Our 1996 Toyota 4 Runner after 320,000 km including hundreds of hockey games and family outings
This week we bought a new truck— a Toyota Tundra. It’s black with an extended cab and red rock leather seats. It’s got bells and whistles I find hard to believe even exist. I can heat up my seat and have my own little furnace on my side while my husband has his side cool.
But with the new comes parting with the old as we traded in our 1996 Toyota 4 Runner.
We went for a drive in the new truck and let the fancy navigation system lead us to the Toyota dealership for one last goodbye. There it was in the back of the lot, rusty and looking a bit worn out.
We bought the 4 Runner 15 years ago after a near accident on a snowy night.
It was Boxing Day and we were on our way back home to Liverpool after spending the day in Halifax visiting family. It was a 90 minute drive and our two sleepy children, 7 and 10, were in the back seat of the car.
The light snow quickly turned into a storm. Just as we were talking about turning back, the car spun out into the opposite lane of the highway and stopped a foot from a steep embankment.
We got back onto the highway and checked into a hotel for the night. We had only the clothes we were wearing, our video camera and a bunch of presents in the trunk that seemed meaningless. We all knew how close we had come to a more serious outcome.
We have video tape of the four of us cuddled on the bed relaying the incident into the camera. I’ll never forget my little girl’s face as she said, “Thank you, Jesus, for keeping us safe.”
After that night, my husband decided we needed a four-wheeled drive vehicle that would carry our family safely through the Nova Scotia winters. And so we bought a six month old Toyota 4 Runner.
That trusty truck served our family well for 15 years, over 320,000 kilometers, hundreds of hockey games and family trips. My husband took it in every 6,000 kilometers for check ups and it never let us down.
Now, here we are, the kids are grown and it’s just the two of us, with our new Toyota vehicle ready to make new memories.
