cars | organised castle

It is almost a month since my last post and whilst I would not necessarily say I have been busy, I have not felt ready to share many of the things that have been going on as they all seem to have ‘work in progress’ status.

Cars – this has been a real juggling act. After our jaunt to the Melbourne Motor Show which I wrote about here we went to Ballarat and test drove a Geely X5. This confirmed our thoughts and we ordered one which we should have within the next week or so. GMan agreed to sell the Hilux ute so that has now gone to a new home. Meanwhile, the Subaru Forester which was damaged in a traffic accident in late February has finally been repaired and the hire car which we have been driving for nearly 3 months has been returned. The next step is to sell the Forester which coincidentally had a ‘spa day’ after the repairs were completed so it is looking bright and shiny and hopefully will be sold soon.

In other news, I spent a week in Brisbane recently. My visit was specifically so that I could attend several reunion events planned for the group who began our student nursing training at Princess Alexandra Hospital in March 1976. It was amazing to reconnect with women, most of whom I had not seen for 47 years since we finishing our general training. There were many hours of laughter, memories and friendships rekindled. Preliminary plans are already afoot for another in 3 years to celebrate 50 years since our graduation! I was also able to spend some time with several family members which was a lovely bonus.

The minutae of life continue and I will continue to share the regular stuff as I have been doing on this blog for over 15 years. That milestone slipped by in March without me noticing. As a matter of interest, I would love to know how you found this blog and how long you have been reading.

I can remember telling my elder daughter that making decisions was part of being an adult. She was about 14 years old at the time and vacillating about what to do in a particular situation and really wanted me to make the decision for her. That was not going to happen, hence my comment.

Today we went to Melbourne with the express purpose of making a decision. We agreed a couple of years ago that our next car would be an EV. Since then we have been debating about when we would actually go ahead and buy one. Several things have happened, including the current global instability which is substantially affecting fuel prices and supply. This is not expected to improve any time soon so we were convinced that now was as good a time as any and we needed to make up our minds about exactly which EV to buy.

Coincidentally, the Melbourne Motor Show began today and runs for 3 days. We were armed with all of our research so far and a short-list of about 4 or 5 vehicles that seemed to meet our various criteria including price, range and features. So we set off with hundreds of other car enthusiasts and would-be buyers. Once we saw the vehicles in real life and were able to sit in them our previously preferred option of the Geely X5 appears to have come out ahead.

The final step will be to organise a test drive at the dealer closest to home which is about 80km away.

Decision making is never easy and this has been particularly challenging as we are comparing features and capabilities such as battery power and range with which we have no previous experience.