We Bought a Van

The first post here was in present tense, this one is in past tense. We bought Pegasus, the van.

I'll explain the warehouse in a minute, but we don't have a good photo of us with the doors open and the bells and whistles all in action because there's a trailer parked on the other side of the van and there's just no space for that. But that's the van. We bought that.

Honestly our biggest hesitance about Pegasus is the name, and we don't even mind the name. It's starting to feel a little more natural, but it just takes some getting used to - like adopting a dog that's pre-named. And while there are a million reasons to be excited about owning this van, one of the biggest is that we are overflowing with van puns.

It'll be the advanture of a lifetime. If we loaded Pegasus with people it'd be a real Pegabus. Stuff like that.

Anyway, we signed the papers and delivered the check, so it's real. Terry, the previous owner who is impossibly sweet, greeted us with flowers. When that wasn't enough, she gave us a little envelope that we were to open later. As we talked about the possibility of adding stickers or magnets from all the places we visited, Terry sheepishly told us that maybe we should check the envelope. 

Not only did she give us a very sweet card with a lovely little pin of a campervan, she also added a very thoughtful (personal) note inside and the magnet below to get our collection started. I like how proverbs of different cultures are fairly similar - this one reminds me of the "may the wind be always at your back" one of Irish lore - because it makes me think that maybe there is some universal truth out there in the world. Maybe not, but it's nice to think that independent cultures, cut off from each other by oceans or mountains or languages or religions all end up figuring out that connecting with nature is part of what makes you whole and full as a person. That's what I want to feel over the next several months.

Anyway. We took the additional step of taking my parents to see it/her/him at the storage facility* yesterday and that went swimmingly. The advantage of parents looking at this kind of thing is that they'll look at things that a younger person won't notice or think of. In short, my parents won't be blinded by the excitement. And to be honest, they had nothing to complain about. It was pretty thrilling.

*(The van is at a storage facility because Cleveland winters can be pretty rough. But even worse than driving in the snow is that the van can get undercarriage rust damage from the salty roads. This van has apparently never seen road salt, or has at least seen so little that previous owners can claim that it's never seen road salt, which is effectively the same thing.)

So now we're in a bit of a holding pattern. It's February 21st, the van has never seen road salt, and the roads are caked in salt until it starts raining in Cleveland, which should be mid-to-late March. We're planning to take Vanna White (this feels like a common one that I'm sure a million people have thought of already) out of storage at the end of March and do a little trip for Jenna's April 4th birthday, but exact dates are not something we really have to think about just yet. 

That last paragraph was my way of saying that I don't expect a lot of action on the blog over the next couple of weeks because I don't know what kinds of things we'll be looking into and/or doing. Although I do expect to write at least 1,000 words about portable toilets.

Oh, also we watched Nomadland last night and it was not very interesting.