It Was Just An Oil Change

I haven't been spending much time on the computer when I'm not at work, so blogging has suffered (obviously).  My apologies.  Truly.

Yesterday, Jay and I had a rare day off together and had errands that needed to get done.  First on the list was an oil change for Newt, so off to the dealership we went.  We dropped her at the service center and went to wander the lot.  Before we even got to the lot, right there, smack-dab in the middle of the showroom floor was the most beautiful Soul I'd ever seen.  We wandered over to look at it, and ooh'd and aah'd for a bit before we headed outside to look at the other cars.

When we came back in, I had to see the Soul again, only this time, we made the mistake of opening the doors and looking at the interior.  She was beautiful. Like, beautiful-beautiful.  A helpful salesman came over and we told him we were just looking, that our Soul was in for an oil change.

But something about the new one wouldn't let me go.  Jay and I decided that if we could do a straight across trade for the new one, we'd do it.  I don't know why.  She just spoke to me.

We talked to the salesman again and he was willing to run the numbers and see what he could do.  Next thing you know, we're moving our stuff out of Newt and into the new car. 

Since Ripley and Newt were both named based on their colors, I saw no need to change the trend.  Salome is Caribbean blue, and that just screams Jimmy Buffet to a ParrotHead like myself.  I wasn't going to name her "Jimmy Buffet", so I needed a name from one of his songs and Salome came to mind.  If you don't know "When Salome Plays the Drums", I've got a little earbug for you.


Some of the trim work that Jay did on Ripley and Newt is already done, so he's hard at work designing a wrap for her back gate that keeps inline with the Jimmy Buffett/Caribbean theme.

We absolutely do NOT plan on trading Salome in any time soon, so we agreed that we will never go to the dealership together again.  One or the other of us will go do her oil changes, but not both.  We tend to be impulsive when we both go to the dealership, after all, that's how we ended up with Newt (and now Salome).

Newt

Jay started a new project with Newt last night and I love it!

With Ripley, he took some of the interior trim pieces and painted them the same color as her body color.  He got the idea from Kia's special editions of the Soul.  It really tied the car together and was one of my favorite customizations.

Newt's interior is much darker than Ripley's, so when Jay suggested doing the same thing to "brighten it up", I readily agreed.

I knew it would be beautiful, but I didn't quite expect it to be such an amazing change.  The Alien II color really pops against the black.

Breaking in Newt (Caution: media heavy)

Newt is finally starting to feel like "my" car.

Last week, we got the parts that Jay ordered for her: a warm air intake, a strut tower brace, and a set of cold air inlets.  We invited ourselves over to Deejo's to use his garage to put all of her new stuff on. 

The inlets are the only visible change

Since we had a new car and new performance-enhancing toys on the car, we decided to take a road trip.  You know 9HealthFair season begins for me in February and runs through May, so getting away is tough.  Last Saturday was my sixth Saturday in a row teaching phlebotomy to the RN students, so the thought of running away was enticing.

Our plans were to go to Mom/Autobot's birthday party and then head out to South Dakota immediately after.  Plans never work out that way, do they?

Ashinator's car broke down and left her stranded, so we had to deal with that before we could leave.  We did get it back on the road for much less money than we anticipated it would take (Bonus!), but also left a couple of hours later than we had hoped (bummer).  I don't know why the drive through Wyoming always takes days but, man, that's a long, tough drive.

We landed in Hot Springs, SD for the night and when we got up the next morning, headed into the Black Hills.  One of the parts we put on Newt was a strut tower brace to stabilize the suspension and take some of the body roll out while driving on the mountain roads.  There was one road in particular that we wanted to try, the Iron Mountain Road.  We weren't sure it was going to be open since it was still technically winter.

We took our time getting there.  We went through Wind Cave National Park, where we saw bison.

We took Newt's picture with a fake bison and drove past some young mountain goats.

We were pretty happy that the road we wanted was open.  There was a warning sign that the road received no winter maintenance, but it was in good shape.  As we left the one of the tunnels, we saw this view:

The view as you clear one of the tunnels on Iron Mountain Road

It was pretty cool, perfectly framed by the trees.  Makes you wonder if they cut away the trees on purpose, doesn't it?

I wish we had out GoPro for the road, but we forgot it, so we had to make do with my camera for video.




It was a lot of fun.  There are a total of three corkscrews in the road and each one is just a ton of fun.

Once we met up with the highway again, we got a much clearer view of Mount Rushmore.

We've both been to Mount Rushmore and had no desire to go to the visitors' center, so we kept driving on toward Crazy Horse.  The amount of work that it takes is astounding, and they accomplish more every day, but I'm afraid it won't be finished in our lifetime, which makes me sad.  I'm also very happy that it's absolutely, 100% privately funded, without government assistance whatsoever.

Statue in front of the visitors' center

From Crazy Horse, we drove up to Deadwood and stopped in a little town along the way to (attempt) to grab something to eat.  There are definite pros and cons to traveling in the off-season.  Pro: no tourists.  Con: nothing is open.  By this time, the places we were driving through were just a blur, so I don't remember where I took these pictures, but I love the artwork.

We did manage to find the one open restaurant in Hill City.  Despite the waitress's best efforts to forget us, we were able to eat and head back out on the road to Prairie Berry Winery for "free" wine tasting.  Free, my ass.  We walked out of there with almost $100 worth of wine.  To be fair, the wine was amazing and I'm sure we'll enjoy it.

Deadwood and Sturgis didn't warrant much other than a quick pass through town to say we've been there.  We still had some time to burn before we called it a day and the Devil's Tower was calling our name.  Back to Wyoming we went.  What astounds me is how close everything is once you're in the Black Hills.  I mean, it was maybe a half an hour from Sturgis to the Devil's Tower.  I had no idea they were so close.

On our way back to South Dakota, around Beulah, we hit 1000 miles on Newt.  They were darn fun miles, too.  A lot more fun than if we would have racked them up driving back and forth to work.

I did not take this picture while I was driving.  Jay did :)

Despite all of the road time and everything we packed into one day, we still managed to find a hotel in Spearfish, grab dinner, and watch The Walking Dead (OMG!  Best. episode. ever.).

Unfortunately, Monday morning, we had to head back home so I could go to work that evening.  Why is it heading out for a road trip is so fun that even driving through Wyoming is tolerable, but driving through Wyoming on the way home seems to take days and days?

It was certainly a whirlwind weekend, but it felt good to get away, even if it was only for one (very) full day.

Introducing Newt

So.

Ripley had to go in for service last week.  Nothing big.  Just an oil change and coolant flush, but while I was there I might as well take a test drive in the 2014 Soul, right?

I drove the exclaim model and it was meh-okay, nothing spectacular.  But I told Jay he should drive one just to try it out, so the next day we went to a different dealership and tried out another Soul.  It was meh-okay.  I did love the panoramic sunroof, though.  Holy cow!  All the benefits of a convertible without the annoyances.

Neither one of us were bowled over with the upper-end Souls.  The poor salesman was disappointed, but we hadn't driven anything that we loved more than Ripley.  I mean,  we're talking about my Rip.  She's pretty much the shit, you know?

After a quick conference with the GM, our salesman came back and asked if we wanted to drive a base model.  Hell, test driving doesn't cost anything and we were already there, so we just shrugged and said, "sure".

What a blast!  The base model was so much more our style.  Turns out that our top-of-the-line 2010 Soul exclaim translated to a base model 2014.  Pretty much everything we had in Ripley comes standard in the base model.  We drove the automatic and were luke-warm about it, so they offered to bring in a manual transmission for us.

The next day, Saturday, we returned to the dealership.  Still not with any intention of trading in Ripley, but it was something to do on a Saturday afternoon.

The manual transmission with the new engine sucks donkey balls.  Jay drove the car first and complained about the transmission being "boggy", but from the passenger seat it didn't feel so bad.  We switched places for the drive back to the dealership and "boggy" isn't quite the right word for the accelerator dropping out from under your foot after each gear change.  I can't explain it well, but it was bad juju.  I'd shift, give it some gas and for just about half a second it was like the gas pedal disappeared until the engine decided to catch up.

When we got back to the dealership, we told the salesman that was the worst transmission we'd ever driven and encouraged him to take it out on the highway.  Seriously, something is effing wrong with how the transmission and the GDI (gasoline direct injection) engine work together.  Jay and I thought it was just that Soul, but in talking to Deejo, we realized that's just how it goes in the new GDI Kias.  Sucked.

We wandered the lot a bit, looking at other cars, but went back to the Souls.  The salesman pointed out a base-plus model in Alien II (the new green) and we took it for a spin.

Loved it.

Loved.

It.

We decided to see what they'd give us in trade on Ripley.  The trade was fair and we started the paperwork.  Monday evening, after he got home from work, Jay took Rip to the dealership and picked up Newt.

Newt had 27 miles on her when Jay picked her up.  We're still in the "getting to know you" stage, and there are things I really love about her (helllloooooo, back up camera), but I'm not going to lie, I miss Rip.  We had 88,500+ miles together and did lots of fun work to her.  After 88K miles, you know your car.  I was incredibly lonely driving home last night without Ripley's light-up speakers.  When we brought Ripley home, I thought the speakers were fun, but a gimmick.  However, having Rip "talk" or "sing" to me on the way home from work kept me company.


I also have a case of the guilts.  For the first time in my life, I've bought a big-ticket item because I wanted it.  For someone who was raised, and who raised her own kids, based on necessity, I have a little (okay, a fair bit) of guilt over spending that much money on a want, not a need.

But Newt sure is pretty and she smells good and I'm certain I'll be over the guilt in no time. :)

Note: Credit goes to Daddy Hawk for suggesting the name "Newt" when I bought Ripley.  Some members of my family thought "Newt" was too wimpy, so I went with Ripley.  This time, though, since Newt's color is Alien II, I can overrule the naysayers.  And she is a bit brighter and "cuter" than Ripley was.