Cleaned out truck; chose car

Yesterday we went to the mechanic to get all our personal effects out of the truck.  It was the first time since the accident that I got to see the damage up close.  It was horrible.  I really can't imagine how it could have taken so much damage, especially hitting a car, not another truck.  It was a very bittersweet experience in recognizing that this is the start yet another lifestyle change.

On Sunday, we went to Carmax (highly recommended over a dealership and we definitely don't want to go private) to sit in a bunch of cars and get a feel as to what we wanted.  We did some preliminary research and had some things in mind but were open to others that met the same criteria.  We then did a LOT of research (including getting the histories of the cars we were interested in) and found a few we liked. We kept coming back to a Toyota Camry.  At first, for almost the same price, we found a 2015 with 5K miles and a 2019 with 37K.  We weren't sure whether to go with lower miles or newer model.  We googled it and asked around, especially to our mechanic, and the majority consensus was the newer model.

Before I was about to reserve the 2019, I found another one that had just arrived: it's a 2018 with 12K miles.  That is really the best of both worlds: relatively new (still under original warranty) and low miles.  Only drawback of this one is that it has an open recall, but that is easily taken care of (at  no cost) by bringing it to a Toyota dealer.  It happens that there is one a mile away from Carmax, so I will bring it over there immediately after picking it up, which will hopefully be by the middle of next week.  We do have a 24 hour test drive period, and then a 30 day no questions asked return policy, but I have every confidence we will love this car (I think I mentioned that a few weeks ago, we rented a car and it was a Camry and I fell in love with it then.  But as someone pointed out, after driving a monster truck, any regular car would be a pleasure to drive!)

On another note, here is an interesting observation.  There are a lot of crows (perhaps ravens?) in this area and we always see them either flying or sitting on a wire.  As with all birds, they sit with their wings down.  Except this one.  It was sitting there for a good 10 minutes with it's wings spread.  Strange.