Wheels!

Well, by now, I’m sure that at least one of you is wondering what we’ve done about the car situation here. Okay, maybe not, but I’m going to tell you anyway.

The problem with the Accent (a.k.a. Mouse) turned out to be rooted in a failed alternator. Unfortunately, that was not related to the work done a couple of weeks ago. And, unfortunately, the cost to repair was more than the trade-in value of the car would have been, were it in good running order.

 So, we decided that repairing the Accent would be throwing good money after bad, and that it was time for a replacement vehicle. Of course, all of this had to happen while I was working in Florida, so it was up to Donna to find a suitable replacement vehicle.

We did talk on the phone a lot, and decided that we likely couldn’t afford a new car, so, we’d be looking for an off-lease or similar deal. We’d about settled on a new Kia Optima from a dealer that was going out of business. The price was excellent, but, because the dealer had canceled their franchise before they sold off all their inventory, the new car warranty would not apply. And, before we could decide whether or not that was a problem, someone else bought the car.

Finally, Donna found a nice ‘06 Hyundai Elantra that was exactly what we’d want in a car, with just about 21K miles on it. She set up an appointment to go see it, and, at the same time discovered that they had another nearly identical car with only 379 miles on it! Better yet, it was less money, and it has what is basically the new car warranty! So, we she bought it. The only drawback to the new car (it really is a new car!) is that there’s a monthly payment associated with it. We’d become pretty happy with the fact that we had no monthly car note.

You may also remember that the exhaust system fell off the van. We had that replaced yesterday, and, lo-and-behold, the “check engine soon” light is not on anymore. It will be interesting to see how long that lasts.

So, all the cars are running again, and the motorcycle kicked right over after having been sitting for over a week. Life is good. Or, something like that.