It has been quite a year! Started the year in the Milwaukee VA Hospital with a diagnosis of Leukemia, found out in early Jan. that I was a candidate for a bone marrow transplant. That happened April 4th at Froedtert Hospital (also in Milwaukee). Three weeks of in-patient recovery followed by 2 months of out-patient recovery which required that I stayed in the Milwaukee area. We were able to get home for a couple of weekends later on in the recovery but we weren't home for good until the 4th of July weekend. I still wasn't able to do much and had to go back weekly for tests. By fall I was finally starting to feel like myself again. We did manage to do some summer car events including the Indian Uprising at St.Charles IL and Pontiac Adventures at Wis. Dells.
When you are laying in a hospital bed you have a lot of time to think about all sorts of things, things you have done, things you haven't done and things you hope you get a chance to do. One of the things that Mary and I always talked about doing after retirement is some serious top down cruising. Well my illness pretty much put me into at least semi-retirement and Mary decided to call it quits the end of Feb.
The only problem with serious top down cruising is the Firebird. It has well over 100K on the clock, very little heat, no A/C or cruise not to mention the safety features that aren't there (Shoulder belts, air bags, ABS etc). Something newer seemed necessary with only one thing mandatory, other than being a convertible, it has to be a Pontiac. My first thought seemed logical, a last gen Firebird. However with the exception of the FireHawks I'm not really a big fan of the newer 'birds. Buying a g-6 never crossed my mind.
That pretty much left the Solstice. The problem there is the lack of storage space. We discussed it very seriously and decided that somehow we would over come that obstacle, and the search was on.
There were a few nearby but either too many miles, wrong color, auto trans, you know the drill when looking for a car. Then, a couple of weeks ago one turned up 100 miles from here that seemed perfect, 2008 GXP 5speed gray (Sly) with only 13,900. miles.
We trailered it home a week ago before the snow and cold arrived here.
Don't worry I'm not abandoning the '69! It is currently at my brother-in-law's shop for some paint touch-up and will be used probably as much as it always has been.
Here are a few pics of our new ride.