tow Package
Spare Tire Cover
Floor Mats
A First Aid Kit (could be a whole post on it's own)
Full Size Spare with Matching Rim
Cruise Control
A/C
Parking Sonar
6 Disk In Dash CD Changer
Some Sort of Compass, Thermometer and Tilt Indicator Thingy
Roof Rack
Mirror Mounted Headlights (not turn signals like most people think, they're diffuse treeline lights)

And best of all... The stock wheels are 30 inch tires on 17 inch rims. This one has 30 inch tires on 16 inch rims. That extra inch of balloonyness pays off in taming Massachusetts' craptacular road surfaces.

My only complaint about the truck is the poor visibility in pretty much every direction. This is not a commuter car for someone heading to the city. This is also not a car for dropping one kid off at soccer and another at band practice. It will be a while before I worry about that. This is a truck meant for driving over anything. If you don't care about the price of gas going into a 19 gallon tank every week this car is great. It's perfect for the commute from my driveway straight to my reserved parking space and home again. (Cue up the Dead Milkmen "No fuckin way am I going to die in Exxon's war! Which by cosmic irony was the first song to play out of the 6 random CD's I put in. It was kind of creepy. The next song was Phish and the one after that was Duran Duran.)

All it needs is remote starting (yay automatic tranny, no more freezing mornings for me!) and a winch bumper.

I have no buyers remorse but I did love that Tacoma. I'll miss her.