When we grow up, we must put aside our Toys.

As I pondered having two pick-ups, my new (used) massive 4X4 traveling truck and my beloved Toyota Tacoma 2000 PU with 99,900 miles on it, good for 150,000 more I was told, since I'm involuntarily retired now, I must trim costs. Two ownership windshield stickers ($40 each), two vehicle property tax bills (hundreds, remember No More Car Tax?--that didn't get done), double insurance (almost a thousand), and maintenance costs.

I called up my buddy John in AZ and offered to sell my stick-shift PU to him at a fair price. He recently got married and made the mistake of teaching his wife to drive, so now he needs a second car for himself.

The fact that the Toyota has a stick-shift, which I love, is a limiting factor in selling a vehicle because many people with operator's licenses can't drive a manual transmission. (Do you even know what I'm talking about?) All I had to do was drive to AZ to deliver it to John, 2,000 miles away, in the winter.

Hmm. The morning I was going to leave on my cross-country trip arrived, and I lolled in bed thinking about a series of Motel-6's across the country, gasoline and toll costs and whether I had enough books-on-tape to last the trip. My thoughts turned to the used-car lot a stone's throw from my back yard where I had purchased my new (used) truck a few weeks earlier... .