My new Prius was lost!

After about a five-month wait, I got the call from Mike Calvert Toyota in Houston Friday afternoon: my Prius was being delivered that night and I could pick it up Saturday morning before nine. I told them I'd be there, but my husband reminded me that I had a date to accompany my granddaughter's clarinet solo at contest at 4:30 in Pflugerville, and hour north of where we live in Austin. I called Ulysses back, and he told me he'd call Saturday when it was ready, and it would be fine if I waited until Monday. So I decided to wait instead of heading down to Houston that night to be ready to rush back.

Saturday morning Ulysses called and told me that my Prius was not on the truck, but another was coming in and he'd call. I heaved a sigh of relief that we hadn't wasted a trip, and I played for my granddaughter (who made a I) and then went to a party. When I got home I called my Ulysses' cell phone, only to learn that the reason he hadn't called was that the car had not arrived. My husband started making noises about how they were just keeping me dangling. The salesman assured me that it would be there for sure on Monday morning. "Promise?" "Promise!"

Sunday as we left for Houston I told my husband, "I hope this is not a wild goose chase." Even if it had been, not all would have been wasted--one of my sons lives there with his wife and our 2 lovely preschool grandchildren.

Monday morning at nine, the Ulysses called on my cell phone to ask if we were in Houston and to inform me that the car was still not in, but his boss, Roger Armstrong and Dan Nagel, another man I'd been talking to, were making all kinds of calls to the port. He was ill, but he'd given the paperwork to the boss. We pointed out that we had to be back in Austin Tuesday morning. The salesman said someone would call us the minute it came in, and that he himself would check with us from home.

By two-thirty we decided to go down to the dealership, wondering if I should have accepted the package 5 from the dealer in Alvin, Texas. The fleet manager explained that the codes had changed Friday to put the car on their inventory and that that always meant the car would be there overnight, and he stated that they'd been calling the port all day to learn what had happened. Our car and four others had not arrived. He went and talked with the man I'd talked to who kept up with allocations, etc. When he came back, he reported that the port was going to send a special truck with the five missing cars. Port said it would be two hours, but he suggested we expect two and a half or three. He promised to call the minute the truck arrived. I wished we'd gone down in the morning, since maybe the "customer in the dealership" got things moving.

At five-thirty we called dealership, and the fleet manager said that they were unloading as we spoke. He said it would be about another hour, and he'd call. We headed for the dealership in about an hour. When we checked in with them they reported that it was being washed. We did the first part of the paper work, but THEY suggested that we wait to finish it until we'd had a test drive. On checking what I considered a price discrepancy, I learned the car was package 3 rather than the package 1 I'd ordered. I'd been thinking that is might wish for the 3, so that was actually suited me. We drove around the big block and then had to wait what seemed like forever for the finance man, while our 4-year old grandson played his version of hop-scotch on the shiny tiles on the dealer's floors.

We finally had my car, with four miles on the odometer, at eight-thirty. We dropped off my Voyager at the kids' house (With two kids, they can use it.), loaded our stuff into the Prius, and headed for Austin. So my poor husband, who had a fairly early tee time, finally got to bed around twelve-thirty.

On the trip home, I managed to figure out the cruise control by braille, and our average milage for 172 mile showed to be 44.7. As I drove around town yesterday, it made it to 45.

I am very pleased with the Prius. I just need to figure out a really good place to put my purse.

So in April I'm a MUCH happier camper that I was for the last three days of February.