Quote:
Originally posted by Uncamitzi
I was striking out with the chicks... I'd pick them up in my 87 Subaru GL, which was in pretty good shape. It had good paint, no body damage and ran well with 190,000 miles on it. It just wasn't the car that I felt comfortable going on dates with... so I wasn't dating...
One day I was driving home and a Jeep cut me off. I mean this guy cut in front of me so hard that I thought that we kissed bumpers! So being the calm, quiet person that you all know and love, I jammed on the gas and squealed around him and cut him off... Well our road rage was escalating and at one light we pull up side by side. He was on the right side of the car and motioned for me to roll down the window. The 87 did not have power windows, so I had to reach across the passenger side and roll the window down. The Jeep guy said very simply and with out much anger, " your car is a piece of ****."
Now, I've really never worried too much about the appearance of my car, but between not having had a date for over a year and this guy's matter of fact statement, I got to thinking about my situation. That day I went home and got on the Internet to look for a car that, number one I could afford and number 2, looked good.
I opened ebay up and did a search on Subaru's. The 87 was the 4th in a long line of Subari that had proven their reliability and ease of maintenance. A Pearl SVX stood out. It looked just like the one that my best friend drove. He is a Stockbroker (Financial Adviser is what he likes to be called) that always had a good looking girl in the car with him... SVX!!! That was the answer!! Good looking Subaru that attracted women!! So I bid 3500.
"Reserve not met." I had never bought anything on ebay before. So I bid again. 4000... "Reserve not met.”...
"Wait just a minute here... How much does he want for this thing?" I thought. So I looked at a few other sites and found prices from 2500 to 12,000. I had 5500 to spend. That was it that's as high as I could go... I thought for sure that I'd have to settle for a station wagon, but I bid one more time. 5000. "Reserve met." I was smiling! only 1 hour to go on the auction and I would have my car!
I got back to work after setting my outlook alarm to go off about 5 minutes before the end of the auction. I got buried in work and almost forgot about the auction until the screen started flashing at me. I switched back to ebay, and to my horror I saw that I had been outbid. By 50 bucks, and there was less than a minute to go! Some a$$hole was going to get my car! I pounded the keyboard to get the bid to 5100. I pressed the bid key and prayed (yes, Randy I guess you're right there are no atheists in foxholes!). When the screen changed I was the winner. 5100 bucks for a car that I really knew nothing about.
It was in a little town in Oregon and I was in Santa Clara, Calif. I emailed the guy to acknowledged the purchase and he asked me when I could pick up the car... I hadn't even thought about that. THE TRAIN!! I could take a couple of days off and take a nice calming train trip up to Bend Oregon and pick up my new car!
The owner would come and pick me up at the “train” station. As the train did not really stop at the little town, they had a bus that took passengers the last 70 miles. I thought, Great! A nice train ride and then a bus ride through the mountains.
This is getting kind of long so… I’ll stop here as I’ve got some work to do.
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OK.. where was I (Istill think this thread belongs in the General Babble area)?
Ok I was going to catch a train (I'm still leading up to my first driving experience in a SVX). I took off early from work after purchasing tickets over the internet for the train ride... I was on an adventure!! I had called the owner and he assured me that the car was in great shape and would make the 500 mile drive with no problems.
The train ride was going to be about an 18 hour trip. And I would be arriving at the bus station (remember the train didn't stop at this little town) at about 1pm the next day. I was having a blast. I hadn't had too much time off of work since I had started working for this new company, and I hadn't taken a train ride for over 10 years. So I took a taxi to the San Jose train station. And started waiting for the train at about 5pm... train is supposed to leave at 5:45pm ... At 8:45 They say there is going to be a little wait because the a Freight Train had missed a switch and had to back up about 4 miles to make the right turn. I guess it took this train 4 miles to come to a stop... (wonder if they warped any rotors...?) At about 10:30pm the train arrived. I got on found an empty seat and got comfortable. I wanted to sleep so that in the morning I could watch the world (or at least Northern California) go by!!
Kind of like now... I thought I could get further into this story tonight but ... I'm having trouble keeping my eyes open... so... I'll leave off here and carry on with the third installment soon...
Night all