Well, as I mentioned 2 weeks ago, Tuna has left us, and I though it would be fun to go back and give Tuna a post for all the years it served us. Tuna is also special to me in the fact that it was my first car. I drove my parents car in high school, and my sister's old car my freshman year, but after I got home from my mission, I went and bought my own car in 2009, and that was Tuna! Tuna was a 1999 Corolla, and by the time we gave him away, he was 22 years old! Here's the first picture I could find of Tuna. It wasn't particularly close to when I bought it. I know that's the Miller parking lot, which means I'd had the car at least a year and a half at this point. I came out to walk to campus one morning and the roof of the car was frosted over, and the water had frozen into a very pretty feathered pattern.
Tuna's been with our family through... well, everything. It was the car Monica and I drove off from our wedding reception in. And, while I don't have a picture, it was the car we brought Brooke home from the hospital in. Tuna was there for all our biggest events. Also, if you click this picture to make it larger you'll see the license plate ends "2NA", hence Tuna.
I don't remember the exact mileage I got Tuna at, I think around 110,000, but here's a picture when we crossed 150,000 miles! We were driving through Wyoming on our way to Utah at the time. When I gave Tuna away it was at 187,000. The whole time we drove Tuna we never had any serious problems, it was always a great and reliable car.
Oh, and here's Monica, driving at 150,000 miles! We drove Tuna back and forth to Utah many times. It's how we got to Colorado to search for an apartment when we first moved out. Tuna was a bit more bumpy and shaky of a drive. In fact, the drive to Utah could easily give me 15,000+ steps on my watch while I held the steering wheel! Here's another fun road trip story. Tuna has a tape player, and my parents still had some of the Harry Potter books on tape, so we'd borrow them and listen to them on our drives. Well, it was winter and cold outside, so we had the heater running, which also caused the tape deck area to get really hot. After a few hours of driving, the audio started squealing really bad and it was hard to hear. For the rest of the drive we'd have to take breaks from listening to our book to let the tape deck cool down so we could hear the audio again!
For several years, Tuna was our conduit to get our Christmas tree home. Here's a picture of us getting our tree out here in Colorado. Monica's and my first Christmas being married, we went to Smiths to get a tree after school one day on our way home. When we stopped and I opened my car door, the latch had apparently frozen a little and the door wouldn't stay closed, so we just had to head home. I had to hold the door shut the whole drive home. By the time we got home the car had warmed up enough to properly close again, so we headed back to the store! The flexibility of not having kids astounds me while I tell this story. Anyway, we got our tree and went to tie it to the roof. When I went to throw the rope to Monica on the other side of the car my wedding ring came flying off! It was dark, and it had snowed recently, and my ring flew over the car and landed somewhere in the parking lot! Fortunately we found it, and got the tree home safely too!
Here's Tuna handing out candy at our ward trunk or treat. This is the best we've ever decorated our trunk as well. You may also note an entire pack of bottled water behind the cobwebs in there. Tuna was reliable, but we still knew it was an old car.
Did we love Tuna? We sure did. Here is some mustard art of Tuna as we prepared sandwiches for a trek out to Utah. This particular drive was when Brooke was just 6 weeks old, and it was quite the experience. We were heading out for my Grandma's (mom's mom) funeral. The drive out was pretty uneventful, other then the fact that Brooke had a rough time nursing at first, so Monica had to pump (we had a battery pack, and she'd even pump while we were driving sometimes), we had to stop a bunch for Brooke, and the technically 8 hour drive took us around 12 hours! We (or at least I) were exhausted when we got to Monica's parents house!
The drive home though? Oof. (Monica is still traumatized from this experience...but seriously) On the morning of my grandma's funeral the day started with freezing rain. The funeral home was about an hour north, so we had to make sure we were careful on the drive up. At one point we were on a stretch of freeway that was about 5 lanes wide. A car passed us in the fast lane to our left, and shortly after it got in front of our car hit an ice patch and spun out all the way across the freeway. I had to swerve around it to not hit the car, and fortunately they spun across at a moment where all the lanes were clear. I don't know if they got hit or anything, but I don't think we saw anything. It was a close call, and we were a bit (or in Monica's case EXTREMELY) rattled the rest of the drive to the funeral home. I think we made it last, but I didn't have much incentive to drive fast at that point with a 6 week old baby in the back!
The funeral was good, but when we came out, it was snowing pretty heavily. We decided we couldn't go to the grave side (it was 30 minutes away) and that we needed to try to beat the storm and head straight home to Colorado. We were in Logan, and headed through the canyon and up over the pass toward Bear Lake. Maps said this was the fastest way to get home, and it seemed better than spending 60 to 90 minutes driving south before starting to head east, so we took it. The road got pretty snowy by the time we got to the top, and we had to descend slowly down to bear lake. Fortunately at bear lake the storm wasn't really in force yet, so we stopped to get gas and Subway, and continued on our way. We've never driven that road since, but I remember we were listening to the part in Harry Potter where Hagrid talks about his journey to the giants, and I still think of that as giant territory. It was a long day, and we got back long after dark. Another fun fact about Tuna, the headlights were REALLY bad, so it was no fun driving in the dark for hours to get home. We did finally make it, and Tuna was just a little salty when we rolled into our garage.
For years Tuna was also our hauling vehicle. I already showed the Christmas tree, but Tuna was our way to get anything home. Someone is giving away lawn chairs? Good thing I had an emergency fleece blanket in the trunk to tie it shut. Need lumber for a project? Tuna can hold about 16 2x4s. You just gotta know these things!
Tuna was the treasure at the end of the rainbow!
I think Tuna's last big excursion was for Monica's and my anniversary in 2019. Monica's mom came out and watched the kids for a weekend, and we drove to Glenwood Springs. We had a great time out there. We stopped at this awesome little bakery on the way out that was so good we stopped again on the way home. We hiked to Hanging Lake, and I'm so glad we had that opportunity as there was a fire there and then rain washed out the trail, so it's closed now. We really enjoyed the charm of the town, and swam in the hot springs too. Here we are outside the bakery on our way home after picking up some treats to share with the girls when we got home. Also, note from the video. Tuna's only failing was that in old age the driver side door handle stopped working on the inside. Always worked great on the outside though. That means I had the great opportunity to get Monica's door, and I also got to climb out the passenger side whenever I drove Tuna to work (every day). I also got to explain about the handle to several people so they didn't think it was weird when I crawled out the passenger side behind them.
Here's Tuna and Luna, best of friends. Luna is an '09 Corolla, so expect a similar post in 2031.
We haven't really driven Tuna since we got our van in May of 2020. Since then Tuna sat in front of our house, watching over us... or something. Tuna was a wonderful car, and was part of many great memories. Tuna helped to build our family, and we ALL (or probably just me) will miss Tuna! Swim on forever little buddy! Hope to see you around town.
This turned out to be a pretty good week for that tribute post, as work was insane and I took a total of 1 video with some pictures during it on Monday... Monica was a little better than me, but still, not too much happened around here this week. The biggest news is probably that Grayson started climbing the stairs! So now we have a baby gate at the bottom of the stairs to make sure he stays safe.
The big reason I didn't get many picture this week is because I was working all day every day. I put in about 60 hours Monday-Friday. I worked all day until around 4-4:30, took a break to talk/play with the kids, have dinner and help get everyone to bed, and then worked again the rest of the night. It was crunch time before my beam trip next week. It was a pretty crazy week, and I was more than a little tired.
Grayson has loved to chase Jelly around the house. He just really want's to pet her. One day Jelly ran behind the couch to get away from Grayson, and he followed her back there! Monica didn't think he could get behind the couch from where he was, but Brooke noticed him back there a minute later. He crawled out on his own with a little encouragement, so that was good. The better news was that Monica just moved and cleaned under the couch a few days before!
During Winry's dance class on Thursday everyone was chilling in the car and Grayson started trying to drive! Fortunately he can't reach the pedals, but this was probably a near disaster!
This morning Winry really wanted to help give Grayson his bottle. She did a superb job and gave him the whole thing! She loves to play with Grayson, and gets in his face a lot. He typically hits/pushes her face away, but Winry always seems to think that's funny and encouraging.
Grayson has discovered and loves to shake this molding. It's been a long time since I redid the fireplace, and after I was done I tried to order the exact molding color from Lowes that I needed to match the floor. That order sat in purgatory for at least 6 months before I gave up, cancelled it, and went and grabbed the closest color I could find. Since then I've been sawless as I let a buddy borrow mine, but they're back now and... well... I don't have an excuse other than I just forgot. Fortunately Grayson reminds me frequently by picking up and shaking it.
In church today someone made a comment and it made me think about how I always used to end my blog post with my testimony, and I thought that was something I should probably try to get back to. I don't know that I'll do it every week, but I definitely want to get that going again, and it's been a really long time. Today we talked about the temple at church. I love the temple! It is such a great blessing to get to go, put the craziness of life aside and feel the spirit! I'm so glad things are starting to open again. I know that families are eternal, and that we can live together forever! I say this in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment