baby you can drive my car / yes I'm gonna be a star

What a weekend. As you can see from the pictures below, I bought a car on Friday. We’d found the red one I wanted (minus a cool auto-dimming rear view mirror with compass and temperature sensor) at the dealership up the road, and went back there first to take another look and see about adding the mirror. Turns out that they had sold the very car I was looking at on Thursday night! I mean, what are the odds of that?!

They had another red one, but it had the $800 premium stereo in it. Despite the saleswoman’s exclamations of “oh, we can work something out,” Dad and I decided to go elsewhere. It wasn’t the price of the stereo, and it wasn’t just that I didn’t care whether or not I had the premium system…I mean, even if they’d been able to completely knock the price off (which they can’t), I truly didn’t want it. It was some fancy stereo with an in-dash 6-disc changer, blah blah blah, and I thought it was uglier than the factory stereo! And I’m not picky about audio, so the factory stereo is totally fine with me.

So, with the help of the Internet, we headed to another Nissan dealership across the highway from the Astrodome that we knew had the car I wanted (minus the cool mirror). As a side note, I have to say that being able to search dealer inventory online is a huge help in the car-buying process! We would have done so much more driving around town if we hadn’t been able to look up in advance who had what vehicle. Awesome.

In the end, I decided not to worry about the mirror (or, I basically decided that I wanted red without the mirror more than I wanted silver with the mirror), and we negotiated on the red one I ended up buying. I was so incredibly nervous and anxious about the whole process! I hadn’t expected that at all, so I was really glad Dad was there to help me. We stood our ground well, and the salesman eventually came down to our offer, which was something I was comfortable with paying, and something that must have been acceptable to the dealership, and bam–I have a new car! Hooray! I have to take it back this week so they can install the tow hitch, and then I’ll have to go pick up my new license plates when they come in, but other than that, everything is great! I’ve already put almost 300 miles on it with all the driving I did this weekend. I’ll need gas soon, so I guess that’s when I’ll find out just how painful it will be at the pump.

I was very nervous driving it on Friday, but got more comfortable very quickly, and already it feels like my car. The Strong Bad sticker on the window helps. I keep parking it where I can see it from the window of Wendy’s or Starbuck’s or wherever, and looking out going “oh look at that nice shiny Xterra…I wonder who that belongs to…oh, me! Hahaha.” Though I need a new Georgia Tech sticker…the next time any of you are within shouting distance of the Tech bookstore, buy me a new car sticker and mail it to me. I’ll pay you back!

I think Dad hadn’t expected that we’d buy so quickly, but we entertained ourselves well for the rest of the weekend. Saturday morning it rained, and poured, and poured some more. My bayou was filling up and I thought we might get washed away, but finally it stopped around lunchtime. Dad and I ran some errands and I finally got a new bathing suit to replace the too-big, stretched out one I’ve been wearing for like five years now. Then I left Dad to his own devices for a few hours while Jason, Paul, Chris and I took Debbie on a geocaching scavenger hunt for her birthday. Despite the rain (which had thankfully decreased to a drizzle, though the high water in Kemah still showed evidence of the morning’s downpour), Debbie had a good time, and after four stops on the hunt, we ended up at Texas Roadhouse for dinner, where Becca, Nick and Jo were already waiting. Our new friend Kelly also joined us.

After dinner I went home, where Dad and I watched baseball and sportscenter for a while and then went to bed at a reasonable hour, because I was getting up to do the Speedo Women’s Triathlon yesterday morning. Dad decided not to come, so I headed over by myself (in my new car! heeheehee!) and met Buzz there. My back bike tire was flat on Saturday night when I put my bike in the car so I pumped it up…and it was flat again Sunday morning. I’d sort of suspected the tube was bad, so I’d brought an extra, and had to change the tube in the parking lot. Glad I took that roadside maintenance class at Bike Barn!

The triathlon was a lot of fun, despite the chilly weather that was the result of the front that came through with all the rain on Saturday. It was about the perfect distance–300m swim, 10-mile bike, 3-mile run. My times were pretty decent:

300-meter swim – 6:32
Transition 1 – 3:01
10-mile bike – 35:28
Transition 2 – 1:40
3-mile run – 30:29
TOTAL – 1:17:10

I’m ecstatic that I ran at a 10:10/mile pace despite having just gotten off a bike; that was far better than I expected my run time to be. My bike time is a little disappointing; I think I could have gone faster, but (in what is unfortunately becoming a theme) I was having bike issues. The gears kept slipping, which didn’t make the bike unrideable, but did make it more difficult. Also, I think my rear brake was rubbing a bit, which is my own fault for not aligning the wheel properly when I put it back on after changing the tube. Anyway. The swim was fine; I’d told them a time of 6:40 to use in seeding me, and I was only 8 seconds faster. Other people were not so accurate though; no one swam past me, but I passed 5 or 6 other people.

I was 151st overall, out of 297 entered. So right about average! Yay me. The winner was a 24-year-old who did it in 49:57, just 44 seconds off the course record. Buzz also did great in her first triathlon, finishing in 1:25:48. The difference in our times is basically the difference in our swim times. She’s a faster runner, I’m a faster biker, so those two pretty much even out.

I got home from the triathlon just as Dad was getting out of the shower, so after I showered, we grabbed some lunch and went to the Astros game. We had great seats that were about 5 feet off the foul line in left field (bit of a splurge), but they were in the sun so we moved back about 10 rows and sat in the shade. Later on, we moved back down to our original seats and were in the sun for just long enough for both of us to have pink faces this morning. The Astros won 6-5, coming back with 3 runs in the bottom of the 8th to win.

Dad left this morning when I left for work, and is probably to Louisiana by now. He might stop for the night somewhere, but said he’ll see how he feels. My crazy dad. It was really nice having him visit.

p.s. I added five pictures from the Bayou Bash relay last weekend to the races album in my gallery.