Ready to Go

The car hunt is over. Meet "Sandhog"-- a 1995 Toyota 4Runner with 165,000 miles. She came out of the factory before I had a driver's license. We've got her all ready to cross the border today. We should be at the coast by Thursday. All we need now is surf boards.

Finding her was two-and-a-half days of mildly painful hunting (Neither Forrest or I are shoppers or car people). If you used car shop with Craigslist as your only resource you may look forward to hearing:

"If you want to look at it, you have to bring jumper cables." (This was slightly better-- for the honesty factor-- than the seller who was jumping the Mitsubishi we wanted to see as we pulled up.)

"It leaks some oil and the engine smokes, but that's not a big deal."

"There's nothing wrong with it-- it has a little damage, but not much."

"You could come look at it, but my son took off with it two days ago and went to his girlfriend's house and I don't know where his girlfriend lives and he wasn't allowed to take the truck and now we're out looking for him but haven't found him yet... maybe I'll call you back."

We drove far and wide-- around all of Phoenix and Prescott, AZ.  Sandhog was sold to us by a clean-cut, honest-seeming young man working as an auto mechanic and flipping cars for extra money (probably to give to orphans). He was going to be late to church when we came to pick her up.  After we made the purchase, we got pulled over immediately for not having plates-- it was a Sunday, and no DMV was open. The cops we mostly interested that we had Alaska driver's licenses, and Forrest was mostly interested that they were cutting into our Super Bowl watching time.