Introducing, Car!

This may surprise you, but I'm not the greatest when it comes to following through on things. I know, if you've been following this blog at all over the past year, you're probably thinking "But Ryan, what are you talking about? You're the most reliable blogger I've ever seen, what with the way you constantly follow through on the things you say you're going to blog about! Remember how many Adventures in Alcohol posts you did after you started that? And lest we forget Buzz vs. The News and Buzz vs. The Internet! Why, of the three of those things, you got a full two posts!

Anyway, among the things I said I'd do and never did was a series of posts about my hunt for a car. I think I made it two posts deep in that one (one was an actual post about it, and the other was a post saying that it had snowed out and I couldn't go test driving). Well, the car hunt has since finished, so rather than waste your time with descriptions of the cars I didn't buy, here's the one I bought:

It's a 2011 Kia Sportage, and I've named it Alexander the Great (although I'm wavering on that name; it felt like an Alexander for the first week or so, but I'm not so sure of late). It doesn't have the power of the V6 in the car I used to drive (Stormin' Norman, a 2000 Toyota Solara), but for a 4-cylinder it's got a good amount of pickup. It's extremely comfortable, and a big selling point for Kia (aside from the fact that it was something like $2000 cheaper than anything else in its class) is the fact that the base models come with all the toys that you'd need to pay extra for in anything else. Mine isn't quite the base model (I got the LX AWD), but it's certainly not the top model, and yet it still comes with Bluetooth connectivity (and I can play music over Bluetooth as well, which is nice), USB port (so I can just put all my music on a flash drive and leave that connected to the car), heated seats, steering wheel audio controls, a 3-month subscription to Sirius satellite radio that I never use, and a backup sensor. It's got way more room than my last car, and overall, I'm really enjoying it.

So there you have it: my new car.

Stay tuned.