On Monday October 28, 2013 I lost the Monte Carlo to a blown head gasket. She put up a good fight and had a long life, 299,000 miles. I got the car when I was 16 and three months later when I was coming home from a "bass turned catfishing turned bass again" fishing trip (5pm to 8am), I dozed off at the wheel and hit a tree. I spent the rest of the summer working for $5.50 an hour to rebuild it. I never expected it to last much longer after that accident, but year after year it continued to surprise me. Since the accident I have put 160,000 additional miles on it, spent almost 1000 fishing trips with it, pulled a 14' jon boat for 2 years with it, and pulled a trailer and kayaks all of this year. Needless to say, it was a good car.
Its departure was untimely but I knew it was coming. I had planned on getting a new vehicle at the beginning of 2014 when I officially took over as superintendent at the plant. So I had already done a bit of research and more-or-less knew what I wanted.....well kind of. If you had spent any amount of time around me, you would know that I never quite have my mind made up. Here's what I thought I wanted...... a 4x4 truck with a crew cab. This would give me the option of hauling kayaks in the bed of the truck and on my trailer, as well as hauling more people in the crew cab. However, the miles per gallon on a 4x4 truck with a crew cab had me second guessing myself. At best I would get 15 miles per gallon city/highway average. After a little math I came to the conclusion that I drive approximately 15,000 miles a year. (15,000 miles year / 15 MPG= 1,000 Gallons of Gas per year..........1,000 gallons of gas per year X $3.50 per gallon (what I fear the average gas price will be in the next five years)= $3,500 a year in gas per year.........for arguments sake lets assume my loan was based on 5 years......5 years X $3,500 =
$17,500 in gas over a 5 year period)
The fact that I was going to pay as much in gas as I was in payments really alarmed me, So I started looking at alternatives. What would let me haul more gear, people, kayaks, and get better gas mileage? An Sport Utility Vehicle would but the gas mileage was only slightly better. And then I found the crossover class. A crossover could haul a trailer full of kayaks, have two kayaks mounted to the roof, carry 5 people, and get 20-30 miles per gallon. Since I had just retired a Chevy at 299,000 miles I figured that I should start my search with them. It didn't take long for me to throw out the idea of a truck, I found the Chevy Equinox at 22mpg city/ 32 mph highway was more than enough to seal the deal. However, I didn't stop looking there. I looked at the GMC Acadia, Chevy Traverse, Honda CR-V, Hyundai Santa Fe's, Kia Spectra, Subaru's Crosstrec, etc. As far as looks went the 2014 Jeep Grand Cherokee won the crossover category and as far as specifications went (Ground clearance, mpg, horsepower, features, etc.) the 2014 Subaru Crosstrek took the crown. But to be honest I was really biased in my search, because of the history I had with my Chevy Monte Carlo. I found a few Chevy Equinox's online and started contacting dealers, in the mean time I made a post on Facebook asking my friends for help in looking for crossovers. Travis sent me a link to an 2011 All Wheel Drive Equinox with around 50,000 miles on it, less than an hour away from me for $17,900. I called the dealer and they told me they would have it ready for me that night. I went down to see it that evening, upon arrival they told me it had been sold. (Which I believe to be total bull crap, it was a way to get people on their lot.) Anyway, they brought up a few other options a 2012 Front Wheel Drive Equinox in Black with 24,000 miles (Certified Pre-Owned.....still under warranty) for $18,900, and a 2011 All Wheel Drive Equinox in Mocha with 56,000 miles on it for $17,900. I wanted an all wheel drive vehicle, but that didn't necessarily mean that I NEEDED one. I had gotten by with a front wheel drive sedan for 8 years (pulling jon boats year round) so I figured that I would be fine with the front wheel drive model. I threw the numbers around in my head but I couldn't make up my mind that night. We ended up leaving empty handed, and of course the salesmen told me that, "It may not be here when you decide to come back." I went home and started to do even more research, the question now became can I find a newer Equinox for less money? Or better yet, Do I just buy a new one? The answer was pretty clear on the first question, no I wouldn't find one cheaper. I called two other dealerships and told them what I had looked at, I then asked them if they could beat it? One of the salesmen actually laughed and said if he saw one that cheap he would buy it. Now with that thought in the back of my head I remembered the salesmen telling me the night before that, "It might not be here when you decide to come back."
Three hours later I pulled into the lot with the intentions of buying the 2012 Equinox.....if it was still there, and to my surprise I found it parked out front. I thought to myself, "Someone must be test driving it." It turns out that they just hadn't moved it since I had driven it the night before. I sat down with a salesmen and began to talk numbers, they wanted $18,900 for it. I offered $17,900 because that's the price of the Equinox that I had originally came to look at the night before, he wrote everything down and went over to talk to the manager. After a couple minutes he came back with, "Sorry we can't do that. It's been marked down $3,000 for our end of the year blowout and we cant go any lower...... I assure you that you won't find one cheaper." I knew all of this from the night before, and from my research. I went along with it and asked for a hitch package ($400) and premium all weather floor mats ($200). At this point he could have said NO and I would have still bought it, but I wanted to see if I could get something extra. He went back to the floor manager and told him what I wanted. He quickly came back and told me that we had a deal.
So for the next two hours I filled out paper after paper. After the grueling 2 hour wait I was finally able to drive off in my new car. The very first thing I did was reset the trip meters and watch the mile per gallon meter. Since then I have drove it approximately 250 miles in the last week and I have averaged 27.3 miles per gallon.....most of which has been short trips to work and back and few trips to Walmart for car supplies. (Wax, cleaner, wheel polish, air fresheners, etc.) I believe there is room to improve on the MPG when I get out and make those long trips next spring.
Remember the numbers I crunched earlier on how much I will spend in 5 years on gas with the full sized truck. Here's what I saved by going with a crossover.
(15,000 miles per year / 27 Miles per gallon= 555.5 gallons of gas per year.) That is 444.5 less gallons per year than the full sized truck per year. (444.5 gallons x $3.5 per gallon= $1,555.75 of savings per year......$1,555.75 x 5 years=
$7,778.75) So I saved nearly $8,000 dollars (5 years) by deciding to go with a crossover rather than a full sized truck. That's more than enough justification for me.
Now Ive covered the loss of the Monte Carlo and the gain of the Equinox, so now its onto desperation. Like I said above, my new car did not come with a hitch, in fact won't have one installed until November the 13th. So as of now I have no way to get my kayaks to the water. Each day that passes I think about what I could do to get on the water....Thursday passed with no fishing, then Friday, and even Saturday passes before I start begging family and friends for vehicles. I was now going on 6 days without fishing, probably the longest dry spell I have had since late February/ early March. I guess you could say I was going through withdraws, every time I passed a lake or went over a bridge I'd slow down and just stare at the water. It was so bad that at one point I was considering strapping my kayak to the top of my new Equinox, which is a very, very bad idea....I hadn't completely lost my mind, but I was on my way.
Saturday night Amanda borrowed her dads 1985 Chevy Silverado so we could fish Sunday evening. Once her dad gave me the keys he started telling me all that was wrong with the truck....."When your going up a hill you will need to put it in Drive because the transmission slips in Overdrive", "You'll need to check the oil because it has a bad leak", "Whatever you do, don't turn the defrost on", "It doesn't have an exhaust", and "The speedometer doesn't work." Those are just a few of the major ones I remember him saying. I told him everything was fine, and that I've had my fair share of troublesome vehicles. I took the key and hit the road. As soon as I got in the truck we started finding "Other" problems. Amanda's door wouldn't shut without a proper slamming two or three times, and the truck needed me to turn the key over several times while pushing on the gas to start. I could already tell that this was going to be quite the adventure. We got out on the road eventually and I noticed two other major problems that were not mentioned, or that I had simply failed to hear. The first being that the headlights were awful, one of which was pointing straight down. The second and most crucial was that the steering wheel had a half a wheel turn of "play" in it. This meant that I could turn the wheel halfway before the truck began to turn. Of course I had to find this out while going into a corner much faster than I needed to be going. I turned the wheel a quarter of a turn and the truck continued to go straight, then I panicked and over compensated which put us heading right toward the ditch. I spun the wheel around the other way and threw us into the other lane. Luckily I got the truck to stay on the road enough to slow down and rethink the situation. I looked over to Amanda and said, "Maybe I don't want to fish that bad." We drove a few more miles down the road very cautiously. After ten minutes I slowly got comfortable enough to drive over 40 miles per hour. We eventually made it home, and then Amanda's dad called to see if we made it. "Yeah we made it", I said. He then asked, "how'd the truck do?", I replied, "It did fine." Which was a complete lie, my hands where sore and my knuckles were still white from grabbing the steering wheel so hard.
We got up around 6am and quickly loaded the truck. We soon met up with Russ at a public boat ramp. It was overcast most of the day with air temperatures in the upper 40's to lower 50's. We paddled over to a few fallen trees and started working tube baits along the bottom. Amanda caught a small 9" crappie on her first cast. Russ and I worked our way around the tree but it seemed that Amanda had found the only fish willing to bite. I spent the next hour and a half switching baits, first I switched color from white to blue but that didn't seem to help. Then I switched from a 2" tube bait to a 1.5" tube bait to see if I could pick up a few smaller fish, maybe even a bluegill or two. That didn't work either. From there I started exploring different locations. I quickly caught one 10" crappie right off of the bank. I worked the same spot for the next 10 minutes hoping that the crappie were chasing minnows toward the banks again, but I failed to catch another fish. It seemed that we would catch one fish every 45 minutes or so, which either meant the fish were super spread out or that they just weren't biting unless we put our baits right in front of them. We fished the lake for a total of 5 hours before we decided to give up on it and hit a nearby creek.
Amanda was done fishing for the evening so she decided to stay in the truck while Russ and I finished the evening out. We quickly discovered that the fish in the creek were much more willing to eat than the fish in the lake even though the creek was 3 degrees colder. Russ went to work early catching 4 crappie over 9" in his first half hour of fishing. I caught two pretty quick as well. After an hour of fishing the same general area, a log jam in 12 feet of water, we decided to start floating downstream and casting toward the bank. The crappie numbers started to fall, but the bluegill and largemouth bass were still pretty eager to take our small tube baits. At one point I was talking to an older gentlemen in an aluminum jon boat when I hooked into a good fish. I was using an 5 foot ultra light spinning combo spooled with 6lb test, so "Good" just happened to be a 15" largemouth. He pulled drag a few times and did a few laps under my kayak before I landed him. Since I was so close to the old man, I decided not to take a picture of the bass. I wasn't quite sure what he would have thought of me, so I just slipped him back into the water and continued to carry on a conversation. I guess I thought if I had took a picture of it he would have said something like, "You must not catch many 15" bass", so I decided to avoid the possible embarrassment.
Russ and I continued to fish until dark, landing a fish nearly every fifteen minutes. On the trip I'd estimate that we caught 40 fish combined. Which wasn't very much for the amount of time we spent on the water. However, It was enough for me to get my weekly dose of fishing.
We loaded up the kayaks and went our separate ways, Russ to clean his fish and Amanda and I to make the long and slow journey home in the 85 Chevy. To be completely fair, I did get used to the old truck after a while. We made it back to the house, unloaded the kayaks, put 10 gallons of gas into the truck, and then took the truck back to her dad. This adventure has really made me appreciate my new vehicle even more. I don't have to think about staying on the road and secondly because I won't have to spend $40 in gas every fishing trip. Unfortunately I will have another weekend off without a hitch, so its possible that the old Chevy might carry a couple kayaks one more time.
