the beast

We spent this past weekend in Tulsa with my parents and while there we went car shopping.  Because my thrice-daily checking of craigslist and carmax and Yahoo! autos was not exhausting and discouraging enough we decided to endure car salesman.

Guys, I do not like car salesman.  This is not just because Jayme’s husband works for CarMax, but honestly, the only non-annoying car salesman are at CarMax.  We stopped by the lot in Wichita and they didn’t even hassle us.  The guy at the lot in Tulsa introduced himself and then let us look at our leisure, and that way we didn’t waste his time when we looked at the SUVs and minivans and quickly found everything to be out of our price range.

The guy at the Toyota lot was not so great.  Hubby and I were driving to the back of the lot–you know, where they keep the cheap vehicles–and the salesman CHASED US DOWN.  Oh friends, not good.  Hubby kindly got out and told him the type of vehicle and price range we were looking to stay in when he offered us a car that was 30% more.  Ummm…. Does this work on other people?  Like, they have a budget but are willing to blow it by such a big margin?  Because we are not those people but an awful lot of salesmen try it on us.

I told the story to my mom and dad and sister over lunch when Hayley said something about how the Toyota dealers are probably desperate for sales because of all the gas pedal problems.

Oh.

Yeah.

Then I forgave the over eager salesman and tried not to think about him anymore.

But what this whole post is really about is that we finally bought a vehicle.  Woohoo!   A large, older, slightly beat-up Toyota Sequoia.  But all the surface issues are not a problem for me because older + slightly dented = a TOYOTA that is ours.

I have always loved those old Toyota 4Runners and Land Cruisers.  Like, the OLD ones that are big and boxy and impressive driving down the road.  When I was checking out a cosmetology school in Hutchinson I drove through the downtown and found two old Land Cruisers parked side-by-side on the street and I determined Hutchinson must be a cool town.  Who cares about the Hepatitis A outbreaks they endured the summer before or the random explosions that destroyed homes?  They had TWO Land Cruisers.

I can be easily impressed, obviously.

Hubby likes Toyotas because his parents have a 90s model Camry that will not die.  For a long time it was the car the kids borrowed when one of our cars was having major problems.  Unable to part with such a reliable vehicle but not really needing it anymore they eventually parked that thing behind the garage so they don’t have to look at it anymore.

So now I have my own old Toyota.  Not as old as those cool 80′s models, but me likey anyway.  And if we treat The Beast well hopefully we’ll have her for many years, so many years that she’ll turn vintage like the other cool ones.  She is a Toyota, after all, and those things tend to run a while.