Last couple of days have been crazy busy with Wednesday and Thursday in LA at the auto show and then Friday I sent off the Rice Robotics Club on their journey to Tahlequah, OK for the first VEX U competition of the year, and then Saturday morning (and I mean bright and early at 5:30am) I had to drive my parents to the airport for MIA flight and go to work after which fly to MIA myself…. I’m exhausted just describing it. In truth it was actually all fun (except for the early morning) and today was a long but exciting day as well.

So why Van(s) Time? Well Friday afternoon I sent off RRC (Robotics Club) on their journey and they had rented a van for the trip and packed it full of tools and robots. The clearance went from above the road to below the road it felt like. In any case they got a KIA Sedona, which is actually a pretty nice van (never though van and nice would be in the same sentence).

Trunk space of this van is limited to say the least, but then again there were 7 people with 4 robots and each had a bag, and there were toolboxes, so I think since we were able to fit all that plus 4 more people in a total of 3 cars was a success. The trunk is deep but it is not deep at all, the third row seats of the van are 12 maybe 13 inches from the back of the trunk so its tall and thin…. not great when you are trying to cram a 20x20x20 robot into it.

That was van number 1. The extent of my knowledge of this van is limited to the trunk, I only got to take a peek inside for a little but it looked really nice and cozy.

After sending them off Friday, taking my parents to the airport Saturday morning, and getting some work done I was off for Thanksgiving to Miami, meeting my friend at the airport in Houston. When we got to Miami, there was a long (and I mean a really really long) walk to the rental car place. When we finally got there I found what I was going to drive for the next 5 days in Florida: a van….

This was a 2014 Chrysler Town and Country (red, yay red) almost brand new (and for some reason all of the settings inside were in metric) Its like they knew! The van pictured here is almost exactly what we got, and the second is the actual car (sorry its was already dark by the time we got to the house on Marco Island):

First thing I noticed, because thats the only part of the car that I saw on the KIA really is that the trunk space of the Chrysler is bigger. That’s actually very interesting because American cars are known for their interior space hence having to compromise on space in the trunk. In any case the inside was standard with all of the regular things (and automatic… ugh). Testing the acceleration though proved that it actually has pretty good pickup! Feels like you are sitting on the second floor though (i guess compared to the GTI).

That’s all on the vans so far. My parents (who came earlier) got a pretty neat car though and hopefully I’ll write a short about that one! Stay tuned!