Mine was the first vehicle I ever purchased with my own money. Granted, when I first turned 16 I got to drive my dad's new Durango, which was a blast. But still, I bought this one with my own money from my dad 2 years later. He bought this truck new in '98 with 7 miles on it. I literally can remember going to the dealer and looking at it, and being amazed at how much power the 5.7 had. I was 7 years old then, and I can remember the damn seat belt rubbing a raw spot on my neck because I was so short. The other day I took all the seats out of it to clean, and I found a happy meal toy I lost in 1999. Talk about nostalgia. And since we bought it, the truck has brought my baby brother home from the hospital, towed the trailer home that held my first horse, helped my family move from 2 different houses, taken at least 3 people to the hospital, pulled an over turned tractor off of a family friend, taken our dog to the vet the 3 times he was hit by a car, survived a divorce, survived a theft attempted by said divorced family member, safely taken me home through a tornado, and those are just the things I can think of off the top of my head.
Many of the things I learned about working on cars I learned from this truck when I was still in grade school. At this point, I feel like I have a very good understanding of how the parts all work on it. When I look at Fords or Dodges, I have a hard time understanding how they work because I am so used to this truck. The same is true, just to a lesser degree with the NBS trucks. My dad's Silverado is much harder to work on than this one is.
I live on campus at college during the school months, and drive 1.5 hours home on the weekends. With that said, the truck probably gets 250 miles, tops, put on it every week. That keeps gas prices from affecting me quite so much I guess. (And when it is at college, it is in a parking garage so it is somewhat protected from the elements. While at home it stays in a heated/cooled garage.) So I can't really justify buying a new car.
I wanted to drive around a bit more this summer, though, so I purchased a CBR600 a few months ago to zip around on. Getting 45MPG on that thing is very nice, and it helps keep the miles off the truck. I'm going to drive it to college through October also, if I don't get killed on the interstate.
Anyway, I am really, really attached to the truck. I know I can get better mileage or more power from a newer model, but the history this vehicle has is priceless to me. I know gas is only going to go up, and if it keeps going at the rate it has been, I will have to invest in a second vehicle in the next few years. When that happens, I will put this one in a garage or a storage unit somewhere to keep it from aging anymore than necessary. After I finish my degree, I will hopefully be living pretty comfortably and will be able to pull it out of storage, totally strip it down, and turn it into a sunny-day toy.
