Another thing that went down on Friday was that the Schneider family got a new set of wheels. The backstory is that when we moved to Colorado back in 2015, we immediately did the most Colorado thing imagineable and leased a Subaru Outback. For those who haven’t been to Colorado, Subarus are basically the unofficial state car of Colorado.
And with good reason, becasue they are awesome. They do really well in the mountains and are just excellent family cars. We loved the Outback, but when the lease came up in 2018, we were at a point where we just needed more space. At that time, Subaru didn’t have a vehicle with a third row of seats, so we traded in to buy an 8-passenger Ford Explorer.
The car was fine, and it worked for us, but we frankly never loved it. It seemed kind of overly big and clunky. Subaru has since come out with the Ascent, which has the third row. A little over a year ago we test drove one and absolutely loved it. We looked into trading in, but discovered that because there are a zillion Explorers on the road, their value drops like a rock immediately and we were underwater on the loan, making a swap challenging.
We gave it a year and started looking into it again. After a few weeks of shopping around and haggling, and with the help of an excellent Costco member discount program, we were able to work something out and get into a new Subaru Asent. We’ve had it all of 2 days, and we already love it. It handles way better, and somehow seems to have a TARDIS-like quality where it is bigger on the inside. It both seems smaller than the Explorer (fits in our garage much better) and also has more interior space. I am not an engineer and don’t know how the hell that works, but I do know I like it.
Anyway, I picked up the new ride on Friday, and it was an instant hit with the family.
Because I did most of the dealing over the phone, working with a dealer on the other side of Denver that was part of the Costco program, I went down on my own and we still need Erin’s signature on a few things. So the dealer sent a packet home with me and we decided to return the forms on Saturday morning, and take some time running errands around town.
Once the deal was fully done, we dropped off Erin and Amelia at Cherry Creek, so they could shop for dresses for my brother’s wedding next weekend. While they were doing that, Henry and I hit up the Trader Joe’s and did the week’s grocery shopping.
The whole operation went pretty smoothly, and we got back in time to pick the ladies up for their shopping expedition. From there, we headed home and took it pretty easy the rest of the afternoon. We were feeling Italian, so I made some pasta for Erin and me, and let the kids build their own pizza. They did an amazing job.
A long day and a bunch of carbs down, we got the kids to bed and I gave a holler to my buddy Price in Texas, to see if he would be up for a long-distance joint viewing of Bill and Ted Face the Music. We are both big Bill and Ted fans, and had been long awaiting their return to the screen. It turned out he was around and available, so we started at the same time and traded comments over Messenger.
It was fun even kind of hanging out with an old friend, and I did enjoy the movie. Is it going to win any awards? No. I wasn’t exactly expecting high art here, but it was goofy and fun and did have a few clever moments. Most importantly, I thought it had a pretty delightful and uplifting ending, which is something we could all do with these days.
So my final thoughts for today are as simple as they are powerful. If everyone paid heed to this credo, the world would be a much, much better place. So please…”be excellent to each other. And…party on, dudes!”
