It all started with me needing to go down to Spokane to get my chocolate tempering machine. I was going to go down with my friend Melissa on Saturday morning. Come Friday night, Josh had found a really great looking car to buy for himself on the internet. It was a 1982 Audi sedan with a diesel engine and only 69K miles, for $1995 a la Craigslist in Tacoma. It sounded too good to be true (which it was), and we called the dealer about it. Josh decided to go down with me to Spokane, and catch a flight to Seattle, pick up the car in Tacoma (half hour cab ride from Seattle), and drive it back to Spokane all in a days time.
Ok, so when we relayed this plan to our parents, you can imagine the groans and warnings that came with it. Josh knew it was completely dangerous to buy a car sight-unseen but we were hopeful. Sadly, we didn't realize about CarFax until it was too late, but that will come later.
SO, we drove down to Spokane. We had a brief delay at the border crossing where we learned that it's absolutely NOT OK to bring kiwi's bought in Canada to the US even if there IS a huge "grown in California" sticker on them. So, there we were, Aloka and I hoovering 4 kiwis as fast as possible, while the border guard waited for us. She was kind enough to let us eat them and not report them as a 'confiscation' which would go on our record. "Note To Self, never bring fruit across border".
We then continued on our way and got to Spokane with not much time to spare, and by the time we got to the airport, Josh's flight was due to leave in 10 minutes and we practically had to throw him out of the moving vehicle. He was off on his adventure, and I had no idea if he'd even make the flight. Our cell phones weren't working so we couldn't stay in contact.
I had to get to the Dept. Of Licensing by 2:30pm and I got there at 2:20pm. No, wait, I actually got there earlier but then realized I needed US cash to pay for my records I was requesting. So I had to shove Aloka back in the car seat and make a mad dash for an ATM, getting back to the DOL 10 minutes before they closed. I made it. Aloka meanwhile is miserable with a cold and so sick of being in the car for hours on end, and she's still hanging in there. I perked her up by telling her she could get some gum at the grocery store. She was very excited. They have the good kind with no chemicals so I was content with that.
The grocery store was a strange culture shock for me. I haven't been in the States for almost a year and a half, and I'd forgotten what a consumer society it is compared to Canada. You can get anything your heart desires practically. They had a million kinds of Annies mac and cheese, a million kinds of chocolate bars, and a zillion kinds of cheeses. And don't even get me started on the deli section! Even the juice bar was HUGE! I had a mixture of euphoria and revulsion. It was weird.
Ok, so we're off on our adventures with gum in hand. Aloka and I took a few photos of ourselves in the car out front of the grocery store which I'll post tomorrow, and then we headed to REI. My dad and stepmom had given me an awesome REI gift card that I had never gotten around to using and I finally ended up with a great pair of new xcountry skiis. I'm beside myself with excitment! Those of you who know me well, I worked it, getting an insane deal! They were having a mega clearance, and I got them to knock an additional 10% off, plus 20% off my ski pants too. I left there pleased. I love getting deals!
By now, we're completely exhausted. Aloka has now been asking to go to the hotel for the past 3 hours and we finally do. We check in, I have no idea how I manage to carry all my bags and my exhausted and sick child at once, but I do. We get to the room, watch a $10 pay-per-view movie and snack on odds and ends. I still have no idea what's happening with Josh. For all I know, he could be stuck in Tacoma with a car that doesn't run.Around 11pm Josh gets to the hotel and crashes. Apparently he didn't miss his flight because it was delayed 40 minutes, but he did get interrogated for having "liquid" in his carry-on. He had no idea what they were talking about until they told him it was his roll-on deodorant, and that he should know better than to pack that.
He tells me that the dealer was pretty sleazy and the car isn't quite what he thought it would be, but nonetheless, has a good strong engine and got him to Spokane, even though it was pouring rain and there was no defrost in the car, so the windows were cloudy the whole time, and Josh could only drive 60mph at his fastest. It took what should've been 4 1/2 hours, about 6. He was exhausted.
Our hotel room had some kind of banging pipe situation every 3 minutes or so the whole night. So that kinda sucked as far as sleep was concerned.
Then in the morning, Josh told me the rest of his story. The car no way felt like it only had 69k on it and our fathers warnings were of course, correct. Two of the door handles are broken (one of them being the drivers side), the other in the back. Apparently, this car had been abandoned, had a window broken (which has since been fixed) and rain poured into it for weeks on end, resulting in half the car being covered in a layer of mold. According to CarFax, the car had 89k miles in 1999, so it had definitely been tampered with.
But, the flip side is that it still runs well, and gets over 50mpg. We're just not sure how many miles is on this car.
The next morning we went to our storage locker, got as much stuff out that could fit into two cars and headed off to Nelson.
I missed an exit. We ended up 2 hours off course. Josh is following behind us, and every time I stop and need to talk to him or he needs to get out, he has to climb out of his window because the passenger side is full of boxes and his door is broken. So, finally a kind woman tells us how to get back onto the correct highway and we finally get to the border crossing a couple hours later.
Josh was supposed to have had an appointment with a woman at 4pm, and we got to the border at 3:30pm so he was pretty stressed. He called the woman on the phone in the border patrols office and could only get her voicemail, so he leaves her this message saying he's so sorry he's supposed to be there in a half hour and he's still at the border. Meanwhile, I'm looking at the clock which is reading 5pm. Crap! Daylight savings! So, he's actually already an hour late and she's been waiting for him in a cafe for god knows how long.
Oh well. The border people ask us a million questions and have us fill out too much paperwork. At this point, we are declaring all our earthly possesions. We also found out that we're supposed to put a dollar amount of everything we own, ha!! Luckily the ever-so-very-cool border officer lets us just put a dollar amount per box. As opposed to the not-very-cool-at-all superior border officer who didn't even let us get a temporary vehicle permit for longer than 30 days, and barely let us use our vehicles, lame. They have SO much power by the way, those border guys. It's kind of scary.
The cool border officer (we don't know his name except by Officer 11204 or something) actually took Aloka into the office (where normal people are so not allowed to go!) and set her in front of a little hidden TV under a desk and played "Zooboomafu" for her. What he is doing with that movie, I have no idea, except that he has 3 kids himself and maybe he needs to entertain them every now and then, or maybe he's just an insanely cool border dude that has a "kids corner", which by the way, was complete with a red fish and a blue fish.
So by the time we had finished all this insane paperwork, we finally got home around 7pm. I can't believe we had only left the morning before. It feels like I've been gone a week.
I've got some pictures but if you could see the house right now, you would understand why I currently can't find the camera. Besides the very many boxes everywhere, Aloka was VERY excited about her two boxes of books, and there are now approximately 40 kids books strewn across the living room. Pictures will follow!
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