Test driving cars

Friday:

Tim took the day off work today so we could get stuff done. One thing was looking for a new car. When I say "new", we wanted a decent second-hand car, not too old. We love our current car but it's about 13 years old now and needs repairs more often, and we worry about reliability on our long trips when it makes funny noises and doesn't want to turn sharp corners. We test drove a few and didn't buy anything, the only one I liked was a new new car! A bit more money than we wanted to spend, considering we need all our money to buy a house very soon! But we need something soon. We'll do some more looking, I don't know when we'll find the time though.

In the past I'm sure car salesmen have just let us take out cars by ourselves (after taking photocopies of ID) but this time each one came with us. Odd. The last one was funny, he said he would drive the car first to get to a quieter place then let us drive. Like we were nervous teenage L-platers instead of adults who drive around that area all the time! Canberra isn't exactly a big city with lots of traffic either. He was probably 20 years younger than us. Maybe he just enjoyed the chance to get out and drive a car instead of being at the car yard all day. He drove quite a long way and finally pulled over to let Tim drive - in our own quiet suburban street! He was giving Tim directions about which way to go and I said "that's our house" and he got a bit subdued after that and just let us drive around and swap when we wanted to, and even let me drive it back to the yard although I asked if he wanted to.

We have a lot of houses to see tomorrow, I'm really hoping we see one (or more) that we like enough to make an offer for. We've definitely decided against that land, it's just too small and oddly shaped. If we see any other blocks before buying an existing house, we'll consider it again.