TRAVEL

Some manufacturers, including General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler , now have online web referral sites. The two most compehensive auto sites are Edmund's and MSN. Of the sites mentioned above, Auto-By-Tel is currently the best known for actually buying vehicles online and operates with the largest volume. It is well worth a try. Dealers pay a fixed monthly fee to Auto-By-Tel for exclusive referrals. I used Auto-By-Tel for an auto purchase, and I was entirely pleased by the price and the ease of the purchase, although I now prefer to correspond with dealers directly by email. MSN operates in a similar manner to Auto-By-Tel. AutoWeb works a bit differently, by charging a fixed rate to dealers per individual referral. Edmunds' is especially useful to acquire invoice prices paid by dealers and the hidden sources of dealer profit, such as "holdbacks" (a kickback of often 2% to 3%) from manufactures to dealers to help them finance their inventory. Do not assume that invoice price leaves no margin for profit to dealers. You also can use the Web to ferret out advertising fees some dealers try to add, and to keep track of customer rebates and dealer-incentive payments from carmakers. Retailers don't have to give them to you, but you can use them to exact a better price. You also can find out about carmaker rebates available if you don't accept the carmaker's subsidized low interest rate financing.

Perhaps the most innovative site selling cars is CarsDirect, formed by Michael Dell and Bill Gross. They purchase cars from dealers in quantity, receiving a volume discount that they pass along to customers. For the car you choose, they not only supply the list and invoice price, but also their price immediately. You can compare their price for different vehicles you are considering online. Since their price is so easily acquired, it would make sense to start with their price before going to other sites to compare with the competition. Also try InvoiceDealers.com. But if you have done your research and know what you want and what to expect to pay, you can circumvent all of this by corresponding by email with all of the relevant dealers in your area. Nearly all dealers have web sites providing their inventory and their email address to use to request a price quote. Most of the car buying sites would refer you to a dealer's email manager anyway, so you might as well just do it yourself directly. If you really want to take the time to do some hard bargaining, you might wish to buy the information sold by Fighting Chance. They recommend an approach that involves sending faxes to dealers, and reputedly can be very effective in producing competition among dealers, especially if the vehicle is not in short supply. Alternatively you can purchase their information package, and correspond with dealers by email (hard to beat). If you don't want to pay Fighting Chance, you can acquire much of the same information for free at Edmund's Auto Buyer's Guide and then correspond directly with dealers by email to acquire their "internet prices" on vehicles you find in their inventories online or to be ordered. I use Edmunds and then correspond with dealers on the internet.

If you have not chosen the car or truck to buy, you can find reviews and road test reports at Microsoft's CarPoint, Kelly's Blue Book, Edmund's Auto Buyer's Guide, and the Consumer Guide Auto Guide. Edmund's site includes its public "chat line," Town Hall, at which you can find extensive online discussions and comments by consumers. You also can find online the Consumer Reports ratings of cars and trucks. Although biased by advertising, it nevertheless can be useful to read the reviews in the car-enthusiasts magazines' web sites, including Car and Driver, Motor Trend, and Road and Track. The Motor Trend site includes a buying service.

Regarding safety of vehicles, see the Insure.com Crash Test Library, containing crash test results from the National Highway Traffic Safety Institute, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, and the Highway Loss Data Institute. Although somewhat redundant, you may also wish to go directly to the Insurance Institute's excellent site, Carsafety.org, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's site on Vehicle and Equipment Information .

Instead of trading in your old used car, or selling it yourself, you may wish to consider donating it to charity. There are now many charities that accept donated used cars. One that makes the procedure especially convenient is the Allstate Car Donation Association .

If your travel is resulting in a temporary or permanent move, then you may have use for monstermoving.com, Roost, and for the National Association of Realtor's Realtor.com , which has a vast nationwide database of houses for sale. For information on housing price appreciation rates over the past 10 years in various markets throughout the U.S., see homestore.com. If you are considering moving here to Lawrence, you might be interested in its quality of life. If you are moving and are concerned about the possible effects of climate change on the location, you can acquire a report at ClimateAppraisal.

If you need a map to locate your destination, enter the address of your destination in MSN Maps & Directions and you will be amazed to find that this site will produce online a map taking you directly to the door. The resulting map can be transmitted to others, if for example you wish to provide map instructions for others to get to your destination (

). If that doesn't do, then try the mapping service of MapQuest or Yahoo Mapping . In this regard, you also may find useful the links in the section, "Search for a Person's Address and Map Location," provided in the Search Tools and Resources section of this web site. Then there is the famous Google Maps and the amazing Google Street-Views.

From Lawrence: Directions and map from the University of Kansas main campus in Lawrence to the Vista Condominiums building, at which I sometimes run events on its Mezzanine Level. The Vista is across the street from KU Medical Center in Kansas City. The address is 3838 Rainbow Blvd, Kansas City, KS 66103. Briefly, the route is Interstate 70 to Exit 422A. At the bottom of the exit ramp from Interstate 70, make a right onto the 7th Street Trafficway (also called Route 169). Continue heading south on that trafficway, which becomes Rainbow Blvd. after you cross the river. The Vista is on Rainbow, just before the intersection with 39th Street. KU Med is on the left side of the street and the Vista is on the right side of the street, both on Rainbow.

An alternative route from Lawrence is route K-10 to I-432 east to exit 83 onto I-35 north, heading towards Des Moines. Take exit 234 from Interstate 35 directly onto Rainbow heading south. The exit from I35 to Rainbow is only a few blocks from the Vista. But unless you are close to K-10 in Lawrence, the Interstate 70 route is faster.

Arriving at the Vista:: There is guest parking at the front of the Vista building. If you will be attending a large event, there may be no remaining guest parking, when you arrive. If so, pull up to the building's front entrance and inform the concierge in the lobby of your reason for being there. He'll assist you with alternative parking. The Mezzanine level is one flight up from the lobby level. There is a flight of stairs from the lobby level directly to the Mezzanine. There also are two elevators, but to get to them you would have to get through a door that usually is locked. You could request the concierge to let you through. But you will probably prefer to use the stairs from the lobby, since the building's conversion is still underway, and one of the elevators is being used as an unfinished freight elevator.

From Out of Town: If you will be arriving from out of town and will need a hotel near the Vista, then the best choice is the nearby Best Western Inn & Conference Center (913-655-3060) or the even closer (but possibly more modest) Sun Inn at 3930 Rainbow Blvd (913-236-6880), which is a Days Inn chain motel. Although the Sun Inn does not have its own web site, you can read about it at Yahoo, Visit KC, MANTA, or CityInsider Hotels. You can read about both of them at Real Travel. Both hotels are on Rainbow within walking distance of the Vista, with the Best Western being about 5 blocks from the Vista in a strip mall and the Sun Inn being about 1 block from the Vista directly across the street from KU Med. Here are driving directions from the airport to the Vista.

Events: The first event at this venue is to be a presentation by Mike Belongia of a paper that he coauthored with Mel Hinich. For this event, a special arrangement has been made for attendees to park on the main level of the garage, since others will be using the guest parking. Drive into the garage (entrance at the left side of the building) and park on its main level. The garage door will be open. There is a short flight of concrete stairs from that level of the garage directly into the mezzanine level of the building. Do not park on the surface lots at the front or back of the building or the lower levels of the garage.