Flashback Friday - 1998

In my search for past Christmas pictures, I have found some pictures that I want to share. In September of 1998 we purchased the first and only brand new vehicle that Mike or I have ever owned. It was a purchase that turned out to be very fortunate for us about 16 months later. The large purchase in question is my 1999 Voyager minivan. It was very fortuitous because in June 1999 I became pregnant with the twins! Jason was 5 years old. We still own this van today. It has been a good vehicle - though it is beginning to act its age.

Would you like to see the car I traded in to get the van? It would NEVER have worked for a family of five plus the dog as well.

This is my 1981 Pontiac Trans Am 5.0 Litre 4-speed manual transmission. I bought it after high school, second hand - it turned 18,000 miles the day I drove it home. I drove it until 9/1998 and when I sold it - it had turned over 200,000 miles. It was a great car!

There are times I still dream about driving this car. I got a few tickets driving it. It was really an awesome and fun car, and I probably made a huge mistake in not keeping it. But truly, we didn't have the mechanical knowledge to really take care of it and give it the TLC it deserved.

I have a lot of memories of my Trans Am. Good times out cruising. Bad times too. Like the winter I had absolutely zero heat due to a ruptured heater core. I drove wrapped in an afghan that winter. The clutch went out twice. Oh - one time in the pouring down rain - my alarm system malfunctioned and the lights began to flash off and on and the horn was honking. You should have seen the people clearing out of my way driving down the interstate. LOL. Fortunately, a neighbor had a trusty pair of wire cutters and we fixed that malfunction rather quickly! Snip!!

It occurs to me that Jason might have liked the Trans Am to drive if we still had it. Hopefully, someone who really loves it has it and is taking care of it. It would be sad to think of it in a junkyard somewhere.