Keep Thou My Feet: new van

This is a long post. Skim if you want. There are some pictures at the very end of our new van.

On Thursday, February 28th, the kids and I were in our first car crash. We had gone to Jared and Kristi's house to play with Kristi and Lily and Zach, and I was bringing the kids home for naps and so I could go to class. I was driving in the right lane on a main road when a girl didn't see us and pulled out of a Wendy's parking lot. I had a couple of seconds to react, but I knew before it happened that I wouldn't be able to slow down enough to avoid colliding. I did have a calm feeling that we would be okay. The right front corner of our car hit the left front corner of her car and our car was pushed about halfway into the left lane. Fortunately it wasn't a very violent collision and nobody was injured. None of us even had any whiplash afterwards.

The girl got out and I rolled my window down. There were a lot of cars trying to go around our car, so I didn't get out right away. She said that it looked like the body of the car was hanging down on the tire and she didn't think it would be a good idea to drive it, so I just turned on the emergency lights. When I had a chance I got out and looked at the damage and agreed that it might not be a good idea to try to drive the car and move it out of the way. There was a stiff piece of the body that was touching the tire and I thought it would pop the tire if I drove. The other girl called the police, and an officer arrived in a few minutes. He thought it would be okay if I drove the car enough to get into a side street, so I did that and it was okay, but now the body was definitely digging into the tire and I knew we would not be driving home.

The interesting thing was that Ryan and I had received inspiration in various ways in the month before the accident that prepared me for this experience. We acted on some of it but unfortunately not on all of it. I had been feeling like I should make a list of important phone numbers so that if we got in an accident or the car broke down somewhere I would be able to call Jared and Kristi or a friend from the ward and also call roadside assistance. I had also been feeling like I should put some minutes on our cell phone and stick it in the car. (We don't carry around cell phones, but we have a very basic pay-as-you-go cell phone, and since we hardly ever use it we hadn't bothered to put more minutes on it for a while.) Unfortunately I never got around to doing either of those things. I ended up borrowing the other driver's cell phone to try to call Ryan, who wasn't home yet, and I didn't know any other phone numbers for people I could call.

A few weeks before the accident, Ryan said we should have a family home evening to talk about what to do if we had a car accident or the car broke down somewhere. He showed me what's covered on the insurance policy and told me about what the process is for filing a claim, and told me about what information to get from the other driver. So I at least knew what to do for that. Roadside assistance was one of the numbers I had been planning to put on my list for the car. While I was getting things out of the glove compartment I noticed there was a form in there with some contact information for USAA (where we get our auto insurance). I decided to call them and see if they could get me a tow truck (all of this was on the other driver's phone, and I was kicking myself for not putting our cell phone in the car). USAA was so helpful and got a tow truck for me and then the person on the phone did a conference call with Ryan (who was fortunately home at that point) so I could tell him what had happened. Ryan gave us Jared and Kristi's number and then the associate did a conference call with them so I could ask them to give us a ride home. So yay for Ryan for listening to the Holy Ghost.

The kids didn't cry after the accident, but after I had moved the car I guess for Kevin it finally sunk in that something slightly scary had happened, and he started to cry. I got him out of his seat to comfort him and it took a while for him to calm down. It was kind of cold outside, but he refused to get back in the car because he was scared. Heidi went to sleep. There was a little Asian grandma going into Wendy's who tried to convince me in broken English that I needed to put Kevin back in the car because it was cold, but since I was talking on the phone and talking to the police officer I couldn't really explain to her that he was scared to get back in the car after what had happened. She gave up on me and went inside, but I did notice she kept looking out the window at us with a very concerned look on her face.

After Kevin had calmed down he looked at the car and was so interested in the fact that it was broken. He kept going over to the other driver and telling her our car was broken. Then he saw her car and said, "Oh! Your car is broken too! Oh, dear, your car is broken." I felt sort of bad because she already felt bad about causing the accident and Kevin was rubbing it in, but oh well.

We had to take everything out of the car before the tow truck took the car away. Oh, and by the way, I had also been thinking I should probably clean out the car. There were lots of little slips of paper with addresses and directions on them, several water bottle lids, and a lot of other things. Fortunately, the last time Ryan drove the car he had taken out the garbage and recycling and had saved the garbage bags from the recycling, so I just stuffed everything haphazardly in the garbage bags. The tow truck driver helped. Then he towed our car away. It was the last time we would ever see our Honda Accord.

The insurance company said it was likely that our car would not be worth repairing because of its age, so we started looking at cars. We found out the next Tuesday that they decided the car was a total loss and they would be giving us a check towards buying a new car. We wanted to be able to get a car that was at least as good as the one we lost, but based on the value of the car on our tax return we wouldn't get enough money to do that. Used cars are more expensive right now. We found cars that were basically the same mileage and year as our car that were selling for only $200 less than what we paid for ours five years ago. Fortunately, they are giving us more money than we expected, so it worked out. I still think it's a shame that the car was totaled because it was a great car and would have lasted many more years, but maybe somebody will buy it and think it's worth fixing.

Then we had to decide whether we should get another sedan or upgrade to more space. Eventually we want to have more kids, and it's hard to fit more than two kids in full car seats in the back seat of a sedan. Before the accident we were planning to try to fit three in the car and maybe buy skinnier car seats. But since we had to buy a new car now anyway, it seemed like maybe it was time to get a minivan. After thinking about it a lot it seemed like getting a minivan was the right choice for us. We did a lot of our shopping online using Cars.com, which was really helpful for getting an idea of what prices you would get for certain mileages, models, and ages.

We found a place called Westgate Auto Imports that had a few reasonably priced vans in our price range, so we decided to check them out. It was a great experience. We showed up and they gave us a list of the cars in the lot with their information, including prices, and told us we were free to go look at the cars and the cars should all be unlocked. So we were free to go look around at all the cars and make comments without a dealer breathing down our necks. If you are an introvert and need to buy a used car, then this is the place for you. There was a black 2005 Chrysler Town and Country with only 90,500 miles on it, and we were pretty impressed with it. So we test drove it and were still impressed with it, so we decided to go home and look at reviews of that particular van. Before we went home we stopped another dealership and it was completely different. It felt like your standard oily car dealership, and we didn't like it. It took forever to even look at any cars because the worker had to take us in and look up cars on the computer, and in the end he couldn't even find the cars we were interested in out in the lot. (He was a nice guy, we just didn't like the dealership.)

On Monday we decided to go back to Westgate and test drive the Chrysler Town and Country on the freeway. It seemed to run well. When we got back we talked to the dealer and talked to each other and decided to buy the van. It seemed like a really good option for us and we were able to pay for it outright. I still didn't like spending all that money in one place, though. : )

The other insurance company paid for us to rent a car while we were searching for a new one. We got to drive a very new Toyota Corolla that ran great but reeked of cigarette smoke. It was a relief to take it back when we were done with it.

On Thursday we took the van out to the Croatan National Forest so I could get more water samples (which is a story for another day). While we were driving on the highway the tail light fell off. It was still attached by the cable but the actual light was just hanging down and banging on the car, so Ryan took it off. No auto parts stores had lights we could buy to replace it, so we had to take the light off and drive without one tail light. When we got home Ryan ordered one off of Amazon, but then when I was talking to a friend he said we should call West Gate and ask if they would take care of it. They said to bring the van because they probably had a tail light from another van lying around, so they replaced it and we cancelled our order. (Phew! Money saved!)

The other minor issue we had was that there was only one key to the van, but we figured we would just make do until we could afford to order another one since they are kind of expensive. Then Ryan was removing a satellite radio that a previous owner had attached to the radio and he discovered another key that had been stuck behind the satellite radio. So now we have two keys. Awesome!

Did I mention how many cool features this van has? It has power sliding doors (which you can open using buttons by the driver's seat, buttons by the doors, or buttons on the key), you can control the radio using buttons on the steering wheel, it can hold six CDs at a time, and both rows of seats in the back can be stowed in the floor. They're certainly not essential to my existence, but they do make driving with kids a little more convenient. It's nice to just release the kids into the car while I buckle them in instead of having Kevin run away or mess with things in the front seat while I buckle Heidi in, which is what we had to do in the old car. It also has a LATCH system for the car seats, which is pretty convenient. It's kind of like having a rocket ship. We keep discovering cool stuff the van can do. Hopefully it will be a good car for us and last a long time.

And if you made it through this post I'm impressed. I've told family and friends the basic details of the story, but this is the full version for posterity.

The kids approve of the van: