Don't tell my father!

After I found an apartment (I found an apartment! Yay!!) I turned my attention to acquiring a vehicle. It has been...challenging. Part of the issue is adjusting my New Yorker sensibilities to vehicles up here. The town is on a river, so there's either mud or silty dirt everywhere. It's not...shall we say...clean. The roads are mostly gravel, so the cars get beat up pretty quickly. It's very expensive to get a car in or out (barge in the summer and air freight in the winter - several thousand dollars each), so cars live here forever and are eventually laid to rest at the dump, where there is a field of cars and a school bus with trees growing out of them.

Despite all this, it's a seller's market. All the cars I looked at or inquired about were going for at least twice the Kelley Blue Book value and were in a condition that made this engineer's daughter tremble in fear. Today I heard that one of the managers at the clinic just bought a car - it's a 1986 with rust holes you can see through! My father would disown me.

A few days ago, I test-drove a cute little Kia 4x4. It was a 1998 model with 132K miles on it. The owner assured me it belonged to his wife's grandfather and ran well, and he was only getting rid of it because the gentleman in question had just had his license taken away. It had four-wheel drive and was fully winterized. He claimed it had run all winter last year. The only thing wrong, he claimed, was that the rear shocks needed replacing.

I hopped in with my roommate, and we bounced away. It was raining, which meant the pot holes were bigger, and bounced was the operative word. The car stank of cigarettes and was filthy inside, but I was lulled into a bouncy fantasy world where Febreze and seat covers heal all ills. We drove a few blocks, and then my roommate made the wise suggestion to turn the car off and start it again, just to be sure. I stopped at a corner and turned it off. I turned the key, and the engine made a few pitiful coughs and then wouldn't start. We were stranded on the side of the road in the cold rain with a dead car! Cars drove by, splashing and spraying us. We got colder and colder. I called up the owner, who seemed surprised. He came to our rescue and then said accusingly, "Did you turn it off?" I answered, "Well, you didn't tell me not to!!"

I did not buy that car.

However, I did buy a different car. It runs very well and is partly winterized. I had a mechanic (whom everyone speaks highly of) check it out, and he told me what was wrong with it. I used that to knock a couple hundred off the asking price and then took the plunge. I got a cashier's check, we did the paperwork, and it's officially mine. The inside smells like fish, but that's okay.

I'm feeling pretty good about it, despite the fact that the car has been driving longer than I have.