Pictures!!!

Yup, it's definitely official now - it has been ages since I posted!! Thank you Gulshan aunty for politely knock - I know I'm way behind on my postings. Would have loved to do 100 a day (just kidding!!!), but seem to be having trouble doing even one a day!!!

Anyhow, here goes. I did promise that I would upload pictures of our car, so here they are, along with a bunch of bonus pictures. Last weekend, Chinni, Raja, Mahi & I drove down to Napa Valley (famous for it's vineyards and Wineries), Muir Woods (famous for well....the woods & forest), Lake Tahoe which as the name suggests is one huge lake and Reno - a smaller version of Vegas.

In Napa Valley we went to the Rutherford Winery and sampled their excellent wines, as well as dis a tour of the entire facility. Here are some snaps of the entrance to their wine storage area as well as of their barrels and wine bottles.

If you were wondering why I had a photograph of a rose in here - it's because of an interesting thing I learnt. All vineyards and wineries have a lot of rose bushes planted around. While the obvious reason is that they look good, and enhance the natural surroundings, the main reason is that rose plants by nature are very sensitive to the slightest changes. So if the owner notices that there is something wrong with the rose plants - it immediately sends in a warning with the help of which suitable steps can be taken to correct the problem.

These three snaps are from Lake Tahoe. Notice the snow clad mountains in the back - with the icy blue water in the front. We are jacketed as it was pretty chilly at the time of the photograph.












The third snap was later in the afternoon, by when it had considerably warmed up.

As for the rest of the snaps below - they are pretty much a mix-up of the rest - Here are the snaps of the car:

While these are some more of the lake:

A couple of the random shots include the drive to the lake, two dogs in the back of a truck (that's especially for you Karthik), the dense canopy in John Muir woods, moss covered trees, a ladybug in action!! We also saw a Giant Banana Slug as can be seen in the photographs below.

Saturday

Right...so continuing where I left off. Saturday dawned nice, bright and sunny....while we did crash out the previous night, it wasn't a very great sleep - owing to the lack of pillows and a mattress!! But nevertheless we did try to grab some shut eye. Got a call from a Kim Hoang from San Leandro Honda, stating that they had a special going on for the end of the month, and that she was really desperate to sell a car.

A quick tip - the trick to buying a car in the US is to pit different dealers against each other to get the best possible rate / deal. Then again, within the dealership too, once can get two different rates for the same car - one from the retail salesman and a different one from the internet salesman. While the retail guy makes his commissions on how much the car is sold for, the internet person makes his commission based on how many cars he sells in the month. So the trick is to talk to the internet guy for the best possible rate as he/she would like to move the car off the lot - irrespective of the price, and then talk to the retail guy to see if he would go any lower than the said price.

Since we do not have any credit history in this country, all interest rates on loans were very high - upwards of 10.5%, which is a ridiculous sum of money. Anyhow, since it was a special (it's all in the timing - end of the month & end of the quarter), we managed to secure a 4.9% which is really good.

We ended up buying the Honda Civic EX with Navigation with the automatic transmission. The color is Beige. Will upload some photographs soon. From start to finish - the entire process took less than two hours - including the financing etc. The actual sale took just about half an hour!!!
While we received delivery of the vehicle, we couldn't take it off the lot, as we didn't have insurance. We finally managed to get insurance on Monday and so drove it back from the showroom on Monday. It was the first time that I drove on the Freeway, and believe me, I was gripping the steering wheel like a dead man clutching straws!!! If at all I am able to drive in this country - it's all thanks to Anil. He has been a tremendous help here.

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