Posting to (a) say hello
and an update. Everytime I check in here I realize how much I miss it, but I've allowed other things to get in the way
No progress on the 8 since my last posting. Lots of reasons, no excuses.
That said, my wife and I are now in a weighty decision process... big Army is sending me orders for Germany. Likely a 3-year tour. As I have 21 years in the Army, this will be one of the, if not THE, last assignments I have, as we plan on retiring in the 24-25 year range. We're eye-balling everything in our lives right now and analyzing what we can "shed". That includes cars. We had planned to sell my (95) BMW, sell my (94) Landcruiser and ship my wife's (02) Audi until this happened last week..
(another driver lost control of her car and crossed three lanes to cut me off, basically t-boned her at 60mph).. all in all, lucky, as no one was injured, even though her car ended up on it's roof..
so now we have three cars (BMW, 'cruiser, Jeep).... and may buy a replacement DD for wife/kids before we go (figure spring time for her), or we may hold out with what we have for now, sell them last minute, and then buy DDs in Germany upon arrival (fairly common practice for those stationed there)....
The government will pay for us to ship what we want/need to Germany and to store the rest here. That is INDEPENDENT of vehicles. I will have an authorization to ship one POV at government expense. I can contract for more, but that's out of pocket.
Obvious result of all of this: what do we do with the Jeep?
(a) sell it as is
(b) fix/finish it and sell it
(c) ship it as our one funded POV
(d) ship it in addition to our funded POV (figure 2-3k out of pocket)
(e) pay to store it here
(f) loan it to Raymond
Even if we do ship it, it's likely that it would (again) end up as a third vehicle, as it is not practical for kids, not terribly efficient, not terribly safe (think commuting on the autobahn), and I expect to lose a lot of my resources to do shade-tree mechanic time over there.
have a little bit of time to think about it, but not much... would like to commit to a course of action in the next month or so..