The Blue and the Gray: Shifter

"The Blue and the Gray" was one of my families favorite 15 passenger vans. The reason we called it "the Blue and Gray" was because just before we got it Ian was going through a time in school (we were home schooled) where he loved anything that had to do with the civil war. Well, the van was a 1992 Ford E350 with three large stripes (the middle stripe was gray and the other two were blue) and one day Ian said, "hey the van is just like the two sides in the civil war; it's blue and gray!" And so that is how are 1992 Ford E350 got it's name, "the Blue and the Gray."

Well, one day we were fund raising for the extra things (programs) we did in home schooling and when we went out for lunch break, something else decided to brake! As we always did we went to a fast food restaurant (I think it was Burger King this time), through the drive thru and lets just say the van didn't want to go all the way thru....
Mom went to order, put the van in park, turned off the engine (we always had to do that because we never had a van that had a completed exhaust system) and order; That went fine. It was when she was done ordering and it was time to start the engine; it started fine. Then it was time to put it into drive and.... the shifter lever went limp, in the drive thru at supper time!
I bet your thinking about now, "OH NOO!!" Yeah, we thought the same thing. But this wasn't the first time something like this happened, so we got good at figuring out what to do.
What ended up happening was the manager of Burger King came out and he was nice but really didn't know anything about cars.
So we were back to the drawing board. The whole time my mom was on the phone with my dad trying to figure out what to do. Then, thankfully, mechanics like to go through the drive thru too! So there was a guy who came through and showed us how to go under that van and put it in drive. So we drove home... but we didn't end up getting the problem fixed until like 3 months later. Yeah, it was a little nerve raking to be under a van to put it from park into drive, sometimes we would miss a notch or pass one put it into 2nd or neutral. After that you had to go back under and you didn't want to do that!
Yeah, that van was was pretty awesome!!!