Home
Car Shopping
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 272
Mission #1, working, Mission #2, find a car. Recruit Chris to drive me to Kaslo, where rumour has it there's a 4X4 for $750.00.
Chat to the guy, it needs brakes, has a bent suspension rod, needs a windshield, battery. Small things, all in all, so if that's it then for $1000 I'm off and to the races.
We get there, it's in "upper Kaslo", which sounds posh - lots of beautiful, big old houses, perfectly preserved from the day when everyone had a 5 bedroom gingerbread mansion with gables and large porches and verandas...
It's quite pretty, really, spectacular even.
But ... it's in "Lower Upper Kaslo" which is the area where somewhere in the 80's or 90's people began building houses on the edges of the stately historical properties, and then began filling their yards with cars and parts cars and more parts cars...
It's nuts, really. Poor people in their vulgar shacks with their assortment of junk cars, snowmobiles, boats, motorcycles, all of which are without plates and in various states of dismantling...
This vehicle, we get out to look at it. Rusted through and through, but I don't particularly give a damn about appearances. The windshield is indeed smashed, we take it for a test drive. It needs a boost to get started. It's got lots of power, but the brakes are completely gone. Meaning that even if I had a plate there would be no driving it to Balfour, slow as we're going around the neighborhood I can't feel the shoe. And it's pulling hard to the right.
We park and give it a good look over, Chris is hum-ho - he's got a similar, lower end model, but his is in mint condition. This is not in mint condition.
Adding up the damage, $3, $4,000 to get it drivable, another month off the road, and then what? I'm trying to talk myself into it, but the abundance of "Shambala" stickers on the back of it are the final straw, I've seen, know the Shambala crowd and it's pretty unlikely they've ever maintained a vehicle in their life.
His price is dropping, $500? $400? He'll tow it to Balfour for me....
We'll think about it.
And, driving around Lower Upper Kaslo we see half a dozen better cars, some of which appear to be in great condition, all without plates, parked in the forest.
I wonder, how to make an offer on these?
***
These trips, they're expensive, having to pay Chris's time, gas, buy him lunch. $120 per failed vehicle attempt could mean I'm out of the vehicle market real quick.
***
Today, Kijiji, Facebook Marketplace, find another few vehicles. There's a serial killer styled van in good working order, Creston, $2000. Might be good, a little more room for living. But I'm kind of stuck on the four wheel drive. There's a Jeep, great condition, uphill, $5300, another one in Trail, good condition, $4200, there's a little TJ for $4500, good for the 4WD but no space for stretching out whatsoever....
And there's an old '98 Jaguar, $6500 OBO - great condition, and not at all a prospector sort of vehicle but maybe I should start driving around in something a little more befitting my station...
A Honda CRV, Thrums, $2500 - Thrums, and this is what I'm going to look at today. Having checked my bank account even this is stretching things - but - I don't want to be sleeping rough in parks anymore. Out of town is fine. My preference for Jeep is going to be swayed by finance and the likelihood that Honda probably makes a better vehicle. I'm going to be sensible for a change.
Fingers crossed.
***
And, a few hours later and I'm once again a free man. The rest of the day spent getting plates, registration, with nary a penny spare. Now some measure of freedom, to be offset by what I estimate to be approximately 2-3 months to shake the winter's debt.
The Lava Treasure
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Found
- Hits: 251
And, yet again - this time in 1956 in the Lava Gulf, a small bay off Corsica. And, naturally, treasure laws being what they are the discovery was kept secret by the Scuba Divers that found it. Estimated value - tens of millions of Euro. Many of the treasures are believed to be irretrievably lost - due entirely to out-of-date and grasping treasure laws.
A Season in Hell & The Drunken Boat - Arthur Rimbaud
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
- Hits: 313
Lured into this by his reputation, by the glowing references provided by Henry Miller, others, reading the French on the left (badly, out loud in my head) and then the English on the right (better), but I'm not smitten and my French is lousy so it's a slender book taking much longer than what it should take me to read; it's a palate cleanser of all the things I was enjoying reading. I get or understand his genius, but it's not at the moment to my taste, and the few pages remaining are proving an obstacle to my moving on and finding something else to enjoy...
Car Shopping
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 271
And Car Shopping, this is ridiculous, finding a decent used vehicle for under $40,000, forget Crypto people, buy a fraction of a used car, wait a year for it to appreciate and then sell it...what happened to the reasonably priced beater? I'm looking at $5,000, $6,000 dollars and more for a beat-up jeep from the late 80's with over 300,000 KM! "Only needs brakes and a transmission...." "My loss is your gain..." This is preposterous!!!
Anyways, surely it will happen and it will be the best jeep ever but - I got to say, it's not happening soon enough...
Page 95 of 1021