For the last three years, we've been driving around town in an '06 Escape.  I love my girl -- yes, she's a girl.  The three of us have travelled across this vast country of ours and she's been my companion up and down the crazy GTA highways.  We've seen crazy (and I do mean c-r-a-z-y) traffic and horrible weather: rain, sleet, and snow.  We've survived and kept going through it all.  I kind of wish we could keep her.

Alas, we leased her and therefore we have to give her back at the start of June.  We could buy her, but the incentives out there to buy a new, shiny vehicle are much too tempting to pass over.  So, it was with a somewhat heavy heart that we began the search for something new.

We searched and searched.  We compared all similar models.  Discovered we could pay more and get less (in features) -- I'm not really interested in paying more for brand name when I have experienced no problems with this brand name.  We even contemplated switching back to a little car (4-door sedan) because, let's face it, the environment is important and gas is expensive... but in the end decided that we would stay with an Escape for a few reasons.  The first being, I really love my Escape.  Aside from the gas mileage, I have zero complaints about her.  We are a one vehicle family -- we live 3 minutes from a subway stop and N can easily get to work via transit so even though we are staying with a bit of a gas guzzler we quasi justify it by saying that we have already "trimmed some of the fat" so to speak by not each driving a vehicle. I love having lots of cargo space and I fill it full of crap regularly.  I also think having an SUV provides for a much more comfortable ride when we have visitors (though I did enjoy picturing Tim and Joey in the back of some tiny compact sedan when we head to Montreal / Quebec City this summer).  I also have had no trouble with icy conditions since moving to a vehicle with AWD and contrary to what some prairie-folk may believe, we DO get our fair share of crappy road conditions out here throughout the winter.

The new 2009 models are much more "manly".  This one is definitely a boy... but a boy that will keep my tush warm in winter and probably in the summer too (-- not sure I will enjoy having leather seats the first time I burn my ass!)  Being the nerd I am, I'm most excited about the Sync feature that will allow me to use my cell phone hands free and to "voice activate" song choices from my ipod or even a USB flash drive.

Here's what he will look like:

Picking him up later in the month!

I'll end with this... while negotiating our deal we sat and sat for hours -- literally HOURS!  While we were slowly drifting into a stupifed state, N noticed this in the brochure:

We laughed and laughed and laughed....