Over the years, my wheels (vehicular modes of transportation) have varied, sometimes for the good and sometimes not so good. My first wheels were a bike, I am in a parade in Viking Alberta in this photo. Cowboy hat and boots were my attire of choice back in 1967 and I still like putting them on.

My first car was purchased from my Mom in 1972, a 1967 Rambler American 440 station wagon, for 800 bucks. It was a nice car that I drove for quite a few years. I drove it to Mexico in 1975; when I pulled into gas stations, I would tell the attendant to check the gas and fill it up with oil. That was back when attendants filled the gas, checked the oil and washed the windows. I used about 20 cans of oil to get there and back. It left a trail of blue smoke behind, leading to police closely following us as we slowly cruised through the posh part of Beverly Hills. I didn’t bother with the bus tour of celebrity homes; I just glanced casually at some of them from the comfort of my car. I should have fixed the engine in the States; it was less expensive than Alberta’s, but we wanted to ensure I had enough money to get us home.

I had done some custom work on the Rambler. The first thing was a paint job. I had an accident that caved in the driver’s door, but it was hard to match the faded original paint, so I painted the whole car Cadillac Green with a white pinstripe down each side. I had custom rearview mirrors, which got painted with the car. Fat rear tires gave it an aggressive stance. Unfortunately, I had hit a curb, and the right rear was wobbly, leading to some people driving up beside me and telling me my tire was going flat.
Another thing that I would have fixed with a bit more coin. We had left our good-paying jobs with some cash in hand; I think it was about three grand between us. In hindsight, it was foolish to leave the jobs because they were easy money, working in the open pit mine in the Crowsnest Pass. My respiratory doctor tells me that working there probably contributed to my lung condition in later life, along with smoking a pack a day until I quit smoking about 35 years back; it was harder to quit smoking than any other addition in my experience. Back to the Rambler, I took out the front bench seat and put in high back fibreglass seats that never got installed correctly, which made the car a bit embarrassing to take a date in. I rented a car to go on a date once.

The Rambler was getting harder to keep together, so 1977, I sold it for $200 and bought a 1958 Pontiac Sky Chief or Chieftain. The photo above is not my car, it looked similar and the colour is close to what I had. That was a sweet car to drive. I can remember driving it to my sister’s grad party in a farmer’s field; the cops had a check stop but didn’t stop me for some reason. It had its flaws, though. The guy I bought it from had swapped the stock three on the tree for four on the floor. It had a slight problem; he had installed it with the shift backwards, so the first gear was where the fourth should have been, etc. It was otherwise stock and a nice clean car without rust, and the engine ran clean. It was heavy, so it took a block to get it up to the speed limit and then another block to stop. That is an exaggeration, but you get the picture. That car slipped away from me due to my addiction to alcohol and stupidity. I had been driving a company truck on a survey crew, but I quit the job about the time I lost the Pontiac, so I was walking or bumming rides for a spell.

Eventually, I ended up living in Red Deer and buying a mid-70s Chevy 4X4. I don’t have a photo of the truck but it would have been similar to the one in the photo above. It was a good drive for surveying, but not so good impaired. I sold it to a farm kid who put a downpayment on it so he could sell a calf and pay the total price, which he did. I am trying to remember how much I paid for it or how much I sold it for. Nope, I don’t know.

With no driver’s license, I rode a bicycle for a year, and at the end of the year, I bought a 1969 Mercury Montego, which turned out to be a money pit. Once again, I don’t have a photo of the actual car that I owned but it would have been similar to the one above. I had the engine rebuilt, bored, stroked and souped up to get more horsepower out of the little 302 in it. I put on a medium-rise manifold with a Holley 750 double pumper on top of the rebuilt engine and added a Holley exhaust system through Chrome Side Exhaust muffler pipes. It had a nice rumble. I put fat tires on the back and traction bars to hold the rear end down; that was wishful thinking. The little 302 gave me good short bursts of power but no high end. I could beat almost anything off the lights, but it had a top end of 75 mph, terrible on the highway. I was red-lining the poor little engine to drive any distance on a Highway, so it became a street car only. It started falling apart, so in 1984, I sold the Merc to a guy who would part it out, and with the money in my pocket, I moved to Edmonton in my Dad’s 1975 Ford 300. What a piece of shit; I drove it for a very short spell and then gave it for free to my cousin Ken; he is handy with tools and cars. Then I got Dad’s 4X4.

The 4X4 was a Dodge Power Wagon that was rather unique. Dad had purchased a 1975 Dodge from a guy who had driven it off the dealer’s lot and, a week later, ran into a train with it while driving impaired. The truck’s shell was totalled, but the drive train was still new, so Dad and his friend Ken stripped the truck down, took out all the salvageable parts and chucked the rest out. Dad then bought an older Dodge that the guy had blown the engine out of, but the body was more or less intact. It was in rough shape but intact. It was about to get rougher as our hunting wagon; we drove it off-road plenty of times, and it was scratched and dented. Dad and Ken patched all the parts with the occasional trip to the local auto salvage yard and dubbed it the Johnny Cash special 75,76,77,78,79 Dodge Power Wagon.

They put a custom gas tank under the tool chest that rested on the edges of the box so we could drive for a week without having to gas up. Unfortunately, they forgot to flush the tank, so we replaced fuel pumps daily as the steel shards came through. They also built a heavy-duty bumper on the front that held a winch that I contributed to the build, and they put an equally heavy-duty bumper on the back; I wish we had put a second winch on the back. It was great in the bush and OK for around town, but not a highway driver; it had a nasty shimmy at highway speeds. It also had a terrible blind spot on the passenger side beside the door.

In the photos below we are stuck. The trees didn’t have enough roots to hold them in place and with no winch on the back we were stuck. We slept overnight in the muskeg and in the morning Dad walked out to the road and got a guy with a Ford 4X4 to come and pull us out backwards. He had to winch 3 times to get to where we were stuck.

In 1985, I started working with Coordinate Surveys, which had an office three blocks from where I lived, so I gave the truck back to Dad and walked to work. They let me drive their company vehicles as I moved up the ladder to party chief. About this time, I bought a 1949 Dodge Jeep 4X4 from a vehicle scrap yard for $200; I sold it a few months later at a net profit to a guy from Red Deer who planned to restore it. I often wonder if he ever did. It had most of the original parts.

Fast forward to 1992, I got married, and shortly after that, we bought a 1994 Dodge Spirit. I don’t have a photo of it but it looked like this stock photo. It was Valerie’s wheels until 2001 when Valerie hit some black ice on the Whitemud Freeway, and the car got totalled. We used the insurance money to buy an early 00s Mazda van. It was the top end of whatever year it came out and had all the bells and whistles, including air conditioning and heat to the van’s back seat. That was also its undoing; the rear heat/air conditioner failed, and fixing it would cost somewhere above $3000.

We used the Mazda as a trade-in for a brand-new 2008 Dodge Caravan, stock photo on the right. We drove that van to Miami and back in 2009, 16,000km. We call it our “Epic Road Trip.” Valerie continued using the van, and I drove a 1995 Ford Ranger. A stock photo again, in fact just assume they are all stock. Note to self and others, take photos of your cars and trucks.

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It had a V-6 engine and a four-speed manual transmission, and it was a fun little vehicle. Fun until the transmission blew out halfway to Red Deer on Highway 2. It would cost about $3000 to fix it, more than the truck was worth, so we sold it for a couple of bucks. I bought a Kia Sportage that got me around that winter. Next up was one of my favourite rides from all my vehicles: a 1995 Nissan Pathfinder.

It was a real workhorse and plowed through snow up to the bumper; yes, I tested that out. I drove that till 2010 when the transmission died on it; I was ready to cry; I loved that SUV. It had a great custom stereo, oversized rubber and a clean interior. Unfortunately, it was rusting severely, a weak spot for all Pathfinders of that era, and things started falling apart. We had a choice: either keep pouring money into the Pathfinder or take that money and buy a new vehicle.

I had been looking at new vehicles and liked the latest Kia vehicles’ looks and the favourable reviews they were getting. We ended up buying a his-and-hers set of 2010 Kias.

Valerie got a base-model Rondo, and I bought a top-of-the-line Kia Forte Koup SX. As of today, we are still driving those two vehicles. Being retired, I don’t go out much in the Forte, but we drive the Rondo all over the place. It’s a dependable and fun little SUV.

With the hip replacement, I got a new set of wheels: a 2024 Stella Rollator. Along with the Forte, it will probably be my last set of wheels. If I ever won the lottery, I would buy another ’58 Pontiac in the same colour as the one I had owned and a 1995 Pathfinder, preferably rust free.
So there we have it, all my rides over the years.