The weather cleared for the most part and driving wasn’t bad at all today. I had to get up and get moving right away as I had to return my rental Toyota and pick up the PR5 from the shop. We got the pleasant surprise last night that the repairs on the car were going to be nowhere near as expensive as they had thought that they were going to be and we were able to save almost a thousand dollars on the repairs.
My review of the Toyota Corolla S was that it is very weak, just like Andy had said after having rented one too. No power at all. And I feel like I am sitting very high off of the road for such a small car. It felt very unstable and it was hard to hold the road. Overall the car was okay but nothing special and definitely not competitive with Kia or Hyundai. It definitely convinced me not to buy a Toyota. Just not the level of craftsmanship that I expect in a car these days.
Congratulations to Steve Romano who bought his own auto shop today in Wamego, Kansas. He won’t be taking over the shop for about a month as everything just went through today. Wamega is “famous” for its Oz Museum with one of the largest collections of Wizard of Oz memorabilia, the Schonhoff Dutch Mill which is the only working stone windmill in the state of Kansas, Historic Prairie Town taking visitors back to the early days of Wamego and most prominently as the birthplace of Walter Chrysler the founder of the former American car maker once famous as one of the big three Detroit auto manufacturers. Wamego has a population of about 4,000 making it just slightly smaller than Perry but it is located very close to Topeka which, in turn, is just outside of Kansas City.
Since we didn’t get to go out to dinner last night we decided on IHOP tonight. I had good food at work today too going out for the Thai House for lunch and then having some Indian food in the office after I got back.
Tonight we are hoping for a slow and relaxing night. Nothing much scheduled. Dominica is planning on going out to Frankfort this weekend to be with her mother. We don’t know much beyond that for plans at this point. We don’t have a car with snow tires on it right now so if there is any snow then it is not safe for us to be driving any distance which is why we have kept avoiding going back to Geneseo to get the rest of our stuff moved out of there. So with that in mind the most likely scenario is that she will take the Amtrak train from Manhattan up to Utica and have her father pick her up there. That means that I will be staying in Newark with Oreo as Oreo is not allowed to ride the train – which is our top complaint about Amtrak service and I am sure a major loss of business to them in general. Dominica was able to get Monday off from work as it is a holiday as I have it off as well so if we both drive up then we can be there for three days or if she goes alone then I am still in Newark on Monday to watch after Oreo.