Beginning of Day 3

We're in Little Rock, Arkansas. It has finally gotten a bit colder. All the way through Florida, Alabama, and the corner of Tennessee, it was around 70 degrees, but when we arrived in Little Rock, it was in the 50s.

The trip so far has been really nice. The only upset was when I got pulled over by the Highway Patrol outside of Tallahassee, FL. There were two police cars on the right-side shoulder. One officer was busy giving someone a ticket. When we drove by, the other officer sped onto the highway and up to us with his lights flashing, so we pulled over. Office Swindle (that was actually his name!) informed me that, since 2002, there is a "Move Over" law in Florida (you have to change lanes if there is an emergency vehicle on the shoulder with flashing lights). I had some really bad excuses and forgot to say "I'm sorry, officer" and I didn't think to explain at first that we hadn't lived in Florida since 1999. He took my license and registration and went back to his patrol car. A long time passed and he came back with a clipboard in his hand. I then did my "sorry, officer" bit and explained we hadn't lived here in a long time. He said my license was registered in 2005 and then shoved the clipboard at me. At that point, there wasn't much point in trying to explain why I had that license (I had renewed my license during a visit home from England). The citation was for $136! Annoyingly, I almost did change lanes, but because the person ahead of us didn't, I thought it was OK. I certainly would have done so had I known it was a law!

Anyway, we made it to Troy, Alabama (our first stop) about an hour and a half later. Had dinner at a good little Mexican restaurant. The Hampton Inn we stayed in was really nice. Got a good night's sleep.

Day 2 went by without any problems. It was a nice drive through Alabama, across Mississippi, and through Memphis. We were on a smaller highway most of the way so there was a bit of character. Had some trouble finding a place to eat lunch because we were in a particularly undeveloped section of the country. That lost us some time.

Last night, when we finally reached the I-40 in Arkansas, it started PISSING DOWN! I don't think I have ever driven in such heavy rain. It was incredible. And a welcome rinsing of the car! It had mostly let up by the time we got close to Little Rock.

After checking in at the Holiday Inn in North Little Rock, we drove across the river to downtown Little Rock (really nice, by the way). I had read about a couple of brewpubs that were worth trying. We went to one called Boscos. The parking was a bit pricey in that area ($5), but we had a scrumptious dinner and I sampled a few of their beers.

This morning, we have a 8-9 hour tripped plotted to Amarillo, TX. I need to re-jig some of the stuff in the car so we have a bit more room and then we are going to take a quick drive through Little Rock to see what it's like in the daytime, before getting back on I-40W.

Tonight: The Big Texas Steak Ranch on Route 66 in Amarillo! Not going to try the 72 oz challenge, though!

Fixin' to leave

Kristen has just gone for a 6am run. I cheesed out on the pre- road trip exercise, though. The car is packed to the gills and we still have some more stuff to shove in there, including ourselves, so I might have to jig things around a bit.

The plan is to hit the road at 8am (knowing that it will probably be more like 9) and making it to Troy, AL by 6ish. Why Troy? No reason, really. It's just the first biggest 8-10-hours-away town on our route.

Oregon, here we come!

We've picked our route!

After some research and some advice from AAA, we have settled on our route across the country.  This one combines the relative safety (weather-wise) of the more southern routes with the interest-factor of taking a road other than the oft-travelled I-10.  We plan to do the trip in 6 days, driving 8-10 hours per day and we will leave on Wednesday, December 24th.

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We have made hotel reservations to stop over in Troy, Alabama; Little Rock, Arkansas; Amarillo, Texas; Kingman, Arizona; and Sacramento, California. Then we can hopefully make it through the pass into Oregon during daylight hours.

At this point, we do not know where we are going to go in Oregon. Kristen has yet to hear from the job she interviewed for in Salem and that's the only job lead we have at the moment. I've applied for one so far and there are a couple more I will apply for, most of them in Portland.

Possible trajectories across the country

Google's default:

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This one is interesting because we haven't really driven through any of those middle states, so it would be different scenery.  However, the weather might present a problem.  Hard to say.  Definitely depends on how quickly we need to get there.

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Less chance of snow (without taking the oft-used I-10):

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Not as direct, but still not doing the I-10 thing.  We kind of like this one.  Might be able to drive on Route 66 for part of it.

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Using I-10 going up California:

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This is the route we have usually taken when going from Florida to California.  I've driven it twice.  It goes through the widest part of Texas and, boy, is that sole-destroying.  I did put in a stop-over in Austin though, to make it more interesting.  There are some friends there we could visit.  And there's a stop-over in San Fran.  Friends there, too.  There's also people we could see in Arizona and Los Angeles, but we'd prefer to steer cleer of LA during this trip.

A stream-of-consciousness (free writing) summary of how it feels to be back -- because it's too hard to formulate this into concrete thought

Numb at first.  

Are we really staying for good?  Isn't this just a vacation?  

Warm.  Florida sunshine.  Tropical.  Food.  Unlimited icecubes.  Tumble dryer.  Amenities that we grew up with.  Thanksgiving.  Random people saying Hello.  Taco Bell.  Pollo Tropical.

Authority.  Police presence.  Immigration.  Citizenship.

Space to breathe.  Space to drive.  Opportunity.

Barack Obama.  New America.  Optimism.  Can-do attitude.  New beginning.  Rebirth.  The road ahead.  Civic duty.

Endless television.  Endless television commercials.

Relief.  All our stuff!  Driving on the right side of the road.  No cars parked in the street.  Yellow school buses.  

Going to the gym.  Suburbia.  Neighborhoods.  Yards.  Lawns.

Commerce.  Consumer freedoms.  Malls.  Giant parking lots.  Car dealerships.  

Have a nice day!

Home.

Going mobile

A couple of days ago, we starting doing a bit of research into cars.  The original plan was to rent a car to drive across the country in and then buy a car in Oregon, but a couple of things made us re-evaluate that idea.  There aren't many cars available at this time of year for a one-way rental.  And it would cost about $800-$1000, not counting the gasoline.  So we started thinking about the idea of buying a car here, which also had its hitching points.

For one, Florida has 6% sales tax (and Oregon doesn't), so that could make the car more expensive in comparison to buying one in Oregon.  However, we realized that the tax we'd pay here would probably be about as much the cost of renting a car (and that rental cost would be just money down the drain, basically).  Secondly, because we have a fair amount of crap to take with us, we would need a car that was sizable enough for that.  And this was before weighing the usual criteria for buying a car.

Speaking of which, we will most likely both have to have a car at some stage and, hopefully, strategically selected to make sure that whomever has the longest commute has the car with the best gas mileage.  If we can get away with only one car, that would be fantastic.  Not easy to arrange, but we are going to try!  Having said that, we do want to be able to do household chores and gardening which often requires some type of truck or SUV.  In that scenario, we would like to have a car and a truck.  

We started researching different types of cars, trucks, and SUVs.  The primary criteria are cost, gas mileage preferably above 20 mpg average, leather interior (for a car or SUV), all-wheel or 4-wheel drive, normal mileage, and to be honest, looks.  Because we're meticulous, list-making Virgo nerds, we made a spreadsheet with the different vehicles that fit our criteria detailing the advertised price in Florida, the Kelly Blue Book value, miles per gallon, and average cost for a similar vehicle in Oregon.  

Then we went for a drive.

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The purpose of today's expedition was to see the cars in person and possibly test drive a couple.  Just a fact-finding mission.  Not a trip to buy a car.  Vehicles we were looking out for:

- 2004-2005 Audi A4

- 2005 Volvo S60 or S40

- 2005-2006 Nissan Murano

- 2005-2006 Mercedes C280 or C240

- 2004-2007 Ford F150

- 2002-2005 Toyota Tacoma

- and others

We started off at Carmax, looking at the types of vehicles in our spreadsheet.  The MPG criterion was a very difficult one because most of the vehicles out there (in our price range) are below 20 mpg average, certainly the trucks and SUVs.  

It was also tough to decide on whether to get Kristen's car or my truck.  The car would get better gas mileage across the country and for all the running about we will need to do when we arrive, but the truck would give us much more room to haul our crap across the country and would be very helpful in the house-move(s) we would be doing.  We decided to leave it to fate to decide.  The vehicle that presented itself to us as the one would be the vehicle we would go after.

After Carmax, we drove up State Road 7 (a long road with lots of car dealerships) because there was a Volvo dealership and then an Audi dealership we wanted to check out.  On the way, we basically decided to rule out an SUV because a) we wanted a nice, safe sedan with good gas mileage as the main get-around car; and b) the "utility" vehicle should really be a truck because SUVs aren't really that great for hauling dirt, wood, etc. since they are, more often than not, to

o nice inside and don't actually have that much hauling space.  This left us to decide on getting the truck or the car.

One thing we started doing when pulling in to a dealership was that I would start the timer on my watch as soon as we got out of the car.  I would stop it when a salesman approached.  Car salespeople must have learned some manners since the last time I shopped for a car because, for the most part, it took several minutes before we were descended upon.  However, at a run-down looking Toyota dealership, it took 3 seconds.  In fact, I didn't even have a chance to start the timer!  This would end up being the start of a perfect example of the stereotypical car salesman.  We were quite bemused.

This guy was trying every trick in the book and constantly peppering us with banter and "get to know ya" questions.  I asked if they had any Toyota Tacomas.  At first, he said no but asked us to "come inside to his office".  We reluctantly agreed.  Then we sat there while he tried to convince us that we needed to buy the 2008 Toyota Tundra instead.  When he saw that we weren't biting, he said there might be a Tacoma in the back lot that just came in a couple of days before.  OK, let's go have a look.

It was a 1998.  Good-looking on the outside, but quite disgusting on the inside.  He insisted on going to get the key for it, so we waited while he take his sweet time about it.  I started it up and noticed few clouds of smoke drift by.  We tried to find out how much they were asking and he couldn't give us an answer because he needed to have his boss make the evaluation.  He talked us into driving the truck around front with him and then basically tricked me into test driving it by telling me the wrong way to the front of the lot (ooh, look... this is the exit of the dealership!).  The truck was pretty much crap.  Ran rough and was really dirty inside.  And it had about 130,000 miles on it!

When we got back to the dealership, I parked it out front and told them we had to go.  Suddenly, the manager came out and introduced himself.  At this point, someone came up behind us and said "Don't buy a car from these people.  They're cheats.  The managers are assholes.  They play good cop/bad cop" and so on.  The salespeople tried to laugh it off like "Eh?  What a nutcase, huh?"  At this point, our salesman was looking really desperate because it was clear that he couldn't reel us in.  We told him we would call in a couple of days when they had evaluate

d the truck and could give us a price.  They weren't having that!  The manager went inside right away (funny that he did the evaluation without looking at the truck) and came out a minute later saying "$4900!"  As we backed towards our car, I told him we would think it over.  Thanks for your time, etc.  We got in the car and laughed our heads off.  It felt like we were lucky to escape with our clothes on and my wallet still in my pocket.

Then we drove to the Audi dealership and had a POLAR OPPOSITE experience!

There was a 2005 Audi A4 that I had found on the internet.  We found it almost right away and had a chance to look it over before a salesman approached.  He was quite laid back and a nice guy, but we were both pretty wary at first because of the Toyota dealer.  The car looked really promising inside and out.  The sticker price was quite a bit more than what we found on the internet.  I pointed that out and he said they had lowered the price for the internet to sell the car because it had been on the lot for a little while and they were trying to make room for new stock.  Red flags would normally go up at this point (and they did) but I should add that it was a "Certified Pre-Owned" and it still had 6 months of the original warranty on it (plus the 1 year dealer warranty).  

We took it for a test drive.  And from this point, things sort of happened quite quickly.  Kristen fell in love with it and I concurred.  The price was about $7,000 below the Kelly Blue Book estimate.  It fit our criteria quite perfectly.  We had no choice.  We had to buy it.

I was able to negotiate it down by $250 (not much, but still good) and we got a good, low monthly payments financing deal with a small chunk of change paid down.  Since we weren't planning on buying anything today, we didn't have any of the pertinent information with us (insurance details, bank info, checkbook, etc.).  We got around that with a little ingenuity and due to the really awesome salesman.  That dealership is awesome!  Apparently, it's the biggest in the world.  They even have a Starbucks inside!  The service area was SPARKLING.  We might consider staying in Coral Springs just for this car dealership!  (OK, not really).

But that's how this day went!  We're car owners now.  And we're really happy with this vehicle.  No buyers remorse whatsoever.  And now we feel a bit more settled.  

It's going to be a nice drive across the country.  I might have to fight Kristen for the chance to drive for a bit!

Recovery Position

It's been almost two weeks now that we have been back in the US and we're both having trouble crystallizing our feelings about it. I've been trying to write this blog entry for about 2 hours, but I keep switching to other web pages to procrastinate. Don't get me wrong; we're really happy to be back and we are really enjoying the time off. We've been sleeping-in (a bit) and have already joined a gym. We've been doing some chores around the house and had a nice Thanksgiving. Kristen has even had a job interview (over the phone), but I guess it's still too soon to talk about it. It's still too soon to put it into words.

It's like we're in a psychic recovery position.

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Well, for now... here are some pictures from our time in Coral Springs so far.