Upon arriving here last October, Mel found her "commute" was actually a 1.5 hour (each way) tube-rail-bus-walk marathon. So it turned out that a car was necessary after all. Well we now officially do have "wheels".  The aforementioned test drive turned into a purchase, and today I picked 'er up! We're now the owners of a 2002 Hyundai Coupe. But no, you didn't pronounce it right. It's "coupe" pronounced with a French accent aigu on the end. So for francaphones it's properly said, "Coupé", or for anglophones, "Coupe, eh?" Well actually in Canada it's called a Tiburon, and I have no idea what that translates to.

After comparing it to similarly priced cars, picking it *out* was relatively easy compared to picking it *up*. The dealer was way, way on the north side of London, so I had to get the car from there all the way back to our flat in Docklands (central-east). If you think that sounds easy, remember that London is a massive city, the roads are all very narrow, the street signs are different, the cars are all reversed, and the people talk funny.

To conquer this arduous task, I armed myself with the latest tools of technology: I used Microsoft Map Point Europe to plot a route for me. This trusty piece of software has led me astray on many occasion, and it certainly did not disappoint this time. It gave me a curvy route right through the middle of the city, down busy streets and through several very scary looking roundabouts. I immediately abandoned the latest tools of technology and asked the salesguy, who gave me a direct route that involved turning left once and following two highways right to our flat. Calling to my geeky side once more, I followed the entire route via Google Earth's satelite to see exactly what I was up against. I'm glad to say it went fine. And after taking me round the block a few times, salesguy waved goodbye and I was home 30 minutes later, with nary a scratch or rude gesture!

Now if only we had a place to *park* the silly thing...