I went to Lincoln and got my "new" van yesterday, but it was not uneventful.
My old van decided to give me one last kick in the butt. It ran fine all the way there (180 miles). I stopped at the University and had lunch with my friend that works there. From there, I went to the dealership. I was about 10 blocks from the dealer at a stoplight and the van died. It started right back up, but it wouldn't keep running at an idle. Great.
I knew what it was because it has done that once before after a long drive. Its an easy fix for someone with the tools. At that point, I didn't have much choice so I went to the dealer. It ended up they took $250 off my trade in from what they would have given me had it been running like it should . . . stoopid van.
We made the deal and it was about 4:00 when I left the dealership. I went to Lowe's, the Guitar Center, and filled up with gas. Small town Joe, blissfully unaware of what time it really was. As I left the gas station, it was 5:05 and I was on the wrong side of Lincoln. Rush hour. Crap. If I had thought about that, I would have hurried through the Guitar Center a little more and waited to get gas on the outside edge of town. Stoopid me.
On the way home, there were storm popping up. About 1/2 of the trip is interstate and half is state highway. About 30 miles off the Interstate, I was watching a nice pretty wall cloud. I had my camera out and was just waiting for it to drop a funnel. It had already passed over the road and was going on South as I went by it, so I wasn't worried.
Again, I didn't think . . . what is usually close to the wall cloud? Hail. I hit a wall of rain and hail that I literally couldn't see 50' in front of me. I pulled off the road and watched this hail blizzard. It sounded horrible under that big metal van roof. The biggest I could see was about nickel size so I was hoping my new van wasn't getting trashed. It hailed horizontal from the North for a few minutes. Then it almost stopped. Then it hailed horizontal from the South for a few minutes. It was crazy. I've never seen wind change direction that quickly before.
I made it home and I don't see any dents that were not probably already there. I do like my new van though. Its four years old, but still 11 years newer than what I traded off.