My Cars Part 2

So anyway in the fall of 1992, Mom convinced me that I should have a more fuel efficient and reliable car. So the Grand Prix was traded in on a 1990 Ford Tempo.

1990 Ford Tempo



I got this car somewhere around August/September of 1992. It was a 2 door, with light blue metallic paint. The cassette deck had auto reverse! Yeah! The Tempo was also the first manual transmission car I ever drove. I had to learn how to drive it pretty quickly and had a lot of help from my good friend Matthew and a girl named Nikki who would later break my heart on a trip taken in that very car.
I was driving this car when I got the only speeding ticket I've ever had. I got it the day after my 21st birthday. I was driving to Kansas City to see my girlfriend at the time, I had a wicked hangover and just wanted to get there as fast as I could. I was ticketed for doing 85 in a 60.
Another memory of this car is from spring of 1995. I was living in an apartment with my friend Kris, in Hays. I was still in college, and had been working at KBSH-TV as a master control operator since December. We got a nasty afternoon thunderstorm and the street by our apartment filled up like a river. I ended up with about 2 inches of standing water in the bottom of the car and got chewed out for being late for work. For about 4 months I had to leave the windows cracked or they'd fog up. It seemed like no matter what I did that damned carpet would not dry out. I even poured cat litter on the carpet to try to absorb the water out. It had a faint mildew scent for about a year afterward. I had this car from the fall of 1992 until late summer of 1996. My sister Traci had recently bought a 1993 Toyota Paseo and no longer wanted to deal with the payments. She got the Tempo outright and I took the Paseo and the payments that went with it.

1993 Toyota Paseo



My Paseo was the only car I ever owned that had a name. I think Matthew named every car he ever owned. There was 'Barry' the red Monte Carlo, named after the silver age Flash, and he once had a truck named 'Flattery', because 'Flattery' would get you nowhere. My friend Kris actually gave the Paseo the name 'the Blue Frog' because that's what he thought it looked like when he first saw it.
This car was also a manual, had a moon roof, and was the first car I had that had a factory CD Player. The CD player would become prone to skipping in later years and had to be replaced. One of the rear speakers would only work intermittently.
In March of 1999 I packed up this car with as much stuff as would fit (including Matthew) and drove out to Denver for a new job.
I had this car when I met my wife, Sara. She drove a green Geo Metro. We took this car on a white knuckle drive to Glenwood Springs, Colorado during a pretty wicked snowstorm. I think she had to literally peel my hands off the steering wheel. Right after we got married in October of 2000, we sold the Geo, and bought a brand new Kia Sportage. We were actually in the Paseo when I first told Sara I loved her and when we decided to get married. Sara drove this car a lot after we got the Kia, but when Sara got pregnant with our daughter, she eventually got too big to get out of the car because it rode really low to the ground. With no back seat to speak of our daughter never rode in this car. We had the Paseo until 2004 when we used it as a trade-in on Sara's dream car, a Subaru Outback. The Blue Frog was a great car. It got really great mileage and was very reliable for many years. It broke my heart a little to part with it, and I just realized while writing this how many great memories of that car I share with Sara.

2000 Kia Sportage



As I mentioned above, I got the Kia with my beautiful new wife in November of 2000. We bought this brand new which was a first for me. This is the car I still drive. It is exactly like the one pictured. We bought this because we wanted a vehicle with four wheel drive and we wanted to start a family, but a minivan was simply out of the question. While I did drive a Ford Tempo for a while, even I have my limits.
This was our family car up until Sara got her Outback, which is much better suited to the task. We've been to and from Utah and Kansas many times in this. We drove to Estes Park in this car when we stayed at the Stanley Hotel. And we took it on a very fun trip to Cedar City Utah.
Our daughter, born in '03 pretty much owns the back seat of the Kia now. I have lots of good memories of her sitting in her car seat and singing songs she learns at daycare or from CDs. Gillian does a pretty good version of 'Fish On' by Primus.
I got rear ended in this car one day after leaving work, and while it was in the shop I was forced to drive a Chevy Cavalier. I was never so glad to have my Kia as the day I got it back, and got to give the Cavalier back to the rental place.
I drive the Kia to work on my days in my carpool and it has been a very reliable vehicle. It's finally paid for and I intend to keep it until the day it dies.

Those are my Cars.