Sayonara, Stuart. You were awesome.

I shook hands with Morgan this morning. Then he drove off with our little truck, Stuart Q Wenatchee. Yep, that's really his name.*

Morgan lives in town, so we'll likely see ol' Stuart around these here parts. His girlfriend works up at Mission Ridge, too. They're good people.

Stuart and we have had some good times. From the day I found him on the side of the road going to the Mclendon's in Kent and took him home, mudders and all.

Dang, he was kind of shiny back then. Enough admiring, I told myself. There was work to do. Like haulin' stuff.

Lots of lumber, lots of pavers, lots of sand and dirt and mulch. Lots of plywood and sheetrock. He was our wheelbarrow. Umm, our self-powered wheelbarrow, not to be confused with the other wheelbarrow in that photo.

But all work and no play we knew would make for a grumpy Stuart, and a grumpy us. So we took him out to the mountains a bunch, too.

Proper amount of dirt splatter. Proper expression, Cosmo. J is back there somewhere in the jump seat. There were lots of mountain roads that kicked up lots of dirt. He became less shiny.

K liked to drive. She's a better four-wheeler than I. I only high-centered once, and the two of us (K and I) learned how good a team we make under a sort of high-stress situation. With a little ingenuity and a lot of calm, the two of us finessed Stuart back up off the rock on which he had gotten stuck. K took the wheel, reversing him back out of the creek bed I had said we could cross and parking him off to the side of the forest road.

At one point, I saw a guy at work who had a bike carrier he had built for his Tacoma. I thought it was brilliant, so I copied it. Then Stuart carried our bikes, over the mountains.

We took him climbing.

I thought the mudders were a little overkill. They sucked for gas mileage, too. So I found a set of stock wheels at the Toyota salvage yard in Buckley, Washington and swapped them out. Someone snagged the big wheels from me, excited I'm sure for their own adventures.

Ours continued, with some camping. Lots of camping, actually.

Speaking of camping, we bought a canopy and slapped some stickers on it, thinking we'd build it out so we could sleep in the back. We never did.

Scott and I added a leaf to each of the rear shocks to level him. He had been suffering a little from the ol' Toyota sag in his old age, after all.

I put in a new stereo.

Installed a lumber rack.

Took stuff to the dump. Lots of stuff to the dump, like old lath and plaster when we tore out our bathroom and started again from studs.

When we moved, I think we took six or eight or twenty-three loads to the dump. I don't remember. That month was sort of a stressful blur. At some point, I'll write about it. Not tonight.

Always keeping a sensical work-life balance for ol' Stuart and ourselves, we also took him out in winter to play in the snow.

Then we moved, here to Wenatchee. Stuart got comfy. A little chubby. Maybe a little sad.

We didn't take him out like we used to. Not to haul stuff, not to play. There wasn't lumber, or pavers, or sand and dirt and mulch to haul. No plywood or sheetrock, either. That and we couldn't safely put a carseat in the back. Our plans changed, like they did when we realized Puyallup was no longer home. Onward and upward, I told K. So we put him up for sale last week.

It took two days. Then a day of back and forth. There's something about these old-school Toyota trucks that leads folks to wax nostalgic. Myself included. Maybe because they're a truck's truck. No bells or whistles. No ginormity to them whatsoever. Stripped down to the essence of what a truck should be, how it should feel. Like the woman from whom I bought him wanted to be reassured by me, I wanted to know his next owner would take good care of him. Appreciate the truck he is. I could tell Morgan's the guy for the job. Stuart'll be in good hands.

For us, watching him (Stuart, but I guess Morgan, too) drive away this afternoon, we turned to each other and started talking about the Sprinter van we're going to buy and convert into our family camper. Onward and upward.

* My Tercel was Oliver P Leavenworth, my Corolla was Spencer M Winthrop, and the old pickup was, yep, Stuart Q Wenatchee (all names of eastern Washington mountain towns)…