Peter and I returned to Austin just before our blogiversary (the 19th) and have been doing nothing but playing catch up ever since. Each day I feel like I accomplish a million things, then I look down at my to do list and I see a million more. I guess this means I’m an adult. Hopefully, it just means I’m busy.
The drive home from Chicago is one that we’ve done before (Can you believe that we bought our car exactly a year ago and have since put more than 20,000 miles on it?!), but this time Peter and I were both swearing that we will never do it again. A late night flight from New York to Chicago the night before we left added a lot of exhaustion onto the trip. Then, on the second day of driving we got a a flat tire. It was a horrible experience, but we learned a lot from it.
We pulled past the Texas border, cheering because we knew we would be home soon–when all of a sudden our tire pressure light came on. After inflating the tires and then watching the light come back on, we suspected we had hit something. Sure enough a huge nail was lodged into our back tire. Peter wanted to drive the rest of the way of the way home, but I knew it would be a better idea for us to stop at the Honda dealership and get a replacement. Luckily, it was the middle of the day and we were sure we had all the time in the world. Only, when we got to the Honda Dealership the parts guys were telling us they didn’t have a tire that would fit our car. “Okay, no problem,” we thought, “we’ll just head over to the Discount Tire.” Before this trip I thought a tire was a tire and you could get them anywhere, but apparently our 2009 Honda Fit has a very rare sized tire and after spending hours searching for one, we were desperate and didn’t know what to do. We also learned that you’re only supposed to drive 60 miles on a spare, so Peter’s original idea to drive home was out of the picture. We were pulled over at a gas station using the GPS and my iphone to search for places that might have a replacement tire. Out of ideas, we went to Target and Peter bought a bottle of green goo called Slime that was supposed to fix our tire.
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Right as he started getting out the original tire, it started pouring. The dogs and I stayed huddled in the car while Peter pulled out everything that was packed on top of the tire storage area. (I think he packed and unpacked the car 20 times that day.) The rain only added to his frustration and after a very long twenty minutes he knew the tire was destroyed beyond repair. We were out of options and somehow the afternoon had vanished and it was already 6:50 PM. We knew we weren’t going to make it home that day, so we called one of our fabulous friends and she and her boyfriend graciously let us stay at her house. In the next ten minutes we called every dealership in town and eventually located one that had a tire that could work.
The next day we arrived at the dealership, only to discover that the Slime had ruined the computer system in our car that measures the tire pressure, so it had to be replaced. A few hours later, we were finally on the road.
If and when we have to take another long journey, Peter and I will be buying another full tire before we go. Here are a few takeaways from our experience:
1.) Find out if you have a rare tire size before you go on a long car journey. If so, prepare accordingly.
2.) Don’t drive more than 60 miles on a spare.
3.) Slime destroyed the sensors in our car, use caution when using a product like this if you have pressure sensors in your tires. (It also voids the warranty on your tires, if you have one.)
4.) Good friends are hard to come by, but Peter and I are so lucky that we have some who will drop everything, go to dinner with us and drink wine and watch a movie, even on a work night. Thanks again, Caroline and Nick 
OK, so that might be a little bit dramatic but this weekend when the unthinkable happened I definitely thanked our lucky stars (i.e., my mother who planned for the worst) that we have AAA. What happened? Our brand new Fit wouldn’t start in the Lowe’s parking lot. Of course this happened on the one day that I forgot to charge my phone so it had one tiny little bar of battery and as for Peter’s phone, Peter might as well not even own a phone. I called my mom asking what to do and she said, “Call AAA!!” As much as we love Lowe’s, sitting in the parking lot was one of the last ways that either of us wanted to spend our Sunday afternoon.
I called AAA while chanting in my head to my phone, “Please don’t die! Please don’t die!” Only thirty minutes later we were up and running. AAA told us that our poor Fit had a faulty battery so the next morning we had to have him towed to the dealership. It was a huge pain but luckily AAA was there to facilitate the process for us. Our battery was replaced and since the car is still under warranty we never had to open our wallets. I know we would’ve survived without AAA but their kind employees made the experience a lot more tolerable–the tow truck even drove us to the dealership.
If you don’t have AAA, I highly recommend them. The price per year is very affordable and the membership comes with miscellaneous perks like discounts on hotel accommodations, rental cars, and restaurants!
You’ll be happy to know that our Fit is feeling much better now. I hope he doesn’t get sick again soon! Have you ever been saved by AAA?
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Since we bought our fabulous Fit many of our friends are asking us how we even began looking for a car. The process has such a negative stigma that it’s understandable for people to be afraid to jump right in. Peter and I started by really evaluating our priorities. He and I have two Pomeranians who take up a lot of space. Since Peter and I are constantly driving them to and from my mother’s (she has a larger yard and watches them every time we have to leave town without them) we needed a car large enough to fit their giant cage. We looked into various types of SUVs but inevitably wanted something with better gas mileage. He and I spent a few hours on a Sunday walking around the closed car dealerships and reading the statistics posted on the window of each car. It was so nice to be there on a Sunday because since the state law requires all car dealerships to close for the day, we weren’t hassled by a million sales people.
The next day after collecting some information we headed back to the dealerships and spent some time sitting in the cars. Peter is pretty tall and quickly realized that he didn’t fit well in most of our top choices. The whole thing was unbelievably discouraging because we were afraid that his long legs would cause us to spend an extra 10K on a more spacious car. We returned to the drawing board and spent hours pouring over various types of consumer reports—some of which are free and available to anyone online and others we had access to through our local library.
Once we had some other leads we visited the dealerships and fell in love with the Fit. The first dealership was no longer doing the Cash for Clunkers and told us that no one else was either (don’t believe anything sales people tell you). The second told us that we could only get a purple one or an orange one because everything else was sold out everywhere and a dealer transfer was impossible unless we wanted to upgrade to the top of the line model—shady. I never thought that I was picky about car colors but when faced with the two equally unappealing choices, I suddenly found myself praying for a normal color.
Somewhat discouraged, I made a list of every Honda dealership that we could visit in our state. My mother and Peter split them up between the two of them and began to look for any dealership that had the model that we wanted in any normal color. The first dealership we called had the car and matched the price that we were offered at the other dealerships. When we arrived at the dealership they told us that the promotion had ended the night before and tried to convince us to just trade in our car. In the end we found a dealership that had the right color and honored the cash for clunkers but it took a lot of walking away. When I began the process a friend told me that no matter what the entire time I was going to feel like I was getting scammed. He said no matter what you do just buy exactly what you want otherwise you’ll hate the car every time you pay a payment. His advice didn’t really sink in until I was considering the purple Fit. I didn’t want it so why would I pay thousands of dollars for it? We just got our first payment today and we still love the car. I guess my best advice is if you’re in the market for a new car do a lot of research just be prepared to walk away.
My mother came to visit last weekend and told us that she thought it would be for the best if Peter and I utilized the CARS Program to buy a new car. Our sole car was ten years old and had 160K miles on it. Nothing was actually wrong with it but from time to time we’d hear mysterious clunking sounds that alluded to the fact that the car would not last forever. No one would ever offer us $4500 for the car again so–we bought a car! I can’t believe it! This is my first genuinely new car. The entire process took over six hours! We were lucky enough to get right in with someone in the dealership but the paperwork was insane. I guess that’s what happens when you do anything with the government.
We opted for a 2009 Honda Fit Sport. They got amazing safety ratings, great gas mileage, and everyone loved them in the consumer reports. So far the car is great. We loved our salesperson (after dealing with a million shady dealers at every other dealership–other Honda dealerships included.) I can’t believe what great visibility it has in comparison to Peter’s old Camry. Here is a picture of our new darling sitting in our garage. Take note of all of the gigantic windows! Fit is go!
