Year: 2025

Sport, Off-Road, Touring

One Month Gone Edition of SORT
As of Monday, February 3, 2025 at 7:00 PM pacific time:

Sport Off-Road Touring
1972 Datsun 510 1994 Toyota Land Cruiser 2004 Volvo V70
I so wanted one of these, but all I could afford on an E3’s salary was a B210. For your off-roading adventures it’s a Jeep or one of these. The Everyday Driver guys swear Volvo seats are the best in the biz.

Here is what last week’s cars sold for, or bid to (if the reserve was not met):
Sport: 1960 Cadillac Series 62 Sold for USD $71,000 on 1/30/25
Off-Road: 2016 Cadillac Escalade Sold for USD $29,000 on 1/30/25
Touring: 1984 Cadillac Fleetwood Bid to USD $9,300 on 1/28/25

Can I Call It A Vacation?

I’ve now been home now for a little for a little over forty hours and I’m already locked into a full home stop mode.

This means that content output here will be back to just sporadic. Which is a shame, because I looked back and the last time I missed a day posting here was December 27th of last year, or thirty-seven days ago. Tomorrow’s SORT post will make it a little under 40 days of posts in a row. Haven’t seen those kind of numbers in quite a while, maybe a dozen years ago?

As to the title of this post, on this last trip, I didn’t know how to tag it. When were were actually driving from point A to B, I used “Road Trip”. When were stationary somewhere, I was tagging them “Vacation.”

So, phycology majors, homework for next week is a 2-page essay on, “If you’re retired, isn’t everyday a vacation?”

The Proposal

Time for one of my patented longwinded intros leading to a small bit of actual content. Sally, of Santa Fe fame, and I have known each other 42 years. So, when she asked me if I wanted to come down, visit Santa Fe a bit, then road trip together to go to her mother’s 98th birthday festivities, I jumped at the chance.

She was Donna’s friend from elementary school onward and the two families belonged to the same church. When I got out of the Navy in 1983, we moved back to Donna’s home town of New Orleans. The 2 girls connected again, Sally had married, so the four of us naturally became a group. Sally and her husband bought the house 2 doors away. Donna and I babysat the daughter Claire and then a couple years later, son Stuart.

For various reasons we moved up to New Jersey for work in 1987. The Lewis clan also moved north to Lexington, Virginia shortly after. We visited several times a year first from Jersey and later from Aiken. In the early two thousands Sally’s husband proclaimed he was in love with someone else and wanted out. Claire was already in college and Stuart was a Junior or Senior in high school. After his graduation Sally joined the State Department. Whenever she was back in the states for language training or something, Donna and I would get to DC to hang for a couple days. Anyway, we go way back.

With just Sally and me, we get along sort of like an old married couple without the sex. Our senses of humor are similar, we would be in a store somewhere and we would cut up with each other in the checkout line. We “argued” who’s turn it was to fill up the car up with gas. “We’ll always have Paris.” A plan was concocted. There was a get together on Saturday the 18th with the whole family at a place downtown Hammond called Tommy’s on Thomas. A local pizza joint/night time entertainment place that is where Stuart met his wife and where they go every year on their anniversary. This would be the most perfect place for this, I was going to pretend to ask her to marry me. I wrote a script. I practiced kneeling.

We thought for sure that Adele and Stuart’s wife Cristina would be flummoxed, Stuart’s two small kids wouldn’t know what was going on. We thought Sally’s kids, Stuart and Claire, would not know what to say or their sense of humor might kick in immediately and call bullshit on Sally and me. At the last minute, because of a miscommunication, Adel and Claire couldn’t make it, so we decided not to do it, because those were 2 of the 3 we thought would get the biggest kick out of the stunt.

Scene: Restaurant Interior

Brian
(stands)
"As we knew the end was getting nearer, I asked Donna if she would be okay with this, and she smiled and said of course."
(slight pause)
"So, Sally, these last 2 weeks have been the happiest that I’ve been since last September.
(he kneels)
It would be great if we could grow old, older, together. Will you marry me?

Possible Responses:
Sally
1. Yes, I thought you’d never ask.
2. Stunned silence.
3. What?
4. I hope you didn’t buy a ring already?

Brian
1. You’ve made me a very happy man.
2. Stunned silence.
3. I feel so embarrassed.
4. I may be an old fool, but I’m not stupid.

Happy New Month Eve

I am typing this at 30,000 feet above sea level

And that is when I realized – No Free Wi-Fi on Alaska Air. No Wi-Fi, that meant I couldn’t save it. The only reason that I do know what I typed is because I copied and pasted it into a Word document.

The flight was delayed a half hour and by the time I picked my luggage off the conveyor belt and summoned a Uber, another 30 minutes went by. Back home, I unpacked most every thing, showered and I fell into bed, time, midnight. Only 11 back in Santa Fe where my body clock was, but that didn’t hinder the start of shut-eye any.

For those of you follow #airlinefood online, here is a Cuban Mojo Chicken Rice Bowl.

The More You Drive It… The Less You Like It

We spent the morning test driving a new or different mid-size SUV to replace the 2-year-old Hyundai Tucson she bought back in June of 2023. While the Tucson is a great example of the class of vehicle that is the go-to for many people it is just not a standout. And Sally has come to not like it so much and has come to coin today’s title as her mantra for the car. And after driving it these past few weeks I have to agree with her on that sentiment.

And I feel a little responsible for her owning such a meh car, because I steered to Hyundai in the first place because of my good feelings for the 2010 Hyundai Sonata Donna and I owned from 2010 to 2016.

Like last time we began with the Subaru Forester and once again it impressed and unlike last time we got a salesman that was personable and helpful. Had we got him last time she might be driving a Forester right now, but who knows, maybe after 2 years she might have the same sentiment about the Subaru.

We skipped the next-door neighbor Honda dealership because in 2023 it didn’t impress. Trying to redeem my previous car advice misadventure, I steered her towards the Mazda dealer and a CX-5. We were greeted by a salesman whose name was Brian, so I knew we were in luck. Looking online prior to coming, I had eyed a dark blue S Premium, so Brian pulled up for us. I drove first and this would be my choice, even with the slightly noisier engine than the Subaru. Half way around our loop we swapped drivers and Sally took over. This car had a lot more amenities than the similar Premium Forester. The heated steering wheel in the CX-5 was almost enough to sell the car to her. Almost.

We had mentioned that we were going to go test drive a Toyota RAV4, but our ever intrepid salesman mentioned he could save us a trip if we wanted to test drive a used one that he had on the lot. What the heck, why not. It was a color, red, so that as good, but it was the base model, so forget heated steering wheel, it didn’t even have heated seats. I drove the whole loop and Sally judged from the passenger seat. Her conclusion was that she liked the feeling of heft compared to the Mazda and the current Hyundai, but the price of a two-year-old RAV4 didn’t make sense as far as a road trip car that lacked refinement.

Once again, our ‘johnny on the spot’ Brian said he had an S Premium used that might work as it was pretty much the same car as the new one (the only thing that was missing was the HUD.) Sally once again just rode shotgun on the loop. And once again, I liked it better than her. And because she’s buying it, I think there won’t be a Mazda CX-5 in her garage.

After driving around all morning we opted to head home and get lunch before trying out any more cars. After a quick lunch we both at each other and said, almost in unison, “No more test drives today.”

The Subaru and Toyota felt the best to her because of the smoother shifting and feel of weightiness, the Mazdas fell behind because of the lighter feel, similar to the Hyundai, and the physical shifting gear feeling. Today is a short day because I’m flying out this afternoon, we have tabled any other car test driving until I return in April. I think we may need to test the Honda CRV again because it an all-new model since the 2023 and also test the Nissan Rouge that we skipped last time because both these vehicles have a CVT transmission which will hide that shift feel of the Mazda.

Deja Vu All Over Again Again

Didn’t we just go through this? I thought we left snow behind in Louisiana, today while at the gym it started snowing, by the time we got back to Casa de Sally it had started to stick. Snow here in Santa Fe is more of a regular event than in Louisiana and the 1″ or so that fell here is a no big thing.

Later on in the afternoon I said, “I’m going to get an aspirin, my back feels a little tight. Probably from using the rowing machine.” Her response was, “Why don’t you try and stretch it out?” And probably for the second or third time I’ve said to her in the last three and a half weeks, “I don’t believe in it, Have you ever seen a lion stretch before taking down a gazelle?” I figure it was probably time to let her knew what I was referencing:

This led me down the Zombieland memory lane, as I remember being pretty fixated on the movie back when it first came on DVD. One post that was unearthed references the movie this way; “All and all, it would have been preferable to have watched Zombieland than Easy A, but Donna couldn’t sit through the gory parts of MNFMTMWHS.”

What that acronym means is lost to history, because I used to have a plugin for this blog that would show you the meaning of what those letters were, but it was never updated to work on newer versions WordPress. My best guess as to what the first 5 letters are is My New Favorite Movie That. What the MWHS part is, no clue.

Deja Vu All Over Again

Yesterday afternoon when we arrived back at Case de Sally the house was usually cold. Didn’t we just go through this?

Turns out the radiant floor heating was not working. At least Sally has several mini-splits and some small portable heaters to keep us only slightly chillier than normal. What is weird is that there is one boiler for both the floor heat and the on demand hot water, that hot water is plentiful and quick to the faucets. There is a call into a plumber to see what the issues is but, this isn’t an emergency, so it might be a while before the floor radiant heating gets back on line.

While it is chilly inside, outside it made it into the 40’s, but the plentiful sun made it feel warmer. I spent some quality time outside replacing her ugly typical dog house door shaped mailbox with a large square lockable one that will swallow several days’ worth of mail and keep her Smith’s coupons from disappearing.

In the afternoon we headed to the gym to try and work off the excess calories consumed on King Cakes while in Louisiana. We probably didn’t make a dent on the calorie front, but it sure felt good after three weeks of sitting on couches or car seats.