It was a Friday evening in August. I was delivering pizzas at Papa Johns in my VW Jetta. Looking for an address in a dark neighborhood, I pulled into a gravel driveway. I realized that I was at the wrong house and that the house I was delivering too was across the street. I put my car in reverse and attempted to back out of the driveway. But my Jetta was not cooperating. It kept kicking it out of gear, making it impossible to back up out of the driveway that was on a downward incline. I was pissed, but decided that I should deliver the pizza before taking any other action. I walked the pizza across the street to the customer, and then came back to my car. I attempted to back up several more times. All it did was make a horrendous sound and I was getting nowhere. To add insult to injury, my left headlight decided to go dead as I was standing in front of my car deciding what to do. This was the moment I decided that it was time for a new car.

The guys across the street had apparently heard the commotion and came to help. They first tried to push my car up the hill, which did not work. Then I drove my car to the bottom of the driveway, which was on less of an incline, so we could push it back and forth sideways in the driveway, until I was able to pull out going forward. This was eventually a success. I told the guys that I would drop off a free pizza coupon in their mail box later on for helping me out.

The next day I went car shopping. I was looking into getting a hybrid car for some time, so I decided to go to the Toyota dealership in Libertyville to test drive a Prius. Before going, I researched on the internet about the Prius and some tips for not getting screwed by car dealers. I didn't want to fall into the trap like I did when I bought my Jetta. I walked into the dealership informed and prepared to make a deal. One would expect to get hounded by salespeople upon entering a car dealership. However, I walked around the showroom floor for about 20 minutes, and no one said a word to me. It was probably because it was Saturday afternoon and extremely busy. In the mean time, I was sizing up all the salespeople. The more intimidating ones that I didn't want to help me, and the less intimidating ones that I would want help from. Eventually, I walked up to someone and asked for help. They matched me up with a salesperson named Art. He was a nice, older guy, not too intimidating.

We took a Prius out for a test drive. I instantly fell in love with it, and wanted no other car. Upon returning to the dealership, I asked Art how long the wait was to get a Prius. He said that it has been averaging 4 months. At that point, I got really dissappointed. There was no way I'd be able to drive my crappy Jetta for the next 4 months. But Art told me that there was an extra Prius arriving at the dealership in mid-September. It was unclaimed and if I put down a deposit on it that day, it could be mine! Since it was already ordered, I couldn't pick my options or my colors. But I would have it in 3 weeks as opposed to 4 months. I decided to go for it. I put $500 down and anxiously awaited 3 weeks for the arrival of my car.

The next 3 weeks were a hassle. I had a car which drove forward fine, but could not reverse. I had to be real careful where I parked. I either had to park in an area where I could pull through a spot, or find an inclined area of the parking lot where I could use to momentum to roll back into a spot. It made the concept of parking a new challenge everywhere I went. Delivering pizzas was out of the question, so I had to borrow Colleen's car for that. This meant that I often had to drop her off and pick her up from work, or drive my car over there, take hers, then drive back later on to swap cars again.

The 2nd week of September I got a call from the Art at the dealership. My Prius had come in earlier than expected. I was very excited. I spent hours at the dealership filling out paperwork, but mostly sitting around waiting for the finance guy to be ready for me. This is where I put on my game face. I wasn't gonna get screwed over like last time. Talking to the finance guy, he let me know about all this after market crap that you could get for your car. But this guy was real down to earth. He was like "You don't really need this, you don't really need that, but the one thing that I would recommend is the extended warranty." I had got swindled into purchasing an extended warranty on my Jetta and it didn't do shit for me. So I reluctant to but another. I said "no thanks" at first. He tried to persuade me to get it, and put up a pretty convincing case to get it. Hybrids are much different than other cars. They have different parts, newer technology that is expensive to replace. He handed me a list of everything that the warranty would and would not cover. The "would" list was quite extensive. It seemed to cover everything except normal wear and tear items such as break pads. He even offered to discount it $1000. He talked me into it. My Prius will be covered for pretty much everything up to 100,000 miles. He set up my financing, and our negotiations were complete.

The color of my Prius wouldn't have been my first choice, but I really like it. It's a cool blue color. It has the most basic options package, but still has more gidgets than my Jetta, so I'm happy with it. Driving it is just like driving a normal car. The only thing that throws you off at first is the fact that the engine shuts off when you are at a stop. Your natural reaction is that "my engine has died" but really it just shuts off to save energy. It turns right back on when you hit the gas. The acceleration of the car is a lot better than I thought it was going to be, it's pretty comparable to your average 4-cylinder vehicle. The top speed is also not an issue. I got it going 95 on the highway. And the gas milage is amazing. I've averaged about 50 miles a gallon.

I decided not to trade in my Jetta, thinking that I could sell it and get more money for it. I posted it on Craigslist originally for $2500, then for $2300, then for $1900. I got several interested buyers, but none that ever followed through. The Jetta sat in our parking lot for weeks until I eventually sold it to some guy from Chicago for $1100 cash. Kinda depressing considering I bought it for $11,000 less than five years ago. Oh well, I'm just happy to get rid of it.