2016 Week 18
First of all, let me apologize to all our members for not blogging the last couple of weeks. I’ve been on a “staycation” since August 13th and it’s been the busiest we’ve been in quite some time. So this week I’ve decided to blog about why I haven’t blogged. This blog is a little long and has absolutely nothing to do with the GCCGL so I’m providing a quick summary below for those of you who’d rather skip to the last paragraph.
Wife’s car breaks down and is towed (first time)
Car pool with my wife for one week
Pack and prepare kids for college
Shop for new “used” car for wife
Drive 30 minutes to test drive a smelly car
Wife’s car breaks down and is towed (second time)
Move kids into college dorm/apt in sweltering heat
Get bad news on wife’s car and decide to junk it
Drop off my car to mechanic before it leaves me stranded
Beg and borrow to pay tuition bills
Watch my retirement dreams vanish like a fart in the wind
It started the day after I got back from vacation 7/24. I took my wife’s car to Pep Boys to have a simple air conditioning belt changed because the car was squealing like “Bobby Trippe” in Deliverance. By the way, for all you millennials in the GCCGL, I highly recommend you watch the movie Deliverance the next time you’re thinking about going camping in the deep woods. You might be asking yourselves, “PW…..why did you take your wife’s car to Pep Boys of all places?” Good question. The answer is because it was a Sunday and all the “real” mechanic shops were closed. Besides, it was the simplest of jobs to change out a belt. I would have done it myself but I’m an idiot and don’t have the tools or the knowledge. One and a half hours later, they weren’t able to figure out how to put the belt on and told me it was the wrong belt. They tried putting on the “correct” belt but of course that didn’t work either. Do you know why? Because I had already bought and gave them CORRECT belt to begin with! So I decided to leave and not go back to Pep Boys. It didn’t cost me anything except my Sunday morning. I was just hoping that they hadn’t done any damage to the vehicle.
A week later, the car’s power steering gives out (coincidence?) and I have it towed to a real mechanic shop in Burlington. He keeps the car for another week before actually working on it. In the meantime, the wife is majorly pissed off because of having to drop me off at work and pick me up every day while the car sat in the mechanic’s lot. After a week of this, I get the call, the car is fixed. It was a belt issue, and $49.99 later, we were picking up the car and driving it home. But before we drove it home, we had to make a pit stop at Tom Gill’s Chevrolet to sign some paper work for the “new” used car we just purchased for my wife. The dealership was 2.3 miles from the mechanic shop. We signed the paperwork and I got in the old Mitsubishi Montero Sport and all of a sudden it didn’t feel right to me. I put the car in park and opened the hood and watched in horror as the alternator belt got looser and looser and then finally popped off. Damn! Now I’m pissed. I call the mechanic, they send a guy over and he doesn’t understand why this happened. So I call AAA to have the car towed back to the mechanic. Meanwhile, the wife has to leave to pick up my 20 year old from work in Cincinnati because she doesn’t have her license. That’s right, I have two college age daughters who have no ambition to obtain their license and drive themselves. Why should they? They have a personal chauffeur in their mom! Anyway, she leaves me in the Tom Gill’s parking lot in Florence, KY while I wait for the tow driver.
As luck would have it, the tow driver showed up about 20 minutes later and took the car. The wife texted me and told me she was stuck in major traffic on 275 and wasn’t even close to my daughter’s work place. At this point, I’m hot, pissed off and bored to tears so I decided that I’d start walking in the direction of home. By the time I reached Mall Road, my phone had died. Now I have no phone, no cash and am sweating profusely. Luckily I told Mrs. PW that I was on Mall Road heading south before my phone died. I made it all the way to Walgreens at the corner of 42 and Mall Rd. (2.1 miles) before the wife picked me up. I know that isn’t real far but it felt like I had just walked across the desert for days.
Before all this happened, we spent a couple of weeks shopping for a new “used” car. We had narrowed it down to a 2014 Ford Escape coming off a 3 year lease with 39K miles for under 15K (Tom Gill Chevrolet) and a Certified Pre-owned 2014 Kia Sorento also coming off a 3 year lease with 40K miles for about 17.1K (AutoMall in Mason). We really liked the Escape but I couldn’t get the dealership to budge on the price. I love squeezing every penny out of these guys. So I called the Automall and told them if they got the Sorento price down to under 15K, I’d come up to test drive the car and if all went well, we’d buy it. He dropped the price immediately. Hmm….that was too easy. Can I really get a Certified Pre-owned 2014 mid-sized SUV with 40K miles coming off lease and approximately 8 years of warranty left for under 15K? We’d be getting a bigger car with a warranty for about the same money. We were off to Mason!
On the drive up to Mason, I kept thinking to myself, why was the salesman so willing to drop the price of the SUV so easily? The car was originally listed over 17K and the blue book was around 18K. I’m not this lucky, am I? We get to the Automall and the sales guy brings the car around. My wife and I get in the car and go for a test drive. Here’s the gist of what happened next.
PW: Do you smell something?
Wife: Do I smell something? What am I, hard of smelling? Of course I smell something.
PW: What is it?
Wife: I think it’s B.O.!
PW: What?
Wife: It’s B.O. The salesman must have had B.O.
PW: It …can’t… be. Nobody has B.O. like this.
Wife: George, It’s B.O.
PW: But the whole car smells.
Wife: So?
PW: So when somebody has B.O., the “O” usually stays with the “B”. Once the “B” leaves, the “O” goes with it.
Wife: This is ….unbelievable… B.O.
PW: I know…
Wife: Oh, this isn’t even B.O.! This is beyond B.O.! It’s B.B.O.!
PW: There should be a B.O. squad that patrols the city like a “Smell Gestapo”. To sniff ’em out, strip ’em down, and wash them with a big, soapy brush…
We proceeded to drive the car back to the dealership with our heads hanging out the window like two dogs! OK, so you Seinfeld fans out there will recognize the above dialog from the “Smelly Car” episode. Just replace the B.O. with cigarette smoke and you have the same situation. The car smelled so bad, by the time we made it back to the lot, my wife was physically ill. You might be asking yourselves, “PW, why did you drive the car off the lot in the first place if it smelled so bad?” Another good question. Here’s the thing, although there was a “hint” of odor when the car was parked, it didn’t really hit us until we put the air conditioner on. Once the air went on, the stink hit us like a ton of bricks! We cut the test drive short but by that time it was too late. The stench had attached itself to our clothes and the inner cavities of our nostrils. I was SUPER pissed now. I told the salesman he should have told me about the smoke and that he just wasted my time and that I wouldn’t buy that car if it cost $100! The only person buying that car is another smoker and even then, I doubt it would sell. He denied knowing about the stench but I didn’t believe him. So we wound up buying the 2014 Ford Escape.
Another week passes and we come to find that the 2002 Mitsubishi Montero Sport has major problems which were the reason for the belts coming lose all the time and that it will cost way more than I was willing to pay to get it fixed. We decided to junk the car and cut our losses. We’re still down to one car because my car also has some major issues so I dropped it off at the mechanic to have them take a look. All the while this is happening, we are preparing both our girls for college. One was moving into her Ball State dorm and the other was moving to her first apartment near the UC campus. Of course we did all the moves ourselves over the course of several days. It has been exhausting and thus the reason for not having the time to blog about the GCCGL.
How about this week’s Kreyling Korner huh? Man-o-man, LG was a wee bit salty with that post. The last time I saw someone that irate and furious, he was riding in the back seat of a white Bronco down a California freeway. I loved it! You go girl! Unfortunately, I didn’t read or participate in the survey because I was out of the office this past week but from what I gather there was a vote on whether there should be carry over points instead of half points for the Battle Golf event. I assume the majority voted to keep the event scoring the way it is. However an anonymous comment was made to the commissioner’s office to stop messing with the event rules so close to the event date. The commissioner’s office has traditionally put these kinds of suggestions to a vote so this was no different than any other potential change. Personally, I can see both sides of the argument. I happen to be a proponent of not changing the rules during the season but I also can totally understand why LG was so irritated. For the first time in a long time, the majority of the teams are out of the race. It is a two team race for the championship. So this suggestion was made to potentially shake things up. And it’s no surprise that it was made by someone who’ team was at the bottom half of the standings. However this can be perceived as unfair to those teams on the top half of the standings. As it turned out, no rules changes were needed for the 4th place team, Laying 8, to move into 3rd place and into the money after destroying Protein for Peffercorn (25 – 15). They were led by Squints who took another 8 points. Grandpa’s Cough Medicine solidified their status as the model of mediocrity as they narrowly defeated Gamblers Fallacy (20.5 – 19.5). They were led by team captain, The Co-op, who managed 7.5 points. Meanwhile the battle between the top two teams was a grudge match and finished in a (20 – 20) tie.
Battle Golf once again took its toll on everyone’s handicap. Over 80% of the league shot over par which makes the low net winners (A/B) Scratch and (C/D) Squints low net scores that much more impressive. Scratch finished with a low net of 31 and Squints finished with a low net of 35. Congratulations to the winners! There are only two weeks left in the season. We move to the front nine of the Pioneer for the last match play of the year. We hope to see you on the course and as always, hit ‘em straight!
George Almeida – GCCGL Co-commissioner
