So Long, Sienna!

I started driving in January 1988. My first vehicle was a manual silver Toyota Tercel. The car didn't have air conditioning, and when I was working on my master's degree in South Carolina in the summer of 1994 I decided it was time to trade the car in for one that did have a/c. My parents had picked the first car out, and I bought it from them in 1991. I knew exactly what color car I wanted in 1994. I bought a mint green Tercel which I owned for several years. While I was working on my doctorate I traded my second Tercel in for a beige Toyota Corolla. In 2009 I traded the Corolla for a red Prius (hybrid). When Paul and I got married 20 years ago, he had a Honda Civic. Over the past 20 years he's purchased two vehicles. The first was another Honda Civic, and the second was a grey 2016 Mazda 3 which he bought in May 2018. It didn't have many miles on it when he bought it, but he drives 600 miles a week to and from work so the car already has 113,000 miles on it only three years later. In 2012 we traded his Civic in for our first minivan. The red Prius became his car at that point, and for the past almost nine years I've been driving a grey 2012 Toyota Sienna. That was the first time either of us ever purchased a brand new vehicle. We planned to buy a used light blue minivan with heated seats, but Oliver came home from the NICU in a car bed because he was too small to use a car seat, and we had to buy a van the same day he was discharged or I would have been at home the next day with three kids who couldn't fit in the Civic or Prius while Paul was at PSU. We weren't able to shop around for that vehicle purchase. 

For the past 30 years I've traded in my car once it's hit about 100K miles. The van has 152,000 miles, which means it's the most miles I've ever put on one vehicle. Over the past 33.5 years I've purchased five different Toyotas - three of which I wasn't really crazy about the color and two I did really like the color (mint green Tercel and red Prius). The color I disliked the most of the five is the grey I've been driving for 9 years. To add insult to injury, Paul bought a grey car 3 years ago. The color of a vehicle is unimportant to Paul, but the kids and I have been really looking forward to trading in the van for another van or SUV that we liked the color. We considered a red Sienna, but the kids preferred the Obsidian Blue Pearl Odyssey. It's a really pretty color - even prettier than the light blue we considered getting in 2012. We were planning on buying a used one this time, but considering the very small discount for a used minivan, we decided it was better to buy a new one. A dealership that had one in the color we wanted was south of where Paul works so he drove the Sienna to work on Monday morning, and I drove his Mazda when I took the kids to art camp, orthodontist, library, grocery store, and such today. Paul owned two Hondas, but the Odyssey is the first Honda that I've owned and our first vehicle with heated seats. As a person who doesn't like being cold, I am really excited about the heated seats! If we own this one as long as we owned the Sienna, we'll have it until Oliver graduates from high school. I had thought that Paul's Mazda could become our third car once Nadia started driving in 2024, but at the pace he's going there will be over 200K miles on it at that point. We shall see how long we keep the Mazda. While I was a FT adjunct at BU from 2017-2019 I set some money I made aside for a few big purchases, and we are using most of that money this summer to buy this van and replace our roof in September. Usually when you earn money it goes towards things you can't really "see" such as paying for gasoline, property taxes, life insurance, utilities, car insurance, etc. 

Paul was at work on Saturday and wasn't able to go to the dealer that day, so on Saturday I made an appointment for him to come down on Monday evening. I confirmed the appointment on Monday morning as I knew there was a chance it had been sold since I made the appointment. The confirmed the appointment, Paul drove down there, and they told him they sold it on Saturday night and weren't expecting more until September. Ugh! He left work early and drove an extra two hours for nothing. The only Obsidian Blue Pearl ones that we found within a 2 hour radius of our house were of a more expensive model. Paul knew how much I had disliked the grey color the last 9 years and was willing to splurge on one that had more bells and whistles, but I wanted to see if there were other options. Although I've never been a person who was really interested in vehicles, liking the color did make it a more exciting purchase. I found a 2020 blue one in Stroudsburg that only had 201 miles on it (seemed new even though it was listed as used), and I made an appointment to see it at 1:30 today. As soon as I picked Nadia and Ian up from art camp at noon, we started driving to the dealership. The blue one was still there, but I quickly learned it was missing many features that I wanted such as it only had 7 seats (we've had 8 seats the past 9 years), didn't have the magic slide for the middle row (which I was eagerly anticipating as it will make it easier for people to get into the back row), didn't have heated seats, etc. I asked if they had any 2022 Odysseys, and they had one white one in stock which was thankfully not the more expensive model. In the end I decided that it was more important to get the features we wanted than a color I wanted. I would rank white as fifth in terms of my favorite colors for vehicles. It's not as pretty as the Obsidian Blue Pearl, but it's much better than grey. 

The Bluetooth was truly a royal pain to use in the 2012 Sienna. It is a billion times easier to listen to audiobooks and use any other feature of my phone via the vehicle's touch screen in the 2022 Odyssey. It has heated seats, and I can set the temperature for three different parts of the vehicle (can be three different temps) - drive, passenger, and rear. The driver's seat is far more comfortable than it was in the Sienna. It also has blind spot information system, adaptive cruise control (ex. if the vehicle in front of us is going slower than what I've set the cruise control to then the vehicle adjusts the cruise control setting accordingly), the car brakes on its own if we are too close to another vehicle, the car also has a lane keeping assist system. In other words the car literally drives itself by controlling the steering wheel and brakes at some points! The only feature it didn't have that I was hoping our next vehicle would have was a power tailgate. When we buy groceries, many times employees are waiting for me to hit a button that I don't have. That's not changing even though we have a new vehicle as we'd have to have gotten a more expensive model to have that feature. It does have a remote starter which I've never had before. It's not plain white - sort of a pearl color. It's growing on me, but I still hope that our next vehicle is a color I prefer. I realize it might be another 9-10 years before we trade this in. If there wasn't such a shortage of vehicles at the moment, I would have held out for blue, green, or red, but I contacted quite a few dealerships and many of them had ZERO Siennas or Odysseys in stock. 

It took almost two hours to drive there, and we were at the dealer for three hours. Milo was a very good boy during the 8 hours he was alone in his crate during our car buying adventure. Since we didn't leave the dealership until 5pm, I treated the kids to dinner at Dairy Queen as going to to DQ was on our bucket list and we hadn't been there yet. Because both my name and Paul's was on the title for the Sienna, they needed Paul's signature. They wanted both of us to sign it in the presence of a notary tomorrow. Paul wasn't sure how to accomplish that in light of his work hours. So Paul drove to the dealership this evening. I certainly hope the next time we buy a vehicle we don't have to drive so far to find one! The kids and I drove about 3.5 hours round trip, and Paul drove a total of 5+ hours to dealerships the past two days (just what he drove to the dealership, I'm not counting the time he spent driving to work). Nadia said she hopes she doesn't want to be around the next time we buy a vehicle, and she said if she's married she'll have her husband do it as she doesn't want to go to a car dealer again. LOL! She might change her mind in the future, but I agree car shopping is not exactly pleasant! Usually we try to negotiate the price, but I figured it was pointless in the current market where there is a shortage of vehicles available for buyers. I asked if they would give us $400 more for the trade in than they initially offered, and they gave us $200 more than what they initially offered. That's not much but considering places are requiring people to make offers that are HIGHER than the sticker price, I was thankful we "only" had to pay the sticker price and that he gave us what I thought was a reasonable amount for the Sienna. Here's to hoping and praying for many years of safely driving our new white Odyssey! 

Nadia and her new friend, Helen