It is a new year.

The adventure that is life continues! I never needed a car for the years I spent in college. I got around mostly by bike or bus or just walked. I’ve been done with school for awhile now and the idea of a car continued to creep around in the back of my head for months. I tried to ignore it but it kept banging around back there.

Last month I decided to do something about my lack of transportation and I got myself a loan. That took some effort on my part considering I have loans still for school: More debt, wonderful. But now I had the loan and started shopping around. I looked at SUV’s and small cars and even a couple of trucks before I narrowed down what I really wanted out of a vehicle. I new I wanted something that could survive a Fairbanks, Alaska winter; something that could handle a load of gear (bikes, snowboards, maybe a kayak); still have room to hold a few people and something in my budget: $10K - $15K.

These options made me take a look at some mid-sized SUV’s. I looked at the Ford Escape, the Kia Sorento and the Mazda Tribute ranging from 2002-2005, mostly because this was what was available at the used car dealers in town. If you know anything about these cars you know that the Ford and the Mazda is practically the same car with interchangeable parts. The Kia has a stigma in the States of being an unreliable vehicle but my research gave me a good impression of the car. The stigma was mostly mid-‘90s thing.

Weeks went buy and I didn’t commit to anything. This was partly because I had some trouble getting rides to the dealers and one weekend of being sick. Finally winter break came around and my mother came up to visit me for X-mas. After the holiday I drove back down to Anchorage with her to hang out with her, my dad and some friends down there. I also ended up going to a used car dealer.

There I found a 2001 Subaru Forester in excellent condition with 68K miles. The car was very well taken care of and looked like it had barely been driven. It’s a smaller vehicle than the others but I felt comfortable with it during the test drive. The next day I bought it.

I have had it for a week now and it has been nothing but excellent. I changed all the fluids out, gave it new windshield wipers and installed a block and oil pan heater. I drove it down to Girdwood to go snowboarding with a friend in nearly white-out conditions, drove it all over Anchorage, back-and-forth from Peter’s Creek and drove 360 miles back up to Fairbanks.

My room mate insists on naming it Ginger since its red; I prefer Donna. I you have actually read this give me your suggestion for a name. Thanks.