Fraize Dotcom

This time of year, the XBox goes dark, I put my laptop down, and the iPod lies dormant. I eschew technology for at least one day every weekend, for the Maryland Renaissance Festival is upon us!

This past weekend was opening weekend, and Mother Nature decided that the East Coast had it easy, and dropped a big steaming high pressure system onto the Atlantic. You know the type – big red animated “H” on the weathermap with wavy red lines spinning clockwise and seemingly turning Washington D.C. into the Bahamas. Not in the cool-ocean-breezes and white sands kinda way. More like the deep in the jungle in long pants kinda way.

It was hotter than should be natural, but the Ren Fest opened anyway, much to the delight of Emergency Medical Technicians on site. I hear they had to revive several folks suffering from heat stroke. Heather and I, however, opted out of opening-day and went, instead, for the second day. We got up as early as our insomnia would let us, and tried to get in quickly, but last-minute errands ended up dogging us, and we were much later than we hoped. Still, it wasn’t too bad once we arrived. The sun hid behind clouds, and a nice cool breeze greeted us as we retrieved our season passes and made our way in to Revel Grove.

There were a couple of new vendors, but it was still the same old Ren Fest. What struck us as interesting was how much grass there was. A coworker reminded me that the grass gets destroyed in the first few weekends, and that we should enjoy it while we can.

I posted a few pictures on the Gallery. You should go check ‘em out.

Sometimes, there are those mornings when you take a deep breath and exclaim to the heavens, “Goddamn, it’s great to be alive!”

I wake up at quarter-to-eleven, which is a totally ridiculous hour for me. I hobble down the stairs, and quickly do the dishes from a yummy homemade chicken tikka masala dinner from last night while Heather makes the coffee.

“Put some pajama pants on, babe,” she says, “I’m going to open the windows. It’s very nice out.”

I do, she does, and it is. We sit on the floor looking outside, drinking our coffee and feeling the cool morning breeze on our faces. Cicadas and birds are chirping on the magnolia tree outside. We talk about being cats sitting on the window sill watching the world go by with huge impassive eyes. I make a big giant bowl of oatmeal for breakfast, and contemplate doing mostly nothing all day. Maybe I’ll mow the lawn.

Right after I play some Bioshock.

My plan was to go to several dealerships, haggle like crazy, ruminate on it for a few days, and finally make a deal later. Of course, car shopping didn’t quite work out that way.

I made appointments with Leesburg Toyota, and Ourisman Toyota in Fairfax. I purposely set the appointments close together so I could do the hard-line negotiations quickly and honestly tell them that I needed their best price quickly ’cause I had to leave. I went to consumer reports online and found the invoice prices, and the costs of each option I was interested in. That report also said to expect to pay between 4 and 8 percent commission, and to negotiate extra fees. Based on that info, I priced out the car I wanted, and set a range that I would accept.

I wanted a nice hematite colored Prius with “Package 5″ which was the model with a nav-system, but no leather. I would also take black, red and blue.

I went first to Leesburg Toyota where I met Mike Clemens. He was so enthusiastic about the car, and let me a gold (aka Driftwood Pearl) package 5. I had never actually been inside one of the new Prii, and I was quite surprised at how large and comfortable it was inside! The ride was smooth and quiet, and the cloth seats were much better than I expected.

We went inside to negotiate the price, and I pulled out my notebook with all my notes and prices – ready and geared up to start the hardcore negotiation. He stepped up with a price that was exactly what I wanted to pay. He didn’t have a hematite color on hand, but could get one in twelve days.

I was shocked that a car salesman would be so nice and straightforward with me. I had already made up my mind to give this guy my business, barring some shocking deal from Ourisman.

Talk about shocking – I drove to Fairfax to meet with the second set of salesmen. I was told to ask for one guy by the internet salesperson, but when I got there, I was told he wasn’t at that building, but was offered no other explanation. I shrugged – oh well, all I had was a name, so maybe the new guy would be good.

He was nice enough, sure, but really didn’t know anything about the Prius. They also didn’t have the hematite package-five that they promised me, so we test-drove a package-six in blue. I didn’t like the leather, so I wasn’t prepared to spend a bunch of money on a package I didn’t want.

By the end of the test-drive, the salesman asked if my company was hiring for anything, and could he give me his resume. WTF?

I really didn’t think I was going to buy anything from them, based entirely off of my experience so far, but I thought I would give them a chance to blow me away with a killer deal. Their price came in much higher than Leesburg, so I told them so and asked what they could do. They came down a bit, but it was still much higher than I wanted to spend. I told them we were done, and threatened to walk out. Of course, that brought out the desperation in them (which I loved). I told the salesman that I didn’t like his manager, and to keep his slimy ass away from me (done), and to come to me with a serious offer. They didn’t come down in price any further, but instead pimped their “lifetime powertrain warranty.”

The wrinkle with that lifetime powertrain warranty was you had to bring your new car to their repair bay for every service. Sounded really good to me, but I could see how much more I would spend on dealership service. I asked, “Do you have a pricelist for your service?” Shockingly, they didn’t!

Finally, they tried to tell me that their dealership had the highest customer satisfaction ratings in the country – demonstrated by a plastic standee with a xerox-copy as “proof.” Leesburg had a nice laminated Toyota-supplied sign claiming the same thing

One of my predictions for 2007 was that my beloved 2002 silver Prius would be one major repair away from being replaced. Tuesday, my happy hybrid was humming along, when suddenly the dashboard console erupted in warning lights. Angry red exclamation marks lit up along side little icons indicating a problem with the hybrid system.

Luckily, I was less than a mile from home, so I continued on – the car wasn’t running roughly, so I didn’t think there would be a problem. I called the Toyota dealership which, by further luck was a very short distance from our house. I told them of the problem, and they promised to have a look the next day.

Gene, the 2nd shift service manager at Leesburg Toyota, is just about the nicest tech I’ve ever worked with. He informed me that the car was throwing two error codes – one was a low brake-fluid indicator, and one was a bad inverter. Gene says that sometimes these old Priuses will throw two codes when only one was valid, so he reset the computer and filled the brake-fluid (which he visually inspected and saw that it was low). If I drive off and the alert doesn’t come up, then I should have been fine.

Unfortunately, on my way into work, that evil red exclamation mark came right back to me. Boo. Gene was able to confirm, though, that replacing the inverter would be covered under warranty. Still, I had a decision to make.

I can get the car fixed, and I could probably drive it for another year or more before something else major happened – something that wouldn’t be covered under the warranty. Or, I could trade it in now and get maximum value for it for a new Prius that, in my opinion, hasn’t yet reached its ultimate popularity.

So the calculation becomes:

K₁ = ( (M_o / M_n) x G ) – ( R_o + P_n / 5 ) / P_n x A – T_o

Where K is the chance I should keep the old car equals the Mileage (M) of the old car over the new car times the estimated price of gasoline in 1 year, minus the potential cost of repairs of the old car plus the amortized price of the new car over the price of a new car multiplied by the factor of the potential availability in 1 year, finally subtracting the loss in trade-in value for the old Prius in a year.

Basically, if the cost of gas next year jumps, I think the availability of new Priuses will drop big-time due to a huge increase of demand. So, if it costs a bunch to keep my old Prius on the road plus the difference in milage, plus the increase I’ll likely spend trying to secure a new Prius in a year.

End result, I think the price of gas will jump, and new Priuses will be really hard to get, and that I’ll have to spend a lot to keep the old Prius going for one more year.

So, I went shopping. More tomorrow.