Ark on Wheels

Any one who has been reading here for a while knows that the $64,000 question on the Ark has been about which vehicle would be chosen to carry our growing family.

Well, the vehicle has been chosen and it is...drumroll please...

the SAME Suburban we've been driving for the past 3 years.

What?!? How will we fit nine people into an eight passenger SUV? Do the words "double buckle" mean anything to you? No, no, I'm just kidding. Especially for those of you in the law enforcement industry, I would never *dream* of breaking the seatbelt law.

It was not an easy decision. And there were several factors that played into our decision:

• The love we feel for our current 4x4 vehicle--it's not just transport for us. Think Knight Rider and David Hasselhof. Or (more pleasantly) Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Dick Van Dyke. It's one of us.
• The Captain's religious differences with the uber-conspicuous extendo-van.
• The price of gas leading to the falling SUV market--leaving us with a vehicle worth $5,000 less than it was 6 months ago!
• Shocking as it may seem, dealers have no shortage of demand for 12 or 15 passenger vans and--even amidst the gas crisis--and aren't ready to deal yet.

So, we went back to the drawing board. And decided that the best vehicle for us was the one we already had with a little tweaking. We decided to invest in a fourth row for the Suburban. It will give us two additional seats, which is one more than we need---at least for now---and will buy us some time at a relatively low price.

But don't worry, those of you who see us during long car trips. We won't disappoint. We've also decided we'd do a few test runs during this interim period. We'll be renting the gargantu-van to do our long trips to see which ones, for future reference, we like best!