Tag Archives: Interstate 5

How Not to Buy a Car – Part 2

The rest of the story is so excruciating I can hardly bear to relate it to you. After waiting a week, Teddy, the grinning salesman, was anxious to conclude the deal and phoned us to check on the progress of our funds. Jimmy advised him that we were approximately $3,000 short of the total not feeling the need to explain why (sales tax booboo).

Teddy was asked if a post dated check for the balance would be acceptable and he agreed. We borrowed truck and drove a wearisome hour and a half in the snow up the busy Interstate 5 through Seattle to pay for and collect our car.

On our arrival at the dealership Teddy showed us the car, anxious to get rid of it and us no doubt, handed us the keys and our temporary license plates. We moved on to the reception desk to make payment with two checks, the second of which would be post-dated as agreed. Only at this point did dear Teddy decide it would be prudent to check with his manager if that would be acceptable.

We were left standing drumming our fingers on the reception desk for ten minutes, dangling the new keys and expecting at any moment to drive away in our new car. You can guess the rest. I’m a little too ashamed of my behaviour to relate it in full but I let the sales manager and finance manager know that I was displeased that they had all wasted our time.

Jimmy was angry as well but anxious to salvage the deal that had already been struck for the one car in the whole of the State of Washington that was exactly what he wanted.

Before embarking on a fourth trip up the tiresome Interstate, Jimmy took the precaution of phoning the finance manager to be told he wasn’t in on the day and at the time when he had promised us he would be.

The duty manager phoned back and told us that our now proposed plan of paying partially by check and the small outstanding amount on my brother’s credit card (our own credit cards were still an unresolved issue, No Credit !*#@!), as had been suggested previously by the finance manager, would be subject to a 3% charge on the credit card portion. Apoplectic, we got increasingly terse with this new member of the saga until he said he would take care of it.

Jimmy went in to conclude the deal while I was told in no uncertain terms to stay in the car until the transaction was completed. I pondered possible scenarios of outcomes at great length to amuse myself; the dealer would knock the outstanding $3,000 off the purchase price as compensation for our wasted trips and distress or throw in a motorcycle that stood oddly out of place in the showroom or give us free coffees. It was only the previously offered car keys and temporary plates with which Jimmy returned.

When we went back to collect our permanent license plates I asked to be dropped at IKEA on the way. Foolishly, I thought I’d seen the last of that dealership. There is, I’m sorry to say, a Part 3.

Welcome to Civilization

Jimmy survived The Green Card Interrogation– no questions asked – at Seattle Airport having been “welcomed” to the United States by Gandalf.  A harrowing drive in a borrowed truck on Interstate 5 – the heavily trafficked north/south corridor of the west coast – in the dark and in pouring rain was Jimmy’s next ordeal. As we’d already been awake for 24 hours, I was feeling giddy. Jimmy, more used to driving an automatic on the left and now required to drive the unfamiliar pickup with manual gearbox on the right, was feeling completely bamboozled. For good measure he added, “My night vision isn’t so good anymore.”


“Oh, that’s reassuring!” A shot of adrenalin jolted me to full alertness on Jimmy’s behalf. Peering as intently as him into a bleak night punctuated with dazzling headlights and blinking brake lights, all reflected in crazy patterns on the slick road surface, I was pumping the floorboards on the passenger side all the way down the Interstate.

When at last we pulled under the apartment parking canopy with a cessation of the thrumming rain on the truck roof, it was with great relief and a measure of amazement that this part of our journey was at an end. We disgorged our suitcases into an apartment we had arranged on a previous visit to Olympia and fell into bed.

The next day, our small two-bed American apartment seemed positively palatial after months of confinement in a trailer. It was fully furnished and equipped – a little treat for our first month until we got our bearings and our belongings in our new country – and we wandered from room to room like novice millionaires inspecting our first mansion.

Deprivation had taught us to appreciate the everyday things we had previously taken for granted so we poked around and played with our new toys – the washer, dryer, microwave, garbage disposal, coffee maker, large screen TV and VCR/DVD and radio/alarm clock (which needed resetting as some bright spark had left it set and it went off at 6 a.m. Cheers, matey).

The monster fridge/freezer (how could we possibly fill it?) was five times the cubic capacity we were used to on our European caravan. The four-ring stove with massive oven, a land line with voicemail, the dishwasher –  it was all exhilarating.

It might be hard for a  normal person (that ship has sailed for me) to imagine how a washer and dryer could provoke such excitement but my undies would no longer share the laundry facilities with dog blankets, greasy overalls and mixed loads of indistinguishable lumps of gray. Each of the ordinary items in the apartment was coveted. The queen sized beds would be blissfully comfortable after our spell on thin hard trailer bunks if only our inner time clocks weren’t eight hours out of sync and we could manage to sleep through the night.

The central heating had a thermostat in every room. For two people with their internal thermostats set at always hot and always cold, to live in a trailer which was essentially one large room had been a constant source of querulous rants. “Turn that heat down!” “I’m freezing!” “Open the door!” “I’ve just warmed up!” “I need some fresh air!” “Well go out and get it!” Jimmy would sit in shorts and a tee-shirt while I shivered under a fleece blanket. The thought of being able to close a door between us and whack the heat up filled me with a tingle of anticipation. Fresh air is meant for outdoors. If himself wants to be an American, he needs to learn that.

These were the first of many adjustments we would make to life in America.