We had a very exciting 24+ hours last weekend in order to welcome the lovely girl above into our family. And there was more excitement than just what you'd expect in conjunction with our first totally new car purchase since 1999!
More about the extra drama later. First, about the baby!
It's a Honda Clarity, a plug-in hybrid that will allow me to do scads of errand-running and volunteering on little or no gas. (Henry just reported that since we picked it up, we've traveled almost 400 miles and used....about 3 whole gallons!)
Now, it's not like I've been bustling around town in a gas-guzzler. My little blue Prius (with which I've been through a lot, and has been played in a lot by the oldest Adorable Granddaughter) is a pure hybrid, and I usually only have to fill it up once every three or four weeks. And when I've driven it to Colorado, bathroom stops are required more often than re-fueling.But now both Henry and I can minimize emissions while gadding about town. And when I drive to Colorado this summer, it will be in a car with all kinds of new safety features, not to mention USB ports and bluetooth for listening to audiobooks and phone calls. (Although with only a 7-gallon gas tank, so gasoline stops will be more frequent.)
Unfortunately, especially for the aforementioned granddaughter who was very fond of riding up and down the driveway with Grampa in his Little Red Sportscar...
...the Honda S2000 was sacrificed to allow us to afford the Clarity. When the trade-in value of your other two cars, combined, is probably about 1/10 of the sportscar's...well, painful as it was, it just had to go:
Henry's still in mourning, although he sure likes driving the new car!
Now, about that extra drama and excitement. One of the reasons we bought the new car when we did was that the Texas' delightfully-named TERP [Texas Emissions Reduction Plan...yes, Texas does have an emissions reduction plan!] rebate program was just about to run out of money. If we wanted the $2500 back for buying an electric vehicle, we needed to do it fast.
Henry's spent inordinate amounts of time researching prices and deals at various area Honda dealers (after, of course, inordinate amounts of time spent trying to decide which of the many electric cars on offer we wanted to buy) and found the best deal in San Marcos, about 40 miles up IH35. So after work on Thursday we raced up there in the most uncomfortable highway car ever, the S2000.
All the haggling (over the trade-in value) and paperwork took a while, keeping the nice guys at San Marcos Honda in the office well after normal closing time. But although that meant that the next day we could just swoop in and pick up the new car, it also meant it was 'way past dinnertime.
Fortunately the dealer is close to the [in]famous San Marcos Outlet Center, and there are plenty of dining options nearby, many of which were still open. We opted for Zaxby's, a chicken place we've never even heard of; a chance to expand our experience of fast-food franchises. Little did we know it would provide a final fillip of excitement to our day.The kid taking our order rather sheepishly gave us full disclosure before we paid: there was a bat in the small restaurant! Yes, there was, and it started swooping around us right away, so we'd know he wasn't kidding. We were hungry enough to go ahead and order, but it was pretty creepy having to duck the bat periodically. Eventually the little guy got tired, I guess, and landed on the board showing the prices (specifically, between the Kidz Meals and the beverages; see photo on the left).
The picture shows him after his capture, which we helped to effect, offering the advice of getting some tape once the kid had slapped the to-go container over the exhausted critter. Then we were able to eat our [only mediocre, sorry] chicken in peace. Apparently there is a substantial bat colony under a nearby overpass, and so brushes with wildlife like this aren't all that uncommon, both at Zaxby's and at the Honda dealership.
Although this was the most harrowing of our car-purchase-related adventures, we weren't done. Getting up earlier the next morning than I'm used to in my retired state, we were on the road in the S2000 again, headed for San Marcos. The paperwork was done, but we still had to be indoctrinated in the many [admittedly wonderful] features of our new baby, and we wanted to get to TCEQ in Austin before the mail delivery. Just in case they received enough applications to exhaust their rebate funds.
And, of course, a trip to Austin isn't anything that Gramma and Grampa mind making, especially when we can introduce another Adorable Granddaughter to one of our vehicles...
Not to keep you in suspense, we made it to the TCEQ headquarters before the mail was delivered (not that we needed to, since, as it turned out, their money lasted almost another week), but also got to have lunch with Sally & Travis & Artemis. The folks at the agency were very nice and went over our papers to make sure everything was in order. Hopefully we'll get that check in a few weeks.
And, we got to drive home in our wonderful new car!
