My wife just told me that Las Vegas is burning.. wel at least one of the big hotels is burning (Monte Carlo hotel).  This is actually quite close to Excalibur, the hotel we’re going to be staying at. Next to Monte Carlo hotel is New York New York which is, together with the Bellagio (which is on the other side of the Monte Carlo), being evacuated while i’m typing this. The fire seems to be burning at three different locations in the hotel and is on it’s way from the top floor all the way down. Let’s hope everybody get’s out there safely and damage stays under control.  Fox channel 5 Las Vegas is reporting this live.

One of my RSS feeds just notified me about a must have tool for our car. We really cannot do without this one, i hope we can order it before leaving.

It is an exhaust burger grill!!! So, while driving we’re able to cook. And since we’re doing more than 3000 miles, we won’t have much time to eat and this tool will come as a big help. No only something that makes Coke from airconditioning condense and we don’t have to stop at all. We’re using the Top Gear Toilet construction™ for our personal exhaust (see below).

It might be because of the time difference between The Netherlands and the US, but the American car sales people are not all that quick with their responses. Because we still don’t have an (final) offer or even a reaction from some of the Jeep Cherokee owners, we decided that we have to go on with our search.We want to buy a car as soon as possible, so most likely the most responsive car-salesman will have the deal.

Of the three Jeep Cherokee’s we have two left. The black one with the incorrect odometer and the white one where the seat position cannot be changed. Besides these two cars, we’re looking at four other cars.

Let’s begin with the white Lexus LS 400 and the green Cadillac Seville. These two cars are owned by the same company, at the moment. We proposed to let them decide on which one he can make the best deal. That’s not our normal way of buying a car, but we couldn’t make the decision. The Lexus is in every bit the better car in comparising with the Seville. The reliability of the Lexus is well known, but the looks of the Seville… Pff, hard decision…

An other great option will be a white Cadillac De Ville. It’s a bit different than the Cadillac Seville, but also nice. This car is for sale at a company who had our dreamcar…. A white Seville STS, with leather and even a ‘maffia’-white/yellow stripes on the tyres.

We where in negotiation but then somebody else bought the car. That was a real dissapointment. We where both really crazy about this car. But too bad…Let’s hope that this De Ville is still available.

The last of the cars we are interested in, is a purple Dodge Durango. It’s pretty different than the rest of the cars, but we like the strong V8 engine, the nice odometer reading and that it’s a 4×4 car. The only problem is the price, because it’s a bit more expensive than the other cars.

Every evening i’m e-mailing and phoning with the US to get us a car. It’s nice but i will be very pleased if we can make a deal this weekend and then focus on our trip: the bumper stickers and other accesoires we need for the car, the GPS Navigation we need for our trip, the GPS tracking device that we will use to update our route on this site, our motels and hotels we have to book on the way, the sighseeings we want to see, en what so ever.Let’s get this over with.

Come on, Las Vegas car sales , show me how slick you are and sell me the car we love.

The presidential election are not that far away anymore. On the 4th of November (most of) the American people will choose their new president for the next couple of years. Here in Europe we do things differently, especially in the Netherlands. We have a kingdom and our lovely Queen Beatrix is leading the country since 1980. Well, leading? Her job is more to open some buildings and exhibitions and sometimes welcome a foreign king or president.

The US Presidential Election happends in a different way than I am used to. Under the 12th Amemdment of the US constitution, the president has to be elected by an Electoral College. Every state will have their own election, but only to figure out what amount of Electors every party gets. At the end of the race you will have 538 Electors. They will choose the president of the United States. In this system, which i think is a good one for such a big country, it is hypothetically possible that the president will have the most electors even when he doesn’t have the most votes. Because if you win in a couple of important states, you can become president while not beeing chosen by the multitude of the people.

Because the US is such an important country for Europe and the rest of the world, everthing is being followed on the internet and TV. Even the pre-elections are a daily item on the news. On the democratic side we have Barrack Obama, pretty unknown in the Netherlands, John Edwards, we know him from a couple years ago, Hilary Clinton, well known and loved in the Netherlands because of her famous husband, and some other guys we have never heard about.On the republic side, wich i think have a very small chance on winning the overall elections, because of the not so loved policy of President Bush, are Rudy Guiliani, former mayor of New York duing 9-11, Fred Thompson, the actor, and some other man i know nothing about.

But are these men and woman the best to run the most powerfull country in the world? I want to suggest another person, who has an answer on every question you might have.

His name is Walter!

So, yesterday we finetuned the route (we’ll put that up later) and today we’ve put our focus to the insurance our new used car. Currently we’re exploring two very fine cars so we wanted to check out what the insurance would cost. Seems like insuring a car as we are trying now isn’t really easy. We have to fill in a form, which is actually compact version of our lives on paper, and this form needs to be sent to the insurance agent (which, as Quintijn told earlier, is Mrs Alessie) she then forwards it to one or two insurance companies in the US which then respond with one or two things; first: can the car be insured and second: what does it costs?. There is a rather special condition though, because the car needs to be bought already before requesting an insurance. So, we need to buy the car but which an insurance clause (which says that when the car cannot be insured the transaction is off). According to Mrs Alessie, it shouldn’t be a problem so Quintijn is now talking to the car owners to check how we can setup this deal.

I’m not yet displaying the cars, i have high hopes on one of them and we will show everything about the car as soon as it is in our possession
With a bit of luck and Quintijn doing his best the car might be ours this evening or tomorrow!