It’s the season.  Banjo Man is car-shopping again.

This time I am enabling him.  Aiding and abetting.  I am, surprisingly, his partner in crime.

Because…I secretly (and now, not so secretly) want a van for this summer’s road trip.  I want room, baby!   I want to be able to open the rear passenger door without a basket of cd’s and my sneakers dropping to the pavement.  I want to be able to ride west without maps and banana peels and half-empty water bottles bumping my ankles.  I want Banjo Man to have a place to lie down in the back so he can take afternoon naps and I can drive and listen to talk radio and eat potato chips and drink bad-for-me diet Coke in total isolation.

[It is always better to indulge one’s strange habits in private, rather than subjecting your spouse to them, which is why Banjo Man eats sardines in his workshop.]

And when I get to where I’m going, when I’m hauling laundry, groceries, garbage and band equipment, I want to be able to do it all at the same time.   I think.  Three out of four, anyway.

At first Banjo Man thought he wanted something with great gas mileage, something small like the Subaru Impreza.  I sat in one.  He sat in a Honda Fit.  Hmmm…..great cars but maybe not for 3000 miles in 6 days?  We want to stay married for a while longer so we can someday pool our Social Security checks and go to the early bird specials at Applebee’s.

Neither of us really want to spend the money on something brand new.   But the Mazda5 mini-mini-van is/was tempting.

We succumbed–for a couple of days– to our former dumber-than-grass car-shopping days when we were always optimistic about buying something used.  Really used.  I had visions of a Mazda MPV minivan (Will has a high-mileage MPV in Texas for driving 4 miles a day to work), one with low miles and lots of room, but the “low miles” feature is hard to find, especially when the vans stopped being made in 2006.

So for the first time in a year we are going together to a car dealer tonight.  So far we’ve made our little research trips separately, which is how we’ve stayed married for 40+ years.

[It is always better to annoy the car salesman than your spouse, though it doesn’t often happen that way.]

Banjo Man is eying used Toyota Ravs.  I like those, too.  I’d love to have 4WD.  And I like sitting up high (which is why I love my truck).  My if-I-won-the-lottery car would be a fancy Subaru Outback with heated seats.  I also drooled over the new Mazda CV (CX?) 5, but the reviews said it’s not so good on steep hills.  And if you’ve ever driven down/up our summer driveway, you know the definition of “steep hill.”

btw, this new Mazda has something called “hill assist”, which I can’t wait to ask the salesman about.  I picture a Sumo wrestler popping out of the cargo area and pushing the car up the slope.

“Hey, Mr. Ito?  We’re heading up the mountain for band practice.  You have enough water back there?”

Then again, depending on how our shopping trip goes tonight, we might end up this way again.

As long as we get to where we’re going, we’re gonna be happy.