Introducing Hannah

Back in 2006, the wife and I were making good money. We had a mortgage and a couple of car payments and we were paying the bills. The wife drove a little zippy convertible and I drove the big dawg-haulin' SUV. On the "Cool-Car Meter" I would have probably ranked us a good solid 8 out of 10.

It was sort of funny because the wife and I are not "car people" we just wanted cars that were reliable and ended up with a couple of car payments when all was said and done. Of course the bottom dropped out of my industry and we have spent the past few years dialing back the expenses and then dialing them back more and more. First to go was my wife's zippy little car. And for a short while we had to rely on just the SUV to juggle schedules and Dr appts.

Cool Car quotient: 4 out of 10

Fortunately for us, good friends found themselves with an extra set of wheels so they gifted us their 12-year old 130k+ mile, battle worn Honda Civic complete with bubbling window tinting and peeling paint. But my goodness that baby runs. And we are very grateful.

Combined Cool-Car quotient: 5 out of 10

Next to go was the SUV. We were rightly nervous to rely just on the well worn gifted Honda but reality was reality.

Cool-Car quotient: 1 out of 10

Once again, God has provided for us and I recently took a one-way flight to Seattle to pick up the newest addition to the family. Ladies and gentlemen, introducing Hannah!

She's a 1992 Pontiac with 80K+ miles giving us a combined Cool-car quotient of 4 out of 10.

She is ENORMOUS. That baby can seat 8 easy and 9 in a pinch. That's right - this van has nine separate seat belts! Not since the days of youth work have I driven a car this size.

Added bonuses: DVD player and automatic sliding door on the passenger side. Which is hilarious to us because we never imagined we would find ourselves driving a "mini" van and we would have NEVER pictured ourselves with an in-car DVD player.

I got to spend two days driving solo from Seattle to San Diego so Hannah and I got a lot of 1 on 1 time to get to know each other. She rides like a dream. I was half tempted to just sleep in the back of her, maybe watch a movie on the little screen. But I had friends in Sacramento I wanted to see so the van camping has been postponed.

Life is so surreal. A few years ago the wife and I were childless professionals, paying the bills and taking the little zippy out for topless dates. In the blink of an eye we are now parents driving a beat up civic and a hulking hauler. Combined mileage: 240k (and we plan on keepin them for 240k more!), Combined Seating: 14. Combined payments: 0. Which gives a combined cool-car-payment quotient of 10 out of 10.

Oh, and the reason we call her Hannah?


That's right baby! She's a Montana. As in Hannah Montana. A fitting name for a combined cool-car quotient of 4, don't ya think?

BTW - we couldn't be happier about it all.


PS: I don't actually even know who HM is other than she is (or was) some pre-teen pop star so I figure there must be a pretty significant dork factor (ala our HUGE people mover). I hope she hasn't killed anyone or been busted for other nasty stuff lately. If she has, don't tell me - I want go on referring to our family van as Hannah in blissful ignorance of the nightly news.