Good thoughts of course, but lets go over the bad first. Yes, there is 'new car regret'. I expected this. The joy of the hunt is done. I'm just about finished with all the 'new car' things that need to be done with her and have her first long road trip already planned. The last part of 'new car regret' will come when the financing paperwork arrives and the first car payment goes out. That will especially be poignant as, if everything works they way I want, I only get one and a half more payments from my long term disability. Yeah, I really need to get a job!
There's a tiny little thing that bothers me. I think the reason it sticks in my craw is that it's a mar on one of Tatiana's biggest features. The dashboard is one big 48" screen. But that's all display. You don't touch that. The part you touch is an 11" screen that sits below it. Unless you're doing something on it, it displays the 'home screen'. The home screen has a map on the left, the profile indicator and the phone display on the upper right, and the media playing on the lower right. It's a little redundant since the map is also displayed just above that on the 48" screen, but whatever, there's a lot of screen to fill up and I don't mind there being something repeated. Except that it's not repeated in the same manner.
You see, the map on the upper 48" display is in dark or night mode. I like everything in dark mode. My desktop computer, my laptop, my Chromebook, my phone, my Google search... everything. The map on the lower 11" screen, however, is in light or day mode. Everything else on that screen is dark hued. The profile indicator, the phone indicator, and the media player... all dark. Just the map. The entire 48" screen is more or less in a dark mode. But not that map. Not that one little bit of screen real estate. And as customizable as this is, THAT isn't customizable. Understand, this is Google Maps. When I log onto Google maps on my desktop, I can make that dark mode. Google maps is in dark mode on my phone and Chromebook. It's in dark mode on the UPPER screen, but not there. Not on Tatiana's central display.
The other thing that I dislike is something that I expected and it's a glass half full glass half less full kind of thing. Her color. Out of all the kinds of white she could be, this is the best white. I'd put this right up against GM's beautiful tri color white that I've seen on Chevy's and Caddy's. It's a deep colorful white that has golds and pinks and greens in it. It's certainly not just that flat, arctic white that you see on so many cars. I can easily see why it's a $750 fee. And overall, white isn't bad for keeping clean. It doesn't show road dust and dirt all that easily. But you know what it DOES show? Everything else. I think I've bitched before that I park under a Chinese Elm tree. This tree fucking sheds all year long. It's spring, so it's budding. Well a tiny breeze can knock these buds off. And the tree has like millions of them. And they're sticky and sappy. I have a car port (more on that below) but the buds (and later in the year, the leaves themselves) are so light that any breeze can get them under the car port and they still hit Tatiana. If these were normal autumnal leaves it would be fine as you drive off and they slip off the paint. But these are sticky and sappy and they've glued themselves to the damned car. Did I notice them on Tiffany's dark blue paint? Or Nina's Velocity blue paint? Or Layla's black paint? Yup, but I had to look for them. I see them a mile away on Tatiana's beautiful white paint. And don't even get me started on the bug stains. Jesus, the front of Tatiana looked like a murder scene. More on the bugs below.
Another minor gripe... lack of normal hybrid displays. I remember driving Ginger, as well as some other occasional hybrids, and having a battery meter right next to the gas meter. As I drove, I could watch it empty while it helped propel me forward or filed up as I braked or coasted. It became a little game of how quickly I could fill it up and how greedy I could be in keeping it full. It would also let me know if the ICE was running or not. Sure, I'd get just a little bit of locomotion from the battery alone, but again it became a game. How little pedal could I use to make the battery last longer. Could I get out of my parking spot? Could I get to the street? Could I get onto the street and into traffic? Could I get to the end of the first block? There is one optional widget I can put up on the 48" display that shows instant gas milage and it indicates when you are running on electric only mode, but I have better uses for that screen space as I don't really care what my immediate gas milage is otherwise. Yeah, it goes down to like 3 miles per gallon when I'm accelerating. And yeah, it goes up to like 80 miles per gallon when I'm coasting. Duh. I kind of get why they don't have this kind of gauge. They didn't build in hybrid technology to appeal to the green hippie crowd. Yes, she does get better gas milage than her non hybrid variant, but she was given the battery and electric motor to give her EXTRA power. 310 horsepower, 300 ft/lbs of torque. They'd rather you just drive it like normal and enjoy the power and extra fuel economy. But still... I want to play the games!
And, so far, I think that's about all that I don't like about Tatiana. There are of course some accessories and other purchases that I don't like, but that's not the core car. That's not Tatiana. So, what do I like about her?
The first thing is the easiest. It's exactly what I was going after. It's the 'Lincolnification' of a vehicle. The door is good and heavy. It closes with a solid 'THUNK'. The door pull is covered in leather. The upper door trim is leather. The speaker grills don't just look like aluminum, they ARE aluminum. The seat leather is nicer, plusher, and cushier. Even the plastics are nicer to touch. When I roll the windows up, almost all sound from outside is left outside. Wind noise, tire noise, road noise, other cars... inside Tatiana remains quiet. The ride is nice and cushy. Even though I'm on those ridiculously large 21" wheels, it's still cushier than Layla on her 18" wheels. It's funny because the normal road undulations are far more smoother, but those hard hits, like a big crack or pothole, those still hit harder on the bigger wheels. But it's not a trade. It's not a 'this for that'. I get a far smoother ride overall with the occasional hard hit.
It should be obvious that I love the technology. The 48" screen is just great. I saw in some reviews that people thought it was distracting, but I don't think so. It's not as close as a normal gauge cluster would be and it's still low in your vision as you watch the road. The widgets on the right side are far enough away that I have to turn my head to see them, but when I do turn my head they're big and easy to read. Because it's so big, all of the information on the screen is easy to read. The map is always right there, the lane keeping information is always right there, even the gas gauge, miles to empty, temp, and odometer are right there and easy to read.
Speaking of the widgets, I do wish there were more. There's eight, I think to choose from and you can display up to three at a time. If they had twenty, I'd probably still be wanting more. Right now I have the media player, a clock, and the weather. I love seeing the temperature, but now I get to see a little animation of the current weather and a three day forecast. Do I need to see a little rain animation when rain is hitting the windshield? Absolutely not. Is it cool that I do? Absofuckinglutely! The clock and media player are things I would have had on the center display (and technically, I still have on the center display!) but now I don't have to take my eyes that far off the road. Just a quick glance and I know who the artist is, or what song is playing. Just a quick glance and I know it's 2 PM or that I'm running on time. Other widgets that I can put up there include the tire pressures, the two trip displays, the instant gas mileage, and a 'this trip' widget that's basically an automatically resetting trip display tha resets each time you turn the car on. I imagine on a longer trip I will put up a trip display, but just as I didn't keep the trip display up on Nina, Tiffany, or Layla, I won't keep one up on Tatiana.
The driver technology isn't that much improved over what Tiffany offered. The lane keeping, lane centering, adaptive cruise, blind spot monitoring, cameras, 360 degree camera... they're all there again. Even the automatic brake hold (THANK THE GODDESS!). I only have 200 miles on her, so I can't say whether these are the same as Tiffany, better, or worse. I can say that Layla's weren't as good even though she was two years newer. I'm not just talking about the fact that she didn't have the auto brake hold or the 360 camera either. Her lane keep and lane centering weren't as good as Tiffany's. Hopefully Tatiana's will be just as good if not better than Tiffany's. Then there's the new one. Blue Cruise. Oh my fucking God! I talked a bit about this in my purchase post, but I've taken another trip with it and... um... WOW!
First, it comes on fast. This trip I took was all of 25 mils on the highway where Blue Cruise would work. One mile on one highway, then the rest on another. It actually activated on the one mile. I merged into traffic, turned the cruise on, and five, six seconds later, it told me to take my hands off the wheel. Forty seconds later, I had to turn it off to take the highway exchange and get on the other highway. A few seconds after I merged onto that highway, it came back on and stayed on until I was at my exit. Outside of the surface streets, I touched the steering wheel all of ten seconds? On a nearly thirty minute drive? Yeah, if I work here in town or work where I'd like when it's down a country highway and Blue Cruise won't work, I'll barely notice this feature. BUT when I take this trip to Texas in a month? It's 16 hours of Blue Cruise available highway. Combine that with the gas milage that Tatiana gets, up to 600 miles on a tank of gas, and I might be able to do that in one day instead of two! Seriously... I won't be nearly as fatigued at the end of the day. Three stops for gas, multiple stops for bathroom and food/snacks. Listening to Stephen King's Dark Tower audio book, my podcasts, and music blaring out louder than I can stand?
I guess technically the audio system is part of the technology, so lets go over that. I'd love to have Tiffany here side by side to compare because I honestly think she may have been louder and clearer. I'll need more time and more songs to figure out if I'm getting more detail out of the new system, but I really do think that Tiffany's was louder. That being said, there is a HUGE gulf between what Layla had and what Tatiana offers. I can appreciate the music playing in Tatiana at any volume. When it's down almost all the way, I still here the idiosyncrasies of each song. When I have it at normal volume, it's big and clear and fills the cabin without being obnoxious. And of course, when it's loud it's amazingly loud and clear. The only distortion I've heard out of the speakers is when the song itself has distortion.
Speaking of audio, Tatiana comes with three months of Sirius XM. They even have an extra feature now that if you sign up during those three months, you get three more months for $2. I mean, that's a fantastic deal for what Sirius XM offers and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't tempted. But the other day, when I was setting up all of my audio station presets, including XM, I remembered why I don't like XM. Even with the stations that I like, at the time I was programing them none were playing songs I was particularly interested in. And when Lithium finally started playing a halfway decent Pearl Jam song that I could get into, I turned the volume up and... it's so distorted. It's compressed and just, bad. I can stream 'radio' from Apple Music and YouTube music. Sure, I'm beholden to an internet signal, but with Sirius I'm beholden to a satellite signal so it's six one way, half a dozen the other. $2 for three months would be worth it just to have it as a backup. For live sports, or breaking news, or when I'm going out of my mind for a particular genre of music that I don't have well represented like 80s or pop or Jazz. That'd be $8 a year. But it doesn't stay at that price. It'd be $5 a month for a year and then $20 a month thereafter. As I understand it, if I call and threaten to cancel the service each year I can probably get the $5 a month indefinitely, but.... is it worth $5 a month? I don't think so.
Finally with technology is just Tatiana's infotainment operating system. Ever since Fiona back in 22013, I've been using some variation of Ford Sync. Fiona and Ginger had Sync 2, Isabela, Nina, and Tiffany all had Sync 3, and Layla had Sync 4. Tatiana, however, has Google. Or rather, Android. Yes, there is a car interface where I can go in and set the climate control and the vehicle settings. But when I go to the navigation, I log into Google maps using my google account. To play music from YouTube music I don't have to connect my phone and play it through Android Auto, I just use Tatiana to log into YouTube music using my Google account and she plays it. The same goes for my Google Play Books app and my Pocket Casts podcast app. These are just android apps. I have YouTube installed and so long as the car is in park, I can watch YouTube videos. And it's connected to my account, so if I start a video and want to finish it later, I can just hit up the history button on my phone or computer. I can even install other video apps like Max, Netflix, and Hulu. The only glaring missing app is Apple Music. Because of course it is Apple. But, not to worry. Yes, I use Apple Music everywhere. On my desktop, on my phone, and through my Google home devices. But a service called 'Tune My Music' logs onto my Apple Music account each night at 3 AM and converts all of it's playlists and converts them over to YouTube music. So, if I get a new song and put it on my Newest, Recent, Good Tunes, and Drive playlists on Apple Music (which is how I normally operate with new music), the next day those will be on the same playlists on YouTube music. It's not perfect as the services differ on some songs. Sometimes the songs simply aren't available and sometimes its just a radically different version. But we're talking like 3 songs out of 1,400. Maybe 10.
As it sits right now, for the first time in years and years, when I get into my car, my phone only connects to the car so that it can make and receive phone calls and text messages. It's not connecting to run Android Auto. Do you know how much battery life that will save on a traditional day of driving? A lot!
I have a little grip about the ambient lighting. Of course I like that it has ambient lighting. It goes in the footwells, the cup holders, under the dash, and some nice looking lines on each of the doors. But while the lighting goes more places, I feel like the color selection has gone backward since Fiona. I only have the choice of a few colors. White, Blue, Teal, Green, Yellow/Orange, Red, and Pink/Purple. I immediately thought I'd want the Pink/Purple. Anywhere on the spectrum from Royal Purple to Barbie Pink would suit me just fine. But instead it comes out this pale almost pukey pink. It's gross. Even the white doesn't look right. The only colors that looks good and saturated is Blue, Green, and Red. Red to me is a warning or danger sign, so I don't like that. Green is Michigan State and fuck no. So, Blue.
Unless I think of something else to shoehorn into technology, I think that covers the technology section of Tatiana. I love it and don't think any other car could compare to it. No Lexus, no BMW, no Mercedes.
The everyday driving. Again, I only have 200 miles, but I think that's enough to say that her ride is smooth and lovely. I've taken her on the highway a couple times and she has plenty of power to get up and get out of her own way. She can merge into heavy fast highway traffic without problem. Yes, I do notice that she isn't quite as fast as Tiffany was. But she's way smoother than Layla. It's kind of strange as Layla felt plenty strong. She had that little 2.0L turbo 4 cylinder that produced about 250 horsepower. And she certainly zipped around. But 'zip' is good and bad. She always sounded like and felt like she was working hard to produce the power that she was. High revving and staying at those high revs to maintain the power. Tiffany before and Tatiana now feel more like they have lower end grunt. They just 'move' with more ease. Get up to speed without all the fuss. Tiffany was doing it with the bigger twin turbo 6 cylinder, and Tatiana is doing it with her hybrid 4 cylinder. The one complaint I might lodge here, and I think its more a case of me needing to get used to it, is her crawling. For one, I need to get used to the fact that she has the brake hold again. I can't just let off the brake and slowly crawl forward. Instead I have to give her a little gas to stop the brake hold and then let off the gas to crawl forward. But it seems like she's moving too fast forward. It's especially noticeable when I'm backing up. I back up into my car spot and tap the rear wheels against a big 4x4 that's locked into place with some railroad spikes. As I have expensive tires, I like that to be a gentle tap but Tatiana is moving quickly enough that even just coasting or crawling backwards, she hits with a little thump. I mean, it's not like its an accident causing speed or anything, but its still way more than what Layla or even Tiffany did. Hell, I think its more than what Nina did. Is it the electric motor?
She also drives bigger than Layla or Tiffany. Again, this might just be getting used to her, but I feel that she's bigger. Wider, longer, taller. Technically, she is, but I shouldn't be able to feel the couple inches of difference. Especially when her turning radius has been reduced. She turns on a fucking dime!
Then there's the gas milage. I haven't been keeping up with that as it's only been 200 miles. BUT, with mostly every day driving, Layla would be just about empty after 200 miles. I think she only got up to 250 miles a couple times. Between her lower fuel efficiency and her smaller tank. But Tatiana is at half a tank of gas left. We'll see how this plays out when I've actually put gas in her. I mean, for one, it's going to be more expensive per fill up. Not only is filling up a twenty gallon tank more expensive than filling up a fifteen gallon tank, but there's the fuel grade to consider. Every car I've ever had has only required 87 octane. And that's all I've ever used. Nina and Tiffany both had the warnings that the stated horsepower and mpg numbers would only be met on premium gas, but at 460 and 330 horsepower and losing a supposed 10% with regular gas... I didn't notice so I just put regular in it. Tatiana has the same warning, but they also put that regular gas will reduce longevity. That's the first time I've seen that in a manual. Yes, it CAN use regular gas, but if you want your engine to last you should use premium. And just like with Tiffany, I believe this might be my forever car. I DO want her to last. So, yeah... I think I'm going to be putting premium in her. Or at least midgrade. With half a tank left, I still have a few weeks to decide!
Then there's presence. Nina was the queen of presence. I couldn't walk away from her without looking over my shoulder. She was just that beautiful. I got complimented on her often. Fiona would occasionally get complimented but it had more to do with her Yellow Blaze color than her actual presence. Ginger and Layla just never had that presence. They were cars. Isabella was impressive if you knew what you were looking at. If you sat in her and saw her special interior you generally knew. But on the road? In a parking lot? Nah, she was looked over. Sadly, the same was true of Tiffany. It's one of the reasons I was initially disappointed by her as she didn't impress. But I'm also a grown up and realize that not everybody has to be impressed with my car for ME to be impressed. Tiffany was simply put better than most cars on the road, so I didn't car what others thought. Tatiana's presence, right now, is a little higher. I've seen people look at her. Not like they'd look at Nina, but they're definitely trying to figure out what she is. It's because she's new. Only the Lincoln Navigator is styled like her and the Navigator is significantly bigger than Tatiana. With her lightbar across the front, her angular lightbar across the back, and her illuminated Lincoln star on the front, she stands out. She's also rare. At the end of having Tiffany, seeing Lincoln Nautiluses, not including the MKXs that was the very similar body styles before it was renamed, was becoming common. They were around. But I've only seen one 2024 or 2025 Lincoln Nautilus. Unfortunately it was the day after I bought Tatiana. It's in town, so I'm sure I'll see it again. And as the years go on, I'll see more and more of them on the road. But for now at least, she has presence.
So, my initial impressions are nothing significantly bad, almost nothing bad at all, and almost everything else good to great. We'll see how I feel after both a long road trip (BLUE CRUISE CROSS COUNTRY!!! WOOOO!!!!) and after the full honeymoon period, but I think she'll be just as good, if not better, than Tiffany in my eyes. She's a forever car.
As with any car, I want to customize and do a bunch of little purchases for it. Tatiana is no difference. In the purchase post I told you about the locking lug nuts and replacing them with black lugs and I told you about getting the Amazon cargo privacy cover. I told you about the Husky winter mats and the wind deflectors. And I finally told you about the personalized plate. Let's cover those first.
I got the privacy cover first. It's fine. It has a texture on it that's supposed to look like carbon fiber. I can see where people would like that, but to me it's just a little cheesy. I think in retrospect, I'd have rather paid more for the actual Lincoln accessory and have it look normal rather than trying to look 'special'. But, it works fine and does what I want, keeps the lookieloos out of my peeking into my cargo area.
I know it's small, but the lug nuts just work. Yes, I'm specifically looking for them, but they DO look better than the chrome ones. And while I hope its a good long time before I have to try and identify MY White Lincoln Nautilus Hybrid Reserve in a parking lot from another White Lincoln Nautilus Hybrid Reserve, this will be one thing that identifies mine.
The Husky winter mats showed up and they'll work fine. You know... in November or December. They're long enough that they'll cover under the pedals and cover the entire dead pedal area. I wish Lincoln's winter mats did as they honestly look better, but I want the usability over the look.
The wind deflectors are... well, I can't judge them fully yet. They're "low profile". These look exactly the same as the ones that Lincoln sells, so I don't think this is a Husky difference. But after I put them in and was driving around with a cigarette, I hit the cherry of my cig on the damned thing. It feels like it's a LOT closer than the normal wind deflectors would be. It means I have to roll my window down a bit more, which kind of defeats the purpose. As for how they look, I really wish I'd taken a photo. Since they glue on, they surround the window/door instead of fit up into the window area. It means that the front and rear sections are so close together that they look like one piece. They look so factory in fact that they included wind deflectors for the rear windows. You know, the ones that don't go down. It's so that the same line they make goes from the A pillar in front all the way to the D pillar in back. And, it stylistically, it works. It looks like the car was designed that way. The real test will be on the highway. On that Texas roadtrip, how much ash do I get in the back seat. And how many times to I practically put my cigarette out on the damned thing (or knock the cherry off and burn my clothes or worse... my leather!).
I still haven't received the replacement for the personalized plate from Tiffany, nor have I ordered a personalized plate for Tatiana. The Tiffany plate doesn't matter as that's just a collectors item so far as I'm concerned. The Tatiana plate though is coming up on the point where I might not have it for my Texas trip. You see, when I go to the Department of State website where I can purchase a new plate and order it as a personalized plate, it shows my current plate still registered to a 2019 Ford Edge. When I order the new plate, it's going to come with new paperwork. The order of things is that they'll registered the change from the Edge to the Nautilus and send out new paperwork. Then I order the new plate and a new plate will come with new paperwork will come all for the Nautilus. If I jump the gun and purchase the new plate though, I'll get the new plate with paperwork for the Ford Edge, then the paperwork for the OLD plate and the Nautilus, and finally the new paperwork for the new plate and the Nautilus. I log into the department of state's website twice a day. Once in the morning to see if it changed over night, and one at the end of the business day to see if it changed during the day. To log in, they require your first name, last name, last four of your social security number, drivers license number, birth date, and the date that your drivers license was issued. I had to grab the license out of my wallet the first few times as I don't memorize my drivers license number and certainly don't memorize the date it was issued. But I have them memorized now. Do I know my mother's cell phone off the top of my head? My brothers? Nope. But I know my 13 digit drivers license number and the date it was issued (8/11/21). I'll just have to keep checking until I can order the new one and then hope they can make it before my trip. My current personalized plate wasn't anything special, but it was a variation on FORD EDGE so that it would be easy to remember. I hate that I basically have FORD EDGE on the back of my Lincoln Nautilus!
A couple things became clear on the first weekend of ownership. First, was the damned Chinese Elm was going to be a problem. I'd forgotten how much of a problem that was before. The second was bugs. I drove up to visit a friend, that 25 mile highway trip, and by the time I got home the murder scene on the front of Tatiana was comical. I can't imagine what its going to look like after 16 hours of summer driving through Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas. When I went down to Texas last time with Tiffany, A and I attempted to wash the bugs off with his pressure washer and... yeah, it didn't really work. I even hit up a car wash right near A's place before I got back on the road toward home and the bugs remained. I think those bugs were still on Tiffany when she died of milk exposure (yeah, still too soon... not funny).
So the Elm. A quick history of protecting my cars. We have a single car garage at the house. When we me and my brothers we growing up my mom parked the family car in the garage and dad parked his truck next to the garage, backing it in. I don't remember when, but it was when I was fairly young, he built a car port that extended from the garage over to cover his truck. It was aluminum and the same material as our patio in back. In fact, I think it was the old patio when it got damaged and the insurance company bought us a new one. That would fit with Dad's normal operating procedure. It eventually got blown down, but Dad replaced it. My brothers and I had two parking spots to share off the side of the driveway. Built by Dad. After Dad passed his spot became my spot. You'll probably remember when the car port fell down on Lita, my Chevy Lumina. When that happened, R decided to built a replacement with the insurance money. Instead of flimsy aluminum that's fallen down twice now in twenty some odd years, he built it out of pressure treated wood. Well, most of it was pressure treated. Several years later, the parts that weren't pressure treated wood, were all water logged and rotten and the whole thing didn't have much stability. As I was parking much nicer car under it than Lita (this was when I was driving Isabella) we decided to just tear it down. I figured I didn't mind that my car wouldn't be sitting in the shade any longer and I could brush the snow off just fine. It turns out that it was a bit more of a bother as that's when I found out about the Elm constantly dropping its buds and leaves on my car. And then I bought Nina. Yeah, I wanted this beautiful Mustang to stay beautiful ALL DAY EVERY DAY. At the same time I didn't really want to have R build another car port. That one had taken him about a week of planning and building, three friends, and several hundred dollars in materials. I found a temporary car port that would work okay. It only cost about $200 and had a literal tarp for the top. Yeah, it wouldn't survive for the winter, but it would keep the buds off Nina. It wasn't bad putting up, but putting the anchors in for the footings (since I was going to leave the frame up year round and just take the tarp down in the winter), was a pain in the ass. It worked... okay. Good enough. It lasted through Nina and well into Tiffany. After 4 or 5 years though, the frame started to bend, letting the tarp bow and catch large puddles of water after every rain. I was concerned that it was going to be enough weight to eventually tear the whole thing down so I pulled the tarp down for the winter and then in the spring, just pulled the rest of the frame down. This was now migraine time and frankly, I didn't care that Tiffany had buds and sap on her. I had bigger fish to fry. I left it the same for Layla because, well, fuck Layla. She wasn't going to get better treatment than Tiffany got. And then we arrive to a couple weeks back and Tatiana's arrival.
Seeing the buds and sap on Tatiana's beautiful white paint made me immediately remember that that was a all spring, all summer, all autumn problem. I could deal with the snow, but dealing with the tree debris was not going to be sustainable. I considered upgrading the carport to a metal one that would be able to hold up the snow, but instead of costing a couple hundred, they went for over $500. And then we ran into the problem of where it sat. The ground there is tilted significantly to make sure the rain doesn't collect near the garage. But that means anything built on that area leans to one side. Not too bad for a 'temporary' structure like the tarp car port, but not great for a semi-permanent metal car port. I'd have to have someone come out and ideally lay out a pad (asphalt probably) and that would cost another $3,000. Then I found the exact same tarp carport I bought last time. It had gone down in price to just over $150. The last one lasted four to five years, so I went ahead and bought one. And instead of putting it together by myself this time, I 'hired' my nephews to come put it together. I gotta admit, I gave them too much credit in my head. I took about 3 or 4 hours to put it together alone, so I figured they'd get it done in about 2. Yeah, it took them 5 hours. I didn't even have the anchors available until yesterday and thankfully my nephew was over to help R with some outside projects and helped me finish that. That was a pain in the ass all by itself, but I'll try to touch on that in an Update post later.
Anyway, Tatiana now has her carport. She parks in the shade has pretty good protection from the Elm (it can still blow buds around the sides) and decent protection from the rain. I figure by the time the car port fails again, Mom will have passed and I'll be parking in the garage.
Now the bugs. Bug splatter has always bothered me on cars. It's not as noticeable on darker cars, and it's not as noticeable on sleeker cars, but a big fairly flat nosed, white Nautilus? Yeah, Tatiana is a big ass target. And I'm not joking... I should have taken a photo... she looked awful after that one drive just because of the bugs. And it was noticeable from far away. I've tried regular soap with no luck. I've tried car washes with no luck. I've tried pressure washers with some luck, but you have to have the pressure so damned high that I'm afraid it might take the paint off, and even then it doesn't' get ALL the bugs off, just most of them. No, I needed chemical help. So I went to YouTube and looked up bug removal reviews from car detailers. There are several products made specifically to get bug guts off your car. They include enzymes and other chemicals designed specifically to soften and break down the proteins in the bugs left over bits so that they'll wipe off. My hope was to find one that I could stop at a gas station, and within like five minutes, clean off a murder scene.
I ended up getting Stoner Car Care Bug Erasers. It's a little sponge like thing that has the chemicals embedded in it. You simply wet it down with a couple ounces of water then gently wipe it over the bugs. It lathers up and supposedly doesn't take a lot of effort to get the bugs to wash off. In practice, it DOES work, but it makes a LOT of lather that then needs to be cleaned off. It also put a lot of that lather onto my hands and considering that it's supposed to break down proteins and my skin is made of proteins... yeah, I don't like it on my hands. But because it worked well, I decided to keep it and just change up my idea of where/how I'd use it. I thought I'd drive down to Texas, stop for the night, get into a hotel, and then after eating dinner, cleaning the bugs off the car and having it clean for the next day. Nope. Now, I'll go to a car wash, clean off the bugs, and then run it through a car wash. I'll also get some gloves that I'll wear when using it. It'll still work, and works especially well on the windshield, but it just isn't a quick fix. It's one that takes effort and a little planning.
I think that's about all the toys I need to buy for Tatiana. I'll still get the plate when the State catches up to where the plate should be. And once I get the paperwork from the bank that says I paid off Layla, I'll return her Warranty and GAP coverage and should get a few hundred to a couple grand back on those.
I'll check in when I have those things and probably make a post about the road trip as I'm sure driving that far with the Blue Cruise is going to be AMAZING. In fact, I just thought of something that's going to be a game changer. I talked in a post awhile back about how I changed where I drove through Oklahoma because of a shitty area of Oklahoma/Texas on country highways I had to go through otherwise. I wanted to stay on Interstates even if it took longer and even if it included some tolls because I wouldn't have to change speeds nearly as much. You see, the country highways through that area go as fast as 80 miles per hour and as slow as 30 miles per hour along with stop lights. Now admittedly, I don't think Blue Cruise hands free driving will work through those areas as it's not a limited access highway. BUT, Tatiana reminded me this morning as I went to therapy, that she can not only read the speed limit signs, she can adjust my adaptive cruise control to match it! Not only match it, but actually hit 5 mph above the speed limit like I like. So I should be able to set my adaptive cruise for that 80 mph, and then leave the cruise on the entire time without changing its setting. The only thing I'll have to do is guide her along a bit with some steering, and occasionally stop at a light then 'resume' the cruise when it turns green.
It's too early to confirm this but...
I LOVE THIS CAR!
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