scharmer05

Glad to hear you are OK. Being a first responder, I have seen a lot of crash scenes, and have been unfortunate enough to come across people who have been hurt much worse from crashes just like yours. I am guessing you must have had your seatbelt on to come away from the crash so well off. Feel better, I have had a few dumps off of snowmobiles and 4-wheelers where I have been in pretty rough shape, but you heal up relatively quickly.

I saw the "be the hammer" commercial run on VH1 while I was eating lunch.

Last Thursday night/Friday morning a thunderstorm rolled through Fargo. One of the loudest thunderstorms I have ever been in the middle of. The thunder was actually shaking the house and the lightning was non-stop. Very odd for this time of year as well as it was only like 60 that day and in the mid 50s when this storm rolled through. The storm dropped hail all the way through town, but the worst part was in the southern end of town. It dropped golf ball size hail throughout most of southern Fargo, and baseball size hail in a few places. Anyway, it happened to hit all the dealerships in town with big enough hail that they received damage. Including the Cadillac dealer, that had a brand new black CTS4 sitting outside. All the dealers are advertising hail damage sales, so a lot of people are going to be getting a lot of good deals on slightly damaged vehicles. Anyone been unlucky enough to have their car outside when one of these storms came through?

Very cool...any time I have dealt with Lunde's they have been great to me. Unfortunately I havne't got to buy anything from them, but I have gone shopping a few times and if I end up buying a new car I hope to be buying an Aura from them.

Very cool, and great pictures. Western ND looks a lot like that except for the most part, the buttes in W. ND have flat tops to them and are pretty much straight up on the sides, so there isn't much driving up them. Seeing them along with the Badlands is about the only reason to travel out West unless you are really into hunting. Much different that Eastern ND where there isn't even a hint of a hill as far as the eye can see.

This reminds me of a couple of towns in Northwest Minnesota for some reason. Fertile, MN and Climax, MN. One day in the Grand Forks Herald there was a headline that read, "Fertile woman dies in Climax."

Even If it Kills Me....by Motion City Soundtrack, a up and coming Pop Punk/Alternative Minneapolis band. It's there 3rd full length album and is bound to be the one that puts them on the map. I have been a fan of theirs for years.

Usually just spray them out with the pressure washer, but I clean the painted portions off by hand.

Row-Zow....like row row row your boat, zow pronounced the same way....definately not an "s" sound in there, its a "z"

Some local ones Minot, ND....pronounced My-not, even though a lot of the Minot locals will say My-nut. You know someone isn't from the area if you pronounce it min-ot, that is definately wrong. One of the city slogans is "Why not Minot" so I am convinced the only way it say it is My-not. Hallock, MN....seriously, its pronounced just how it look....Hal-lock, not hal-lick. McVille, ND....Macville, not micville

Yeah, the Saturn dealer here in Fargo is a Mazda, Jeep, Lincoln, Mercury, Saturn dealer. Although Saturn has their own building right next to the rest of the dealership. When you see local commercials or print ads that Lunde Auto puts out, everything is featured together.

You've got to be kidding....right? While the Caravan/T&C may not be quite as pleasing to the eye as the 07s they are light years ahead of the Astro and Safari. My mom had 3 Astros for work and those things were the most uncomfortable rolling hunks of plastic that I have ever had the displeasure of stepping foot into. Not to mention the fact that all struggled to make 13mpg with almost all of the driving being highway. My Suburban can do better than that. Luckily her company just bought her a new 07 Caravan SXT after 5 years of driving an Astros. She is happy they went with the 07 instead of an 08 after seeing the new ones, but she will tell you all the Chrysler minivans she have ever driven have been top notch. The 07 being the best so far followed closely by the 96 and 98 she has had in the past. Coming from a woman that has put over 100K a year onto all kinds of vans from GM to Ford to Chrysler, that says a lot about what kind of quality vans Chrysler puts out. I'm sure that won't change with the 08. All you have to do is get used to the styling. And to 68. The first two Chrysler vans she has driven both made it over 200K with no tranny issues. I realize that Chrysler has had there issues in the past, but not in any Chrysler that has been in our driveway. The 98 was even an AWD model.

There is an early 80s mustang that is sitting in a lot near downtown Fargo that has been there for going on 4 years now. Never moved, and now has 4 flat tires, but no one ever gets it towed.

Geez, why don't you NASCAR haters just stay out of these threads. Anyway, I hate Tony with every being of my body. He can't stand loosing now with Chevy backing him, and chevy is easily running the best out of any manufacturer out there, and has been for a while. I'm excited to see what he has to say when he can't even make the top 10 in those slow ass Toyota's. They might have them running well in a few years, but you can count any of the Gibb guys out of a championship for a couple years at least. I have more faith in Kyle. That guy can run the doors off of a car. If they give him a car that can stick to the track, he might be able to muster a few decent runs, maybe even couple wins. As far as Gibbs goes, he is a jerk. Bobby Labonte made that race team what it is today, but Joe is always looking for the next big thing, so Bobby got hung out to dry. He knew Bobby was unhappy with how things had changed at JGR, but he didn't do a thing about it.

I always leave my Suburban on instant MPG. It does make me watch my driving habits, especially when you can see it drop a couple miles to the gallon when you move up to 75 instead of sticking with 65. I also makes me lay off the gas at stop lights.

Really?....because I LOVE the olympics....along with most of my friends. Maybe we are dorks, but when the Olympics are going on, that is what I am watching when my computer is on. In fact I think a group of us are going to go up to Vancouver in 2010 to take in part of the show.

Traveling across ND.....ALL THE WAY across North Dakota.....I'm sure you can all imagine how fun that would be. A friend of mine is getting married in town right up in the corner of the state next to Montana and Canada. I live in Fargo, which is right on the Minnesota border and about 75 miles away from SD. I'm coming back on Sunday though, and might head out to the lake for actual Labor Day if it is nice enough out. I want to get out there at least one more time before it gets cold out for good.

I have it pretty easy. My mom is an ultrasound tech, and works in small town hospitals all over our corner of the state and a small chunk of Minnesota. She knows almost all of the nurses and most of the doctors within 50 miles of me, except for the hospitals right here in Fargo. I have also had the same primary physician since I was born. My sister is going to school to be a RN, I am in Pharmacy school part time and am a First Responder, my dad is an EMT, and my mom is an X-ray and ultrasound tech. So most of the time we have an illness diagnosed before we even go in. I have talked my doctor into writing me a presciption without even going in. While quite illegal, it is nice. Getting presciptions renewed is usually as simple as a phone call as well. To answer your question though, I only have to see if PA if I can't get into an MD or I choose to see a PA (which I usually do if it is something small.)

Wow what a bummer....but for me it pails in comparison to the F4 that touched down about 50 miles to the north of here on Sunday night. It was over a mile wide they are guessing when it hit the town. Destroyed most of the town. Destroyed the school right before school was scheduled to start on Monday morning. Luckily only one dead, but I doubt they will rebuild, not in the middle of ND anyway.

Congrats...hopefully it gets to you quickly

Toyota......moving forward......to self-destruction

I usually fill up at Tesoro stations. That is treasure in spanish for those of you who don't know. When Amoco got bought out, the stations either switched over to BP or to Tesoro. When the switch was made from Amoco any of the stations that switched to Tesoro were the stations that got fuel from the refinery in Mandan, ND. The Mandan refinery gets most all of its oil nationally, much of it in western ND. I have no idea if all Tesoro stations still get their fuel from Mandan, but there is a chain of stations here in the Fargo Area call Petro Serve, which carries Tesoro gasoline, who get all of thier fuel exclusively from the Mandan refinery. Plus, Tesoro has a stamp program where you get a stamp for every 8 gallons of gas you purchase and once you get 24 stamps it is goot for $5 worth of gas. If you go into a station once the night crew is working they will usually throw 2 or 3 stamps, so it is a decent deal. Better than nothing Other than that we have a lot of the same national stations and few of the others mentions on here like Sinclair and Kum & Go. BP is soon to pull out the state though. Apparently they aren't making any money here.

Thanks for the help guys. I went with Sirius. I decided that I wanted to hard wire a tuner into the Impala instead of an FM modulated unit. I have over 2 grand into the stereo in the Impala so I figured it would benefit the most from a dedicated satellite radio install. It sounds amazing except for a few of the treble notes that get a little tinny, but those were easy to cover up somewhat with the equalizer. The guy at a local audio shop that I deal a lot with here gave me a deal on the tuner. I got it for a little under 80 bucks. He would have given me a XM tuner for free if I would have wanted it he said since I have bought a lot of stuff from him. They just can't move them off the shelves. Everyone wants Sirius. I am glad that I did it the way that I did. Now I can buy a mobile unit to keep in the Suburban. That way I can pull it out of there when I am out in the field or going to go fishing in the boat or whatever else I run into.

You will have to take apart the whole dash in order to get to the radio, but it isn't too tough to get everything off. The Impala is a PAIN in the ass to put an aftermarket system in as you basically have to redo everything. If you put an aftermarket deck in, then you basically need to put new speakers in at the same time. In Impalas, the radio sends out a low level signal out to an amp that then boosts the signal up to speaker level. So if you take out the factory deck, then the factory amp does not work correctly and needs to be bypassed. So if you don't want to spend a bunch of money on installation or you really know what you are doing when it comes to car audio install, then you really don't have much of a choice except to replace the existing deck with a CD deck from another Impala. Ebay has a ton of them, once you get the dash off, it should be as easy as plugging in the new radio. I would talk to your local GM service department first in order to see if everything matches up between the CD and tape decks.

A guy at a local audio shop told me that even though the merger has taken place, nothing will be complete for about 2 years. That may be complete BS.