Driving Miles

Miles finally got his drivers license. His persistence paid off, he nudged us about taking drivers training which he started before his 15th birthday. He turned out to be a decent driver, a bit slower and more cautious than I thought he might be which proved to be irritating for an aggressive driver like me....but a relief for a mom longterm...what mom doesn't want their teenage son driving like an old man?
When we came back from Vero beach this year , 15 hours into the trip in Louisville Kentucky we pulled up to the hotel we reserved exhausted from driving and spending the previous day at Disney, the hotel clerk told us he had JUST given our room away....we called every hotel/motel in Louisville and everything was booked, we called every place en route for the next two hours to no avail. So I sucked it up and hit a Mcdonalds to get a large latte, but the Latte machine was broken, the second Mcdonalds was closed and the third one had just shut their coffee machine down. So after wasting another 40 minutes on a latte hunt, I had no choice but to  just kept driving home, only 7 hours to go. It was Miles who offered to drive when I pulled over at a cold sparsley snowing truck stop at 3 am. we were close to the Michigan/Indiana border and I was crying from exhaustion.

Either it was the thought that he'd been able to sleep along the way the previous 18 hours, or the mental exhaustion I was experiencing, or the fact that I didn't want to sit in my car in 30 degrees temperatures with the twins at a truck stop overnight over a few hours from home...so I decided to let a very excited and eager Miles drive. I told him to run in and buy either coffee or mountain dew, or something heavily caffeinated. So here I am in the car waiting and Miles is inside, he runs to the window with his selection for me to approve: Rootbeer. I'm like "are you kidding me?" Caffeine!!" He runs back and grabs a Gatorade and comes back for approval. I just shake my head and I realize he doesn't have a clue that the junk-food drinks Ive allowed them to drink growing up are never caffeinated. So I go in and school him on how to properly pump yourself full of caffeine in a moment like this. He ends up with two Mountain Dews and  3 hours later at 6:30 a.m. we were home. Hallelujah. Was I GLAD to see my husband, and my bed.

He saved money from working at Mulligans Hollow during the winter and saved more working at Culvers this summer. Ive never seen a kid so excited to work at a fast food restaurant. He opened up his own IRA account with Jeffs help and started putting 20% of his paycheck into retirement...the rest goes to car savings. He ended up saving $4,000. Pretty good for a minimum wage worker. He gets so excited about Culvers, the people who work there, the brand itself. He read in Forbes that Culvers was the #1 chain in the country, so he takes this exciting news into work with him and shares it with his manager...his managers response? "That's great, can you go change the trash now?" Priceless! This is a great kid.

He nudged us again to start looking for cars in July. We had one of my facebook friends, Will Nalu talk to Miles and give him the do's and don's when shopping for a used car. Super valuable information even for me! Even so, I almost jumped on buying him a beautiful jaguar the neighbor had for sale. It was in perfect shape, a 2006 with low miles and only $4,000 but everyone said run because of the ridiculous cost to repair Jags. I was on my way to the bank to buy this car when I called a mechanic who heavily enlightened me. Miles definitely smarter than me in that moment, so we passed on the car.
We ended up at Draegers lot in Spring Lake and bough at $4,500 2005 green subaru forrester with 136,000 miles. It came home and dripped fluids all over the driveway...we seem to have taken care of that now but we also found out subarus are notrious for blowing head gaskets and burning oil so we'll see. God willing, the kid gets 4 years out of this car. Maybe we should have purchased the Jaguar instead.

Our neighbor Calvin gave Miles a Trump Pence bumper sticker, Miles said people honk and swear at him all the time.....a family with kids in the car gave him the finger and a few curse words. He backs his car in when he parks and he's the guy who parks farthest away from any building...backed in....no joke, he's THAT guy. Probably not a bad idea considering he's got a political sticker on his car in the worst and most divided election season I've ever experienced in my lifetime.