More of a blast than I thought!

I’m into my third month of owning my Chevy Tracker and it’s turning out to be even more of a blast than I expected.

One reason is that I have a stick shift again. I had to forsake that for an automatic when we bought the family sedan because, my wife did not want to drive a standard.

It’s not the smoothest or fastest transmission I’ve ever tried, but hey, this is a small truck, not a Ferrari.

Aside from that though I bought the Tracker just as the summer turned nice (we had had a cloudy and rainy one until then). We’ve already put a couple of thousand clicks on it and it’s been a real blast tooling along the secondary roads with the top down, admiring the scenery and discovering places we didn’t know existed right here in our own back yard so to speak.

Truckin' on a summer day! Nope, it's not a traffic jam, we're on a ferry crossing the St-Lawrence River.

It rides a bit rougher than the family sedan, but with the comfortable seats, it’s still pleasant. Actually, this is part of the Tracker’s appeal for me.

I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the 2.0 litre engine / 5 speed manual transmission match up. It’s more responsive than I had expected and just fine for keeping up with city or freeway traffic.

Here’s the icing on the cake though. My wife really likes the fact that I don’t go blasting around corners; that she can’t see the underside of 18 wheelers and that we don’t have everyone’s exhaust pipe right in our faces.

The one thing that first worried me was my impression that you needed a PhD in engineering to drop and raise the top on this thing.

The previous owner explained how to do it, but my mind went numb and my eyes glassed over after the 2^nd sentence. It actually turned out the way simpler than I expected once you just get down to doing it.

All in all, I’m thrilled with the Tracker and hope to be able to enjoy it for many years. It’s not the Tracker that I’m worried about – these things are reported to be like the Energizer Bunny – it’s me – at my age, you just never know.

There is one thing that worries me bit though.

My son, who’s just qualified for his learner’s permit ( step one in getting his license), has been looking at the thing with a sort of starry-eyed look in his eye. Sort of the “I can see myself with my girlfriend and friends heading out to the beach in this thing” kind of look.

Better start hiding the keys!

And now, here it comes – that “How can I dress this thing up a bit” phase.

Well, with winter coming, I’ll just have to wait until spring to get around to that sort of thing, but that’s okay ‘cause that’ll give me time to think about it.

Okay, enough for now,

Make it a great day!

MarcL