June has been a month of wheels and deals. After selling our other home at the end of May, we decided to use some of the money to purchase a new car since our beloved Explorer is celebrating her twentieth birthday. We looked at all of the usual suspects - Jaguars, Rolls Royce and Bentleys - but decided after a month of test drives that a new Ford Escape was just what we needed. We now have a Ruby Red Escape Titanium (a month ago I didn’t know that was even a thing) sitting in our garage, having displaced Cindy’s canary yellow Tweety Bird, which now adorns our driveway. Modern cars have more electronics than most houses and ours comes with an owner’s manual that makes War and Peace look like an intro. We have to sit in the car and read, push buttons, make lights blink on and off - and that is just to set the radio stations!
We also have another set of wheels for Cindy’s exclusive use. It is a knee scooter which is a godsend for her mobility. Seems that our long distance runner done run the heck out of her foot and she has a stress fracture that will keep her off her feet for at least six to eight weeks. We had been using a wheeled desk chair around the house but she really couldn’t do it herself and it was not as agile as the scooter. I was pushing her but the house isn’t designed for high speed maneuvers! We are reasonably sure that Cindy had been running with this fracture for four or five days, thinking it was a spider bite causing the swelling. Finally after an ex-ray, two doctor’s visits, and an MRI it was confirmed as a stress fracture. She’ll be a hoot driving her scooter around the music camp in Seattle next week with her violin strapped to her back and her music and lunch in the scooter’s basket.
Our new car, Petit Rouge, is like an updated mini version of the Explorer, but as mentioned, with lots and lots of electronics. It has its own wi-fi network which is faster than the one we have in the house. The pretty eight-inch screen can tell us things about the car that make me blush, they are so detailed. I honestly think that two people have to be in the car to make it safe since there are so many distractions. Bells and whistles don’t begin to describe the things that are available. While we know many of the offerings are not new to modern cars, they are all new to us. We especially like the little buttons that tell the car how to arrange the seat and mirrors for each driver. We have never experienced Sirius XM radio, but I think I love it since they have channels with music from the 60’s, Frank Sinatra, BBC News, and Classical Symphonies, and they are always available wherever you travel. Rather cool. No doubt most of our dear readers have been listening to Sirius radio for years - but keep in mind that the Explorer is so old it has a cassette player! Today we are going to just sit in the car and program things like the local radio, GPS Navigation and Universal Garage Door Opener; I know how to show a gal a good time! There was a time when all you could do in a car that wasn’t moving was make out, we might do some of that too!
Best wishes to all, Cindy and William
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| Co-Pilot's Seat, very necessary! |
