Road Trip in the Fusion

Are there images that you have so fixed in your mind that you could describe them to anyone at a moment's notice?

This is one of those images for me - "home" - or as I've talked about it before "The Ranch" - where I grew up - the only other place that I have lived besides Bellingham - and that was for the first 18 years of my life.

Out of this writing will come a few more - a few book reports - stories of sisters - and stories of memories - but I have to do my church newsletter first, so I hope you'll stop back in a week or so to see what I have to say.

This picture of The Shepherd and The Blueberry Farmer (my B-I-L) was taken about two years ago on the front porch of the house where my dad was born. There are actually two houses hiding behind all the trees and greenery in the picture above - this is the house on the left hand side of the picture. We have that little house fixed up with beds, full kitchen, etc. We just - after thirty or so years - have purchased an "apartment sized" refrigerator - an upgrade from the little dorm room sized one that we had in the kitchen that would only hold enough food for one or two people for one or two days (now we actually have a REAL freezer!) - Something that was so simple we don't know why we didn't do it years ago.

If you notice in the picture above, there are two REALLY big steps and not a very big area to stand while you are fixing to open the door. Plus the area in front of it was a cement pad that, over the years had broken and heaved up - a very dangerous place to walk -

This past summer my nephews, our farmer (& good friend) Doug and my B-I-L took a jackhammer and a tractor and took out all the old bad cement and we had new cement poured and the boys build these wonderful new steps (not quite finished - face boards on the top two steps and the hand rails still need to be put up - but, again, something that was so simple, we wonder why we didn't do it years ago.


Here is a side view - an area just waiting for some patio furniture, don't you think?












If you scroll back up to the very first picture you will see this tree on the very far right hand sided of the landscape. The tree is planted on a "scab patch" about 200 or so yards in front of the house I grew up in. Farmer Doug planted it in memory of my dad about 30 years ago -

But, when I was growing up, there was no tree there - just the truck sized rock that it hides.














My younger sister and I would spend hours climbing up and around this rock - it would be a sailing ship one day - a classroom the next.

Thinking about it now, it is funny that we spent so much time out on that rock - there were no wildflowers to pick and bring back to our mom - just the sound of the wind and the buzzing of the flies and bees to be heard - and our imaginations gone wild with what adventure that we'd face next up on our big rock.







The Shepherd is checking the map and getting ready for our Saturday trip to Dry Falls State Park - one of my favorite places in the world.












One road trip and you already need a bath! Poor little car.

How we spent our Labor Day...

Yes, we got a new to us car - It isn't a very good picture - I didn't realize that there was so much reflection - it looks like there is a big divot in the side of it, but there isn't - and it's dark now, so I'm not going outside to take a new picture in the dark, that's all there is to it....

Here you have our new(to us) 2006 Ford Fusion - and if I can borrow a theme from the competition's advertising - "Zoom, Zoom..."


I'm afraid I'm going to consciously have to keep my foot off of the gas or there goes my "ticket free" insurance rating!

The Jelly Bean, as we affectionately call my 1991 Ford Festiva, has started to have some major problems in it's "major" systems - and looking at putting a couple of thousand bucks into an 18 year old car, however much one loves it, didn't seem to be very practical. And, I made the final payment on his truck last week.

So, while I'd been doing some internet car reviewing, The Shepherd had been keeping his "eagle eyes" open for different cars that he thought I'd like. About 10:30 this morning he said - "Did you want to go into town and look at cars??" I said - "Sure, why not."

We looked at a couple of Subaru's - specifically the Forester, as it has a lot of head room, but we felt kind of cramped "side to side" - A Legacy sedan, which was really cute and had a lot of cool options but was WAY out of our budget and, again, I felt kind of cramped. The sales guy, who was helpful and not too pushy (for a car sales guy), said pointing at this car - "have you thought of trying out a Fusion" - Not really, but we thought, heck, why not. Wow! - lots of room in this little car - both for The Shepherd's long legs and for my "ample" girth - I didn't feel like my arms were being squished into my torso by the door - it's a little bit hard to get out of, (but maybe that will be a good reason for me to start working on some flexibility exercises, no?) So we took it for a drive. It's got a "pernundle" aka PRNDL aka Automatic transmission - I've driven a stick for, oh, about 30 years now - but, manual Fusions are few and far between. Actually we realized while we were at lunch that Fusions were pretty much few and far between - could that be a good thing? Actually it's one of the top 4 selling cars in America right now. And besides that, my dad would probably turn over in his grave if I bought anything else but a Ford...

I'm not one of those people who change cars with the model year - in fact for my "real" adult life (after college) - I've only owned two cars - and I bought both of them new off the showroom floor - a 1978 Mercury Zephyr (I LOVED that car) and the Jelly Bean, which I bought from this same dealer in 1991. (I think they got rid of the Festiva because it was so trouble free - service departments don't like cars that are trouble free...) So, I'm not into dickering for price - we did feel that this was pretty fairly priced - but wish they had thrown in the set of tires that The Shepherd wanted. (car salesman - whining "You know, we're not making anything on this car" I just hate to listen to people whine - OK, fine - we'll take the car without the new tires.

And they only wanted to give me $100 for the Jelly Bean! How Dare They??? - Nope, we'll keep it.

So, I've got a couple of ideas up my sleeve for the JB - one is a fellow in town who has built an electric Festiva - He was impressed that the body on mine was in such good shape - or, I'll donate it to the local public radio station who says they'll take donated cars, running or not...

First I have to clean it out - AAAaaaRRRrrrGGGgggHHHhhh! I hate cleaning out my car.

I'm going to miss you little Jelly Bean - we had some pretty darn good times together, didn't we?