Things Looking Up

There is nothing in this world - nothing - I enjoy more than bargaining for a new car. It's what gets the juices pumping. Every synapse is firing, the give-and-take sparks energy. All-in-all I'm a pretty happy camper when it come time to negotiating. And I honed these skills with the Vietnamese and Cambodians and, yes, even the Namibians. But the Vietnamese are best when it comes to tough bargaining.

First, we had to dispose of the old Honda Accord. We gave that to the towing people, along with the title. They said they would crush the car because it was no use to man or beast. They simply didn't believe me when I told them this car would be rebuilt in Cambodia. I've seen it done, I told them.

So now we had a find a replacement car. This is not so easy when you have a requirement to tow that vehicle. Most Toyotas, Hyundais, Hondas and many domestic cars don't let you tow with all wheels on the ground.

We looked at a Chevy Cobalt and a Chevy HHR which met the requirement. It was pretty easy to squeeze down the price on these because General Motors is an eyelash away from going bankrupt. And that was a consideration, since warranty issues might come into play.

The salesman didn't want to let these fish off the hook since it was 100 per cent certain that we would be buying a car. But I said I needed to review the repair records and to read the reviews of both cars. When I did that on the Internet, it was impossible to proceed with the purchase. Both get a "mediocre" for reliability score from multiple sites. We transferred our affections back to Honda and the Fit seemed to meet our needs. We made contact on the Internet with various dealers and located new 2008 cars that were discounted. Then we drove to Sarasota, 25 miles south of us, to learn the only 2008 was sold an hour earlier. But the salesman had a fallback position: a 2007 Fit that had - wait for it - 1,494 miles. Those miles were driven by a little old lady. She died and her son brought the car back to the dealership. This was the perfect car from our point of view. So the haggling began. And then it ended in five minutes. The salesman had zero interest in negotiating. "This is the price, take it or leave it." he said. I said I was looking to make an offer of $2,000 less because it is a used vehicle but he was insulted. He didn't care. I suggested he put me with his sales manager and he refused. We left.

The sales manager phoned as we drove back north and we had a pretty good conversation about sales techniques in a crashing economy. He reduced the price some, but not enough. I told him we would think about it but there was an issue of trust that we'd have to struggle with.

Fortified with lunch, but sagging a bit from struggling in and out of our rental car with the massive back brace, we rolled into the Bradenton Honda dealership. We lucked out with an excellent salesman who had a sense of humor. But he still seemed to have a difficulty understanding the concept of serious negotiation. The Fit is a "hot" car right now because it is so fuel efficient. We danced around for a while on a 2007 Honda Fit. I asked to look at the car's manual to confirm that the older Fit could be flat towed and it instantly became clear this was not possible. Honda specifically prohibited the car from being towed for more than 20 miles at 30 miles an hour.

That moved us back to the brand, spanking new, 2009 Fit. There is no prohibition for towing it. Now we were 'way too expensive, of course. But he came down more than $2,000. In addition, he threw in the add-ons that came with the car and it started to look fairly attractive. He asked if there was anything to keep me from going ahead with the purchase.

"Here's my problem," I explained. "I have massive quantities of Scottish DNA, with transfusions of Vietnamese DNA and possible side strains of Chinese and Cambodian DNA. All these require that I perceive that I am getting an actual bargain. And I don't feel that way yet. So we need to see a little movement downward in the price." I told him I needed to see $300 off the bottom line. I told him I'm just an aging cripple, with a broken back, and I'm trying to do best by my bride.

He rolled his eyes and went off for a Coke or to the bathroom, or to check with some grand pooba of sales. I whispered to Jo that $200 off would be fine. He came back in and said the final stretch allowed him to come down $150. It's a deal, I said.

A couple of hours later, we drove home in our spanking new Fit.

All these financial seismic conditions have put a crimp in our plans to head for Alaska. We had budgeted $12-14,000 for that trip. The car ate all of that up (and more) so we think we will park and enjoy Florida's west coast for this winter. This will allow my back to heal...and for Jo's arm to be taken care of. It seems to be healing well. But we are not 100 per cent certain that all of the glass came out.

So the best laid plans of mice and men go down the drain. But we'll rise again.

Oh, He Broke His Back...That's Not Good

Jo and I escaped with our lives last night when I lost control of our car as we returned from an afternoon trip. I had just left the Interstate and was on a little road on our way back to our motor home when a low divider appeared in the road. I swerved but couldn't avoid bouncing the front of the car over the divider (a six-inch high hump in the road). That action seemed to cut off our brakes and we hurtled into the Florida underbrush.
It felt as though we were accelerating instead of slowing down as we flashed past sawgrass and a big melaleuca tree. We sheared off the tree and that seemed to bring us to a halt. The whole windshield was smashed in and Jo'd side of the car was pretty well demolished.
I was gasping for breath and Jo said she was cut on her right arm. Blood streamed from her wounds. I tried to reach for my cellphone but that was pretty painful. I swung open the door and got my feet on the scrub grass. I called 911 and was amazed when I was connected to the emergency services of the county we were in. I was amazed because our cell's number is out of Connecticut, 1,000 miles to the northeast. I told the operator about our situation and she asked me to give my location. I did the best I could but she wanted a cross street so she could triangulate on me. I told her I knew of no cross street and asked if she could not locate me via the GPS in my cell. She managed to do that (ain't technology grand!)
She said EMTs (emergency medical technicians) would be with us in three minutes.
Jo and I saw in the car, surrounded now by mosquitoes as large as seagulls. They seemed interested in Jo's blood and generally in just getting under my skin.
A passing driver spotted our lights and stopped to ask if we needed assistance. I thanked him and asked if he could stay by the road with his flashing lights so he could guide in the EMTs.
They arrived as I was pulled Jo from the car through the driver's side. Her door wouldn't open. The EMTs supported me as I came up to the road, then they secured me on a back board while they took our blood pressure. Mine, amazingly, was close to normal. Jo's was 200+ over something equally outrageous.
We drove off just as the Florida Highway Patrol officer arrived and he said he'd catch up with us at the emergency room of Manatee Memorial Hospital, about 10 miles away.
They moved me into Orthopaedic Trauma and they put Jo in Emergency Triage. A doctor ordered a CT scan on my neck because he feared it might be broken even though I said all the pain was in my lower back. After a couple of hours, the Highway Patrol officer stopped by to give me the report number which he said I'd need for insurance purposes.
He said we both would have been dead had I been speeding but said it was pretty clear to him we were not exceeding the speed limit. He said he thought the car was pretty much a total loss. His report showed an outline of a car with a request that the officer mark an X on any area that was damaged. He had marked an X on every possible place and also noted the windshield had caved in. The two airbags had not deployed, however.
My doctor and a nurse came over with my discharge papers and helped me swing my legs to the floor. When I stood up, however, I let out a scream because of the excruciating pain in my back. It was infinitely worse than four hours earlier. They and another nurse grabbed me and laid me back on the gurney. A nurse shot some magic juice into my thigh and I felt my pain ease while the doctor who now seemed to understand that my pain was not in my upper neck set up another CT scan on my lower back. This showed a compression fracture of my T-12 vertebra. This led to a series of X-rays of my spine which confirmed the fracture.
Now I was going nowhere. They brought Jo to me so I could hand over our cellphone. money and other stuff. Her arm was bandaged. She had bitten her tongue and she also had cuts on her neck. Otherwise she was in pretty good shape. The hospital arranged for a taxi to take her home while I was rolled upstairs.
I spent a restless night - mostly because the guy in the next bed seemed to be in worse shape than me and kept calling out or grunting through the wee, small hours.
Jo returned in the morning and we contacted our auto insurance company where it was confirmed that we are not protected for the damages. But we are covered for the first $10,000 of medical bills before our health insurance kicks in.
We arranged for Jo to rent a car for a week so we can assess our situation and look for a new vehicle.
Jo has to get with an orthopaedic surgeon on Monday to have the chunk of tree removed from deep inside her arm. The emergency room people didn't want to dig too deeply.
The nurse came in to see me this morning and gave me a shot of morphine. This was followed by my usual doctor who told me I would be fitted with a clamshell cast to immobilize my spine. Then a neurologist came back and he confirmed that approach and said I would be able to leave as soon as it was built. Might be a problem to accomplish this on a Saturday, he said. So we'll see what transpires.
We'll keep you apprised of developments.

A Blast from the Past

There may be no greater pleasure than reconnecting with a friend and colleague from 28 years ago and filling in the gaps in our respective lives.
That's what happened today when one of the finest writers I've ever worked with stepped back into my world.
Michael stopped writing in 1980 when he left The Morning Call in Allentown, Pennsylvania, where I was his editor. I'd hired him after working with him for years at The St. Petersburg Times in Florida where he helped reshape that newspaper with original, inspirational and inventive writing that cut a swath through our feature department.
He was a big man, physically, back then. And he's substantially bigger now. When he hauled his Falstaffian body aboard our motor home, it sank about three inches as he climbed the steps.
During the past 28 years he moved his creative energies from writing to the stage. He gained a national reputation as a Renaissance Festival king. His basso profundo voice fairly vibrates your inner core when you listen to him. When he sings, his operatic bass is riveting and mesmerizing.
We connected because Jo and I drove our motor home over to Orlando for a "free" weekend at a membership park where their top salesman was put in charge of convincing us of the value of buying a $16,995 membership package. When that didn't work, the price dropped to a mere $6,995. And still we didn't buy in. Then the salesman seemed to take the rejection as a personal rejection of him and he became curt and snippy.
Eventually, after two hours of hard selling, soft selling, arm twisting and ultimately personal abuse, he threw in the towel. He handed over our promised $100 in Walmart gift cards and the 30-day free membership in the parks around the U.S. They had offered these incentives to get us to agree to listen to the sales pitch.
And then we were free to enjoy the rest of our weekend at this quite pleasant park.
Michael's arrival made the day special. He's a bear of a man. He may weigh more than 350 pounds and he has just been hired by Disney World in Orlando to play a British version of Father Christmas this holiday season.
We patched the memory quilt of where we'd both gone and what we'd done since last we'd worked together.
My last recollection of Michael as a feature writer was to watch him struggle to put words on paper while sitting in front of a manual typewriter in the newsroom in Allentown. I remember the sweat - yes, real beads of actual sweat - on his brow as he struggled to find his muse. Singing is easy for Michael. Acting is easy for Michael. Writing is hard. Even though he has few peers, he told me today that he always felt like a fraud, that he was not as good as everyone thought he was when it came to writing.
To this day, he said, he wakes up from a recurring nightmare in which he is poised in front of a typewriter and he cannot write the first sentence of his story.
So he walked away from that work, loaded his wife in a VW bus and drove around the U.S. visiting national parks. Eventually they hooked up with the Renaissance Fair circuit in which he played the role of Henry VIII, and his wife played one of Hank's wives.
They did that for eight years before he moved into the Disney complex as an actor. Now, he is between gigs (that's actor talk for being out of work). But things look up after Thanksgiving when he takes on the role of Father Christmas.
He is 62 now; his health is not so good - heart stents, gall bladder removed, the toe next to the big toe on his left foot was recently surgically removed to stop an infection down there.
But the voice is still there. Ah, the voice: sonorous, creamy rich, musical. He's like a bottle of port that has been brought up from the cellar. What a joy to find him again and to connect for even a few hours.