The Blue Bus

You know when things get quiet and your mind begins to wander? When you find yourself thinking of your childhood and you start to get all emotional? You begin to think of all those happy times and become sad, because they are over and you will never be able to replicate them.

If you don't normally experience this sort of nostalgia, then you are probably in some serious walk-down-memory-lane withdrawals. Hans Zimmer can assist with a blast from the past if you are struggling to flashback Thursday.

The particular series of memories that I'm thinking about delivers these exact feelings. 

It is the end of an era with a rather unfortunate finale, but we won't talk about that part.

Sunday, March 6, 2016 marks the day we lost a dear 14 year old family member. Although the circumstances of the loss are not particularly wonderful, the health of the family member had me threatening euthanasia for the past few years. 

Now, I realize that I have been leading you to believe that we lost a living, breathing creature; but this is not the case.

On the aforementioned Sunday, there came about a vehicular crash wherein we were disposed of our dear  2002 Dodge Caravan. 

As the nostalgia has been strong, I have compiled a short list of memories of the minivan to share with you. Unfortunately, I can't share it all. Probably mostly because I moved on from the van about eight years ago. You really can't expect a teenager to choose a minivan over a Volvo. It just isn't done. 

Cue the memories:

- Carpool throughout all four years of high school. There are a lot of memories within this statement, but I just can't possibly summarize them into one.

- That one time that Pa said we weren't allowed to wash the van anymore because all the dried mud was holding the frame together. (The big guy got rather rusty near the end.)

- The most recent adventure involved us traveling to the airport and the upper rad hose protesting. We should have known better than to take such a long (three hour) trip in the old guy.

- This one time (maybe even the last time) we were traveling to Chesley Lake when Pa went over a bump as Syd was taking a drink of water. She dumped the whole bottle of freezing cold water onto herself. I still remember the look on her face as the water doused her. 

- When we were in elementary school, if the buses weren't running because of snow or fog; the Blue Bus was always running. 

Hairs to the future! this is t-bear signing off