u/Garp74

Hi!!

My mother has a 9-year-old ES with less than 100,000 miles and a pristine interior. She told me today she's ready to trade it in for a new model.

Her concerns:

1. 2026 was a redesign to a new generation of ESes. She's been taught her whole life never to buy a model in its first year of a new generation. She always waits until the second year.

A) does this philosophy have any merit?
B) I see Lexus has released press releases on the new 2027 ES models back on 10 August. When would these new models generally be available to dealers to sell?

2. she's 81 years old. She's been driving for nearly 60 years. She's only ever driven combustion engines. How different should she expect the handling and suspension feel to be on either/both the hybrid and the electric from the kind of drive she's accustomed to?

My concerns:

3. she's 81 years old. New technology isn't her friend; it's challenging for her to learn and can become daunting. For you 2026 ES lovers, can you please comment on the amount of new technology she might have to learn in a 2026 ES? Opinions welcome.

4. she's only ever paid cash for cars. I'd like her to consider financing and keep her cash working in the market. It would help if Lexus were going to run manufacturer's incentives on financing rates sometime in the next few months. I guess my question is if it's likely a deal like 2.9% APR or something might be realistic over the winter months.

Thanks everyone!!

Hi!

Rented a car from National. Drove it. Returned it. The rental car facility is small and tight and had a massive line just to get in the National entrance. Took 10 minutes to get to the front of the line. No attendants visible so I put my car in the next free space. Most of the cars behind me put their cars a lane over.

Left the keys, a supervisor dude who was swamped asked me if email was ok, I smiled and said yes. I walked to the terminal.

It's four days later. I never got the email with my final charges. I have no CC charge. The "confirm or modify your return" texts stopped the moment I got to the airport.

Thoughts?

Thanks!

Fantastic design, perfect execution. Best part of the 6pm-8pm block.

Thank you, Blue Knights!!!

Massive car line to get to departures

Massive car line to get to arrivals

MASSIVE line for the Ubers to get into their pickup area. Must be a zillion people waiting for Ubers

I walk into baggage claim to meet my friends and there are gazillion folks here. And I see at least 100 people in line for the baggage service folks :(

This is crazy. It's normally quiet and winding down at this hour. Baggage claim feels like all the Euro flights landed at once.

Hi!

Wife and I will be in town late tonight. Staying downtown (18th and Champa). Was really looking forward to one of my favorite bagel joints in America, Rosenberg's Five Points, but it's closed tomorrow. I called around a few other spots and they're closed. Can you please help us and recommend a good breakfast place for "coffee, eggs, and bagels" kind of fare that's open on July 4?

Thank you so much!

Middle aged full time biz traveler here. Ex-GS. Deleted my flight memory after I reached 2k segments. Yadda yadda yadda.

Took my family on holiday to Scotland (two very enthusiastic thumbs up!). Based at IAD and was able to get saver economy award seats for us all.

Thursday night we flew to EDI in the Star Alliance livery 752. Boarding took forever. (Like my recent A321 flight. And like all the 753 flights.) Lots of fights over overhead bin space. WiFi is totally interoperable the entire flight. We hit turbulence for the first 90 minutes. So the FAs waited it out for the dinner service. But it's a 10:30pm flight. Which means they turned on all the lights and started dinner service after midnight. One of the FAs spoke at full volume to every single passenger. Sleep was not gonna happen with her. The mid-cabin lav was inoperable for the second half of the flight. And 4 hours after dinner service was completed they turned all the lights, and their full voices, back on for the breakfast service. But all that belly aching aside, we took off on time and landed early. And that's what really counts. Especially on a family holiday trip.

Today we are flying back to Dulles. WiFi has worked well the whole time so far. After boarding, a bunch of bins were closed half empty. The crew is fast and efficient. The moment a kid started listening to his mobile device without headphones the FA swooped in. The only notable thing for me was the appetizer service in Y: almonds and olives. I hadn't seen that one before. Wife had them and said they were fine.

I've been a MileagePlus member for 26 years and generally think United is a decent airline. Good crews. Decent equipment. An exceptional app (even after they've done everything they can to try and screw that up by pushing the data server side.). The food is the worst part of it, clearly. And the 75s and 764s need to go. But there's a lot they do right. (And Starlink is a game changer for the biz commuters.)

I've got 11 or 12 years left until retirement and expect I'll continue flying UA. (Also: duh, Dulles. What else am I gonna do?)

I got curious about whether our kicking situation has been as bad as I perceive it so be. So I went to Pro Football References and I pulled every placekicker who scored a point for an NFC East team from 2011 through 2025 and graded the four teams two ways. Note: I only looked at the regular season.

One of the trick parts about thinking about this measurement is that the whole league keeps getting better at kicking. League field goal percentage sat around 83 percent in 2011 and 2012 and runs around 85 to 86 percent now, and long range has changed even more. Raw career percentages just flatter whoever had their good kickers most recently. So I compared every kicker to the league average for that exact season, then added it up. "Points vs average" below is how many more or fewer points each team's kickers produced than a league-average kicker would have on the same attempts, totaled over all 15 years.

Unfortunately, the bottom line for what I measured isn't good.

https://preview.redd.it/urn79c8q9i8h1.jpg?width=2847&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=05f02307e0ccec5cf2675b725dff9ab925243e04

https://preview.redd.it/3ozzutqr9i8h1.jpg?width=2847&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8b06ce52ecff196c7aa11019e18e5ad42d482567

Two small notes:

• I adjusted for league average each season but not for distance mix. A team that attempts more long ones looks a little worse on raw percentage. That is what the 50+ column is for.
• One point in Washington's favor. The reputation I perceive us to have, as a kicker carousel, is only half right. DHop held the job for seven straight seasons, 2015 to 2021. The turnover is concentrated at the ends, 2011 to 2014 and 2021 to today. For us, the bigger issue the whole time was simply that the kicks did not go in often enough.

https://preview.redd.it/0wewhfebhj6h1.jpg?width=800&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5790d290c8975518f21040a260c004bcaaa6e565

Meet TJ, a 12-week-old yellow Labrador Retriever puppy from Warrior Canine Connection in partnership with Redwire!

I flew IAD-SEA on Sunday. One hour into the flight, I started getting severe stomach pains, and was very quickly doubled over in pain. Soon I felt nauseous and was going to throw up. It was a full flight and I was in the exit row, and I didnt want to throw up next to my fellow pax. I went to the back of the plane and the FAs there quickly figured out something was up. They were kind and compassionate, and allowed me some freedom to lurk in the rear galley and the rear lavs as I worked through my difficulties. Eventually we hit turbulence and I had to sit down, and of course, that's when I threw up. It was bad. At one point I missed the barf bag and threw up on my jeans. I also got fever and chills, and was visibly shaking.

I felt so bad for the folks around me, but on a full flight with the seat belt light on, there was nothing I could do.

When the seatbelt light turned off, I immediately took my stuff to the back and disposed of it, and stayed back there as long as I could.

I wrote United a compliments note, naming the two FAs by name. I wound up in the hospital the rest of the week, and yesterday had surgery to repair the problem and am on the mend. I missed tonight's IAD-MUC flight, and my time in SVQ this coming week, but that's the way life is sometimes.

Random: my next UA flight segment is scheduled to be on the 25th, IAD-EDI for a family holiday. It will be my 1 million miler flight!