MattMaroon.com

I wasn’t looking for a new car. I’ve loved the one I have ever since I bought it a little over two years ago. In fact, if my business sold tomorrow for a billion dollars, I wouldn’t buy a different one. I’m not a car guy, and I’m not so insecure as to feel the need to show off obscene wealth (even if I possessed it) by riding around in a Bentley. That stuff is for poor people who become famous actors or professional athletes.

Me, I just want something luxurious. A car that pays attention to every detail. Comfortable seats. A good sound system. Suspension that makes you feel like you’re floating over a cloud. And my car has all of that.

But as we sat on the tarmac at Akron Canton last week, I saw a vehicle that made me realize the one thing my car lacks: a 3,000 gallon tank. That’s why this is going to be my next car:

First of all, what I like about my SUV is being up high and having 4 wheel drive. This bad boy is way farther from the ground, and has 18 wheel drive. As far as I’m concerned, that’s 4.5x as good.

Second, what better way is there to hedge against fuel prices than to be able to buy a few years worth of it at once? Even if that sucker only gets 10 miles per gallon highway, I’m covered for the rest of the decade. When 2009 rolls around and everyone is complaining about that $11/gallon they’re spending, I’ll laughing my ass off. As little as I drive, I’ll fill it once, and by the time it’s empty we’ll all be getting to work in solar powered helicopters.

My local grocery chain (Giant Eagle) recently opened up a chain of gas stations called Get Go. They have a gimmick where when you shop at their grocery stores and use your Advantage Card (so called because it gives you the “advantage” of paying normal price for items they otherwise mark up in order to convince you to use their Advantage Card) you get discounts on gas. For every $50 you spend, you get 20 cents per gallon off.

So, the play here is obvious. I do all of my shopping there until I spend $1,000 (not hard to do, especially since gift cards to places like The Home Depot and Bed Bath and Beyond count) and get $4 per gallon off, which is still slightly above the going rate for the cheap gas. Then I park my new car outside of the Get Go until a tanker pulls up and reloads (they’ll need it). After it leaves, I wheel this bad boy up to the pump and fill ‘er up.

I figure one tank full of 87 octane would last me at least two years, so I can turn around and resell almost all of it immediately. I would make a cool $12k per load. Then I’d just go blow $1k of it on groceries (filet mignon 7 nights a week baby) and repeat.

I wonder who I’d see about getting a nav system and some Mark Levinson speakers installed in a gas tanker.

Long time no post. Sorry about that. I’ve been consumed with the move to Cambridge and all of the startup work. That’s progressing at a pretty good pace I think.

So far I don’t really care for this place. It’s crowded. It’s loud. It smells bad. I drove to a Whole Foods that is less than 3 miles away and that took almost a half hour, and once there I had to fight through aisles so narrow you practically had to turn your ketchup bottle sideways just to get it out.

My rent here on a tiny, very old apartment is more than I pay at home for a mortgage on a recently built house in a good school district and a new Lexus SUV. And if there’s anything about this town that makes it worth the expense, I’ve yet to find it. The restaurant situation looks pretty amazing here, but I’m not sure how much chance I’ll get to try it out.

This also has to be the worst city in the world to drive in. I take multiple wrong turns on every trip even with GPS. The road layout is just that confusing. Lots of traffic circles and six way intersections. It makes you really appreciate newer cities like Las Vegas, which are basically one giant grid.

I think that from living where I do, I’ve become accustomed to space. I like my neighbors being on the other side of an acre of grass. I like having a spare room for an office. I like having a room big enough for a 55″ TV, even though I’ll never really watch it. I like having a backyard to chase my dog around. I like having a giant driveway and a two car garage.

So while this apartment is nice for Cambridge standards, I miss my home. I’m not the sort to get homesick either. I’ve spent weeks away with little trouble, but after three days here, I want to move back.

Nonetheless, we’ll get a lot more work done here. We’re already getting stuff together. I expect we’ll have a private beta up and running in 2 weeks, and hopefully a public one not too long thereafter. I’ll keep y’alls posted.