Cars

 I have to buy a car.  I hate shopping for cars, but my little Chevy Equinox that I love has bitten the dust. But it’s 15 years old with 249,000 miles so I can’t complain.  

I sold vehicles, big trucks, for 30-plus years so you’d think I would be a good trader.  I could wheel and deal with the best of them on a truck, but I’m probably the world’s worst car trader! Give me a Mack truck any day over a sedan or an SUV! And pickups are the worst!  

For the past few years, I’ve driven and ridden almost exclusively in SUV’s.  No reason, other than most vehicles today are SUV’s. Recently, though, I’ve ridden in, and driven a couple of sedans. I hated them! I felt like I was falling down into the car and then had to climb out!  A friend of my father stopped by one day to show Daddy his new Toyota Highlander. It was very nice and Daddy asked how he picked that particular vehicle.  He says he went from dealer to dealer looking at vehicles. He got in and out of each one.  He paid no attention to price. He picked the Highlander because he could slide in and out easiest of any he tried!  I laughed then, but I’m not laughing now!

These days car shopping is different. I haven’t been to a single dealership. I have looked at hundreds of cars without leaving my house.  I’ve been to Car Gurus, Autotrader, Cars.com, CARFAX, KBB. All the car sale websites. I have narrowed my search to 3. Two are Nissan Pathfinders and one is a Hyundai Tucson. Not new, but new to me.  The Hyundai and one Pathfinder are at a dealership in New Orleans.  The other is on the Mississippi coast.  So tomorrow, my sister and I are heading south.  It’s such a hardship having to go to New Orleans!  NOT!!!  We’re going to NOLA first because they have two I’m interested in, and possibly more.  If that doesn’t work out, we’ll jump over to Biloxi. It’s only an hour away. 

Wish me luck!  

Edited to add:  The NOLA trip was a total bust.  They tried to pull the old “bait and switch” on me. The two cars I went specifically to look at, they somehow “couldn’t locate them” and tried to pawn some piece of junk off on me.  I told them thanks and left.  Didn’t even go to look at the other one. By this time I was thoroughly disgusted and just wanted to go home.  I did stop and get a king cake and two loaves of good New Orleans French bread!  And found some really nice shrimp too.  So the shrimp po-boy I had at home almost made up for the fiasco of a trip!  

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