I thought when we replaced our little 2007 Jeep Liberty with a 2010 Ford Escape four years ago that we were done buying cars. We paid off the Escape last January. No more car payments, and I thought this should last me as long as I plan on being out in the working world. But a 15-year-old car is bound to start showing its age, especially with almost 185,000 miles on it.
I hate car shopping — driving around from lot to lot, looking at car after car, salespeople circling, the crazy dance of finding a lender, agreeing to a price, yada, yada. I don’t want to play that game. And we didn’t. I called a local lender we already have a couple things with and got pre-approved on the condition that we buy a 2017 or newer with 100k miles or less. Cool, we were already looking for that. They gave us a letter to give to the dealership when we find our new ride.
Dealerships kind of intimidate me. But our son dragged me into the 20th century and showed me how to do things online. I know everyone else is in the 21st century now, but I probably won’t ever progress that far.
Dave and I decided we wanted either another Jeep or another Ford and I was able to easily get the approximate value of our Escape for a trade-in. It was also easy to look up local vehicles for sale online. I filtered by year, make, model, miles, price and proximity. I was shopping like a boss and came up with eight possibilities. Oddly, the one that didn’t include a photo sounded the most promising.
Of course at that point, I went back to my old-school ways and wrote out a list of each vehicle and a schedule of which one we would see and in which order. We started with the no photo one and never went any farther. It was the best deal of them all and we were the only ones in the running for it since it really wasn’t ready to be sold yet. Our salesperson said she didn’t know how it even got on the website already.
It needed a minute for the new tires, brakes, tune-up, oil change and extensive protection package and they’d call us when it was ready. We used the time to clean up the Escape. OMG. I took three bags of stuff out before I could even get to cleaning it up — tissues and paper towels, dog blanket and leash, reusable grocery bags, umbrella and snow brush, three pairs of gloves, six pairs of sunglasses, jumper cables and even a road flare. Is that even a thing anymore?
Finally, the salesperson called and said our 2019 Jeep Cherokee Lariat was ready. Holy moly, how can this be ours? I took the afternoon off work so we wouldn’t be learning how to drive our new-to-us vehicle in the dark.
On the way up to the Big City, I thought I saw a flag on the ground. An American flag. Uh, can’t have that. We about got ourselves killed getting turned around across four lanes to go back for it. What were we going to do with it? I don’t know, but the salesperson is waiting for us so we stuck it in the backseat — and the wayback. Apparently, it’s one of the big ones the city puts up on the telephone poles. Holy Toledo, we’re going to jail for stealing a flag.
At the dealership, it wasn’t all bubblegum and fairy dust, we still had some paperwork to do and a little time cooling our heels while they put the finishing touches on our Jeep. As we waited, the weather was getting worse and worse. What had been a cool, but sunny day had turned cold and windy and it was starting to rain. When we finally got in our new ride to head for home, there was a lot of new stuff to get used to and the day has turned ugly and gray with pounding rain. We managed to get the wipers and headlights on so we could get back to our little town with our flag “hostage” chilling in the back.
I have to admit, it crossed my mind to just keep it, it was a really nice flag. But then we really would be going to jail. Instead, we headed for the American Legion post — where they thanked us profusely and planned a retirement ceremony for it. Apparently, there are lots of rules and regulations regarding the American flag and one that has touched the ground gets retired. So we didn’t steal it, we rescued it. Cool.
It’s been a slow learning process with the Jeep. Keyless push button start means you don’t need your keys in your hand to start or shut off the car, but you do still need them to get in the house. We’re also learning the rules of remote start, talking on the phone through the radio and how to set the radio stations. I can live without the sunroof the Escape had, but I really miss those heated seats.
