“Remoted” – Day 452 (Friday)

The vacation day was busy with a lot of waiting. It started last night with the continued near-obsessive checking of Jeep websites for vehicle availability. The criteria list was on the short side – sun roof, four-wheel drive, not red or white, not costing a fortune. Easy, right?

The inventory of blue Renegades with sun roofs seems to have disappeared in the past week. The 0% Jeep financing deal of late May that came and went, then came back long enough for me to learn about it on Monday, was gone again on Thursday. A person at one dealership that I had been communicating with via text for several days suddenly disappeared without a trace. 

In preparation for visiting a dealership today, credit reports had been taken off “Freeze” status a few days ago. The Honda was cleaned, just in case. Not like dealer detailed clean, but extra everyday clean cleaned. Book value had been checked, and according to the Kelly Blue Book site, the trade value could be around $1,000 to $2,000.

Inventory at local dealers was checked and two suitable potential prospects located at one dealer. Neither was blue, but they weren’t any of the “don’t want these colors” list, either. An appointment was scheduled. I was greeted and checked in by a very nice person. 

2017 Latitude dealer photo.

The first test drive was a 2021 Renegade Latitude with sun roof in some shade of gray. It was nice. I didn’t love the color, but I also didn’t hate it. The new car technology will take getting used to. The sun roof on Renegade is basically the whole roof. It’s kind of cool. The gas tank was on empty, and I worried it would run out, but my sales guy assured me that would not happen.

Anvil? Okay. 

After that, I drove a 2017 Renegade Latitude with a half tank of gas. This one has removable sun roof panels. The front panel lifts up to vent, slides back, or totally comes off. The back seat also has a removable roof panel. 

On the second test drive, I deliberately went beyond the turn I took earlier to “see what’s up ahead.” I got sort of lost, and ended up on 495, so that was actually a more thorough test drive. Not worrying about running out of gas helped a lot.

It turned out I liked the 2017 better. Nothing was wrong with the ’21, but the ’17 just felt right. I also liked the color better. The information calls the color “Anvil,” which I am fairly certain was never a color in a Crayola box of any size. “Anvil” is grayish green. Or maybe it’s greenish gray. Maybe Wile E Coyote is involved. Whatever, I like it. There are rubber floor mats which should help with the dogs. Vacuuming dog hair out of carpet mats is not so easy. That doesn’t even consider the crazy amounts of my own hair that is always everywhere.

Then the fun began. It ended up being four hours at the dealership. Apparently, there was only one finance guy on site where there are usually two. The trade offer was very much lower than the online estimate. By 2:00 I was hungry and glazing over, still hadn’t done paperwork, but had been enjoying a lovely chat with the sales guy, who was infinitely more helpful than the guy at Honda in April. The only way Honda guy could have been less interested in providing help would have been if he stayed home.

Anyway, by 3:00, the paperwork was completed. It was kind of dizzying, but mostly because spending money stresses me out. Things still need processing at the RMV, and even though the insurance rep at the auto insurer I’m moving to told me exactly what to do on Wednesday, I totally forgot and screwed it up on Friday. Whatever. There will be a new-to-me vehicle in my driveway possibly as soon as tomorrow, and definitely on Monday.

Hours later, at home, I realize there are probably a lot of things that should have been checked out, but I still don’t know what those might be. That is where having a wing person is helpful. I got the important stuff – how to open the sun roof, location of the phone charging port and the gas door, how to change the radio stations. Upon delivery, the Bluetooth connection will be set up.

There are things I will miss that are not in the new vehicle. The first and worst will be the beloved six disc CD player. That will be hard to deal with. How am I supposed to listen to my Middle Eastern music discs while driving to belly dance class, or to Latin Church Hymns while cursing my way along 495 or 128? The absence of the right-side arm rest will also take getting used to. It was realized how much I use it during the test drives when there was none. But change is good, right? It’s certainly exciting. And stressful.