Sure, I'm a working guy with a good job and benefits, but with rising utility costs, a slight dip in the economy and a mortgage, money for a newer car is way down there on the list.

Sometimes I wish I lived in a city like Boston or New York where I didn't need a car and I could get around on reliable mass transportation. Sometimes I wish I lived in downtown Homer and could walk or ride my bike to work, and had a company car to borrow to dash out to those breaking news stories.

Sometimes I wish I had a jet pack, too, like the science fiction magazines I read in the 1970s promised me.

As it works out, I live six miles out of town, a reasonable commute, except that I also live in snow country, where a few times a winter my driveway drifts in. If I don't park my truck at the end of the driveway the night before, I'm pretty much stuck. Long ago I became a convert to that essential Alaska vehicle, a four-wheel-drive car with studded tires.

What I've wound up with is a 1986 Toyota pickup with 153,000 miles and a truck bed that's rusting into oblivion. My radio went out a few months after Sept. 11. My gas cap door is held in place by nylon rope. I lost the back bumper when I drove over the speed bump at the dump. If I drive too fast down a hill, the truck backfires. I'd try to drive my truck into the ground, but as evidenced by the hundreds of other vintage Toyotas I see around town, you'd need a .357-magnum handgun to kill the engine.

My wife, Jenny, and I looked at the family budget back during the Cash for Clunkers deal and figured we might be able to afford something like a Scion or Yaris if we got the right deal. Alas, the cut off for a clunker was 18 mpg or worse, and the official EPA mileage for my truck is 19 mpg. I wish the EPA would tell my truck that, since it hasn't seen 19 mpg since the Clinton administration.

Ever since I bought a Cimatti moped right out of college, I've been searching for the perfect motorized transportation. A moped worked fine for Florida, except for the half-hour commute to go 10 miles and the inherent risk riding among tourists who see no harm in backing up at intersections, even when you're pounding on their car trunk.

When I first moved to Anchorage I got around fine for a year using the People Mover. I joked to my mom that I had an $85,000 limo driven by my own personal driver. After my dad died I used part of my inheritance to buy my first truck, a yellow 1979 Mazda two-wheel drive pickup. You can get around the Anchorage Hillside just dandy in a two-wheel drive truck if you fill the bed with logs and chain up. I've been driving four-wheel drive cars in the winter ever since.

My all-time favorite vehicle was our summer-only VW Westphalia Vanagon. Jenny and I never did drive the Wondervan all the way down the Alaska Highway, but we made it to Skagway and over the Top of the World Highway on one memorable trip. I got the Toyota after the Wondervan blew an engine and we sold it for the value of the body and cut our losses.

That was nine years and 60,000 miles ago.

As is the case in lots of households, my wife has the nice car, the it-can-survive-a-trip-to-Anchorage road car -- a Subaru, of course. The back two hubcaps went walkabout a while ago, and the CD player has discriminating musical tastes, but otherwise it runs fine.

As I drive into town, trying to keep the Toyota from backfiring, and feeling guilty about driving such a junker, I dream of better cars. A Porsche Cayenne looks awfully sweet. Those little Land Rovers that look like beefy Foresters would be cool.

I have a bigger dream, though. I'll enter the Homer Chamber of Commerce car raffle, win and take the $15,000 cash. I'll baby the Toyota through one more winter and spring.

Next summer, I'll head south to Florida and pick up something with really great mileage, like a slightly used Mini Cooper. Then it's off to Key West for the Hoka Hey Motorcycle Challenge. I'll tail the band of Harleys all the way home, and when the finisher drives down Baycrest Hill, I'll be there in my Mini following them to glory.

Hey, a guy can dream, right?

Meanwhile, with my permanent fund dividend coming, I'm thinking if I rip out the rusty pickup bed, slap down a home-built flatbed and get a tune-up, I might be able to make the trusty Toy last another nine years.

When my old managing editor, Joel Gay, finally sold his vintage Toyota a few years ago, his ad read, "Look local instantly." That's me. If nothing else, I have street cred. Here where cars go to die, I'm like many another Homer driver living with not what they'd love, but with what works.

Michael Armstrong can be reached at michael.armstrong.@homernews.com.