Dodge Caravan

I’m back home now and wistfully recalling younger days when a six-hour drive was a piece of cake.

So! My car talked to me this morning as I was leaving the motel. Well, not exactly, but it did communicate. I’ve had this particular vehicle, a 2009 Dodge Grand Caravan, for almost a year now. Understand that even though I am pretty high-tech in many ways, when it comes to my vehicles I have been decidedly low-tech. The last vehicle I had before this had manual windows. This is the first vehicle I’ve had with ABS (and may I say it scared me the first time the brakes pulsed in that weird way). I don’t have GPS, although I’m sure many of you think that’s a huge mistake (I do use BlackBerry Maps and MapQuest for BlackBerry when traveling).

Anyway, back to this morning. I have never even seen most of the warning lights on the dashboard. Imagine my horror to see a horseshoe-shaped thing with an exclamation point in the middle of it. I had to look it up in the manual: it was a low tire indicator. It’s not quite high tech enough to tell me which tire, though. None of the tires looked particularly low, but who am I to ignore my car?

This turned into a mini-fiasco as the first two gas stations I went to did not have functioning air pumps. The third one did, and my car was right. The driver’s side front tire was about 5 pounds low, and the others were fine. Aside from the single-digit temperatures and the fact air costs $1.00, all was well. You are probably wondering to yourself how I could not know that air costs $1.00. We have compressors at home and I truly can’t remember the last time my low tire needs were not noticed within reach of our personal compressors.

It is very quiet here without Axel. Freya is somewhat stressed out but she’ll be fine in a day or two once she remembers that when Axel is away, she also gets his share of attention and treats.

Back to work and a normal routine tomorrow. Oh, joy.

(NaBloPoMo | January ’10: 5 of 31)

Last week at the New York Auto Show, Honda showed its Dog Friendly version of the Element. Press release and photos can be seen here:

New York 2009: Dog Friendly Honda Element Concept

Although my Rottweiler wrecking crew would surely make short work of the soft fabric crate and the cushioned pet bed, I still think it’s cool that Honda would run with a concept like this, and with features that really will be useful to many dog owners.

I seem to remember this being done before, though, but I can’t find any online references to a dog-friendly minivan done several years ago by one of the American carmakers (I want to say it was a Chevy Astro, but I’m not 100% sure on that). I didn’t save the paper article and apparently I didn’t blog about it, nor post to any forums either!

When I got my first Rottweiler Heidi, I still had a 1986 Honda Civic CRX. That would be the 2-seater hatchback. It was a good thing we had only one Rottweiler for a while. I was a bad dog owner and let her ride in the passenger seat, usually unrestrained. Fortunately she was one of those dogs that would fall asleep in the car almost immediately. I learned to fully recline the passenger seat before letting her in the car and surprisingly enough, we were both happy and comfortable and never got hurt.

That car was replaced by a Honda Civic coupe, and my husband replaced a Thunderbird with the ultimate dog-friendly vehicle, a Chevy Suburban. Shortly after Civic #2 was replaced by a Dodge Caravan minivan, he traded in the Suburban for the light truck he really wanted and ever since then, the dogs have had a Caravan as their main transportation. The newest one was just picked up in March. The middle row of seats immediately got folded into the floor, and probably won’t emerge until it’s time to sell or trade.

The Caravan was not my first choice vehicle, but it’s been a good one for us. I’d be all over the Dog Friendly Honda if it were an Odyssey though!

My car talked to me!

Dog-friendly rides (15 of 30/81 of 274)