Altimate Mayhem: Part 3

Yet another cliffhanger I so cleverly left on my last post about my auto situation. In all honesty I’m not doing this on purpose. Life seems to be bringing the drama to me in equal parts of ups and downs. Just when I think I’m going to get things figured out, the roller coaster takes another dip.
When last I left you, both insurance companies had decided to total out my car. I had no more room to fight. My poor baby was lost. I had just gone to the auto body shop in order to get the rest of my belongings out and say goodbye, only to be told that the car had already been towed just twenty-four hours earlier on the date that I had thought I had told my insurance company I couldn’t work around. Even with how pissed off I was, there was nothing I could do right then because it was Saturday. No one that I wanted to yell at would be in the office until Monday.
They had towed my car without telling me. They had towed my car with my stuff still in it. They had just plain towed my car away without me being able to see it one last time! I was so completely angry. Yet I had to wait to hear the next piece of ridiculous news on Halloween day. Apparently the car had been towed to SPOKANE of all places. All the way on the other freakin’ side of the state where I couldn’t just jaunt over and get my stuff back. What was I suppose to do now? My car was sitting in an auto auction yard waiting for the Power of Attorney paper work to be signed so the insurance company could have the legal right to sell it and make a profit.
The first thing I did was sit on that paperwork. They couldn’t sell my car until I sent back that stuff. In the hopes of buying my self time, I tried to figure out how I was going to get my property back. The problem with all that was, while I was stalling for time my only form of transportation was really gone, so gone in fact that it was on the other side of the state. I had to start looking for a new car, but as long as I held onto that paperwork, the insurance company held onto the money I needed to close out the still accruing loan on the Altima and make a down payment towards the new car. Talk about a catch-22.
I was still stuck asking for rides from friends and co-workers in order to get where ever it was I needed to go. It was no longer about wanting to go some place, for me it was rationalizing out where I NEEDED to go in order to have the humility enough to ask someone to take me. I hate being so dependent again on people. It was like being in high school again. You call, and you call again because people are never as available as they say they will be. You wait. You wait, wait, and wait. Whatever the actual travel time is to get from one place to where ever you’re waiting at to be picked up, it always feels like they’re coming from China.
All thought I had my license at seventeen my parents claimed the addition of me to their insurance policy would be too pricey, which left me unable to drive the family car without parental presence. Janai and I ended up living out of her car by my senior year, just so the two of us could have lives. Now here I was a grown woman and when I had asked to borrow the car to drive downtown in order to purchase my Halloween costume it was just like old times. “You’d have to ask your father.” My mother use to drive me insane with this tactic. Back then, I was stuck at home because Dad was always at work when she pulled this card on me, with no way to contact him in order to get this mythical permission. Now was the age of cell phones and I thought I had a way around her. Over confident I sent Dad a text message asking if I could borrow the car. Foiled again my Dad sidestepped me by calling my Mother’s cell phone. Disappearing into their bedroom, my Mother returned like a jury with a verdict. It wasn’t good. “Your Father says you can take the car but you can’t go outside of town, and you have to take me with you.” WHAT THE FUCK!?! I mean really!
Whether it was just my parents being the same retarded parents they’ll always be, treating me like I’m eternally ten years old, or not, I still took the whole thing as distrust of my driving ability because I had been in an accident. It wasn’t my fault. I wasn’t going to wreck every vehicle I got behind the wheel of because of my “past history”. I flat refused to go anywhere in their car under those absolutely insulting conditions. I was back to being a burden on someone else for yet another errand.
In all honesty I shouldn’t make the “people” that are driving my ass around so vague. It’s been 90 percent Cale. All because the poor bastard works for me and I’m currently representing his band. As if we weren’t getting enough of each other when I did have a car, he’s still been the most gracious one to offer. To work, home from work, to band gigs and all sorts of other places; he’s been willing to drive me around which is an activity I know he’s not overly fond of. From the bottom of my heart I need to give big thanks to that guy. He’s been a LIFE SAVER in my “time of need”. That sounds so dramatic but really that’s how I feel. I’ll pay him back and he knows it.
Life was still rolling by as I sat around wondering what the heck I was going to do about my lost belongings. The best I could come up with was calling the insurance auction company and offering to send them the owner’s manual and hub lock key in exchange for the items I wanted back. I figured that I could use it as a price inducing point; these items might make the car worth more if they were included. It was just so frustrating that I couldn’t just go to the auction yard and root through the car myself. I had no way of knowing what else was stashed in corners or under seats, besides the stuff I was already missing. My only hope was to negotiate for the stuff I could at least list of the top of my head.
By the time Thanksgiving rolled around I was still massively procrastinating. I hadn’t called the auction yard and I was no closer to signing the paperwork that my insurance company was waiting on. I didn’t even want to THINK about car shopping. I kept trying to get myself excited about having a new car but you can’t lie to yourself. I knew I didn’t have the money for this, nor would I find as great a car as the Altima had been; not for the budget I had to work with. For all the times I’ve mentioned “new” car in this story, that’s a joke in itself. A “different” car is a better way of describing what I would be looking for. New wasn’t even in my wildest dreams. It was tough.
Especially since the new ’05 Mustangs make me drool instantaneously the moment I spot one. For months I had been wondering if I’d ever have the strength to trade in my Altima for a Mustang and the answer had always no. Now that my dilemma had been solved, it was still a terrible tease. I needed a car. The ’05 Mustang was the car I wanted next. The V6 base model wasn’t that badly priced. But there was NO WAY I’d ever be able to afford something like that.
With the holiday looming and my situation still looking as bleak as ever I was rather surprised when Cale invited me to come with him down to Oregon for Thanksgiving. I was shocked that he would volunteer to spend even more time with me. The past several days we had been at each other’s throats because of my ever mounting stress from lack of independence. His reasoning was that I needed to get away from my “daily routine” for a while. Life had been tough enough just dealing with all my accident related shit. Then everything else was stacking up and dragging me down to rock bottom with a breakdown seeming imminent. The idea of going to the middle of nowhere just to be “away” from it all seemed like a completely awesome plan.
Taking extra vacation time at the last second and telling my parents that Thanksgiving would be celebrated as a family on some other day; I jumped in the truck with Cale armed only with extra clothes and plenty of music. My only plans were to hole up in a spare room and just forget the world for a couple days. The drive would be several hours and as the city receded behind me, so did my stress. We were going away from everything that reminded me of my situation.
Long road trips to far away Oregon destinations in order to forget my troubles seems to be a habit of mine. Since meeting Janai our junior year of High School, I’d always gone with her to her family’s hometown which was also in Oregon. It was an eight hour drive to this wonderful place out in the eastern mountains, and the entire way is nothing but beautiful scenery. Population 200 during non tourist seasons, this farming community was locked in the past. She and I always ran there whenever life was tough for one of us. Every time we went, we’d always job hunt and plan our escape from the real world completely.
Cale’s hometown turned out to be a place I had stopped over at once before. I had never known the name of the town, my boyfriend at the time and I had been on the sort of road trip that had left us staying at the next place we came to, and that happened to be it. What a small world it truly was, and this place was tiny! The epitome of a small town, it was so very beautiful being right on the coast and completely void of cell phone reception. That was the most liberating of all. No one could get a hold of me and I didn’t have to get a hold of anyone. I was in another world, one that was so much nicer than the one I had left behind.
The stay didn’t last nearly long enough but it turned out to be the best thing I could have done. Cale’s family was awesome to stay with. Something about eating with someone else’s family for Thanksgiving makes the holiday more meaningful. But then again I’ve always ended up celebrating the actual day of Thanksgiving with a family other than my own because of my father’s work schedule. Most often it had been Janai’s home festivities that I was sitting in the middle of. With Cale’s family I was like an observer to the whole holiday which was blissfully void of drama. When it’s not your family you aren’t privy to all the underlying things that make “family” gatherings a pain in the ass. No tension and no obligations other than eating and sleeping.
I was thankful for a million things, but without that chance to step back and think with a clearer head I honestly feel I would have sank into the pit of despair and not pulled out for a long, long time. Having the chance to sit on the deck and watch the ocean roll in, just being left to my own devices, was exactly what I needed. In that time spent alone I had a piece of my independence back.
One of the first days I was there I went with Cale down to the Ford Dealership that his father is the Parts Manager for. It had never been my intention to look for cars while on that lot, but Cale was doing his best to kick my butt into gear on that subject. I had to face the fact that I needed to buy a car. There was nothing I could do to get around that. Figuring out what I wanted in the mean time would only be more helpful.
Walking through without much real interest, I was drawn in by a VW Jetta. It was a sporty little car that was the same year as my Alitma and an automatic in my actual price range. It was red, which seemed too flashy for me, but I had to remind myself that with a different car, I had to be looking for something OTHER than what my Altima had been. The other discovery was a bight yellow 2005 Mustang. It was a quite an accomplishment that this dealership had gotten their hands on one; even back home dealerships were having trouble keeping the new Mustangs on the lot. What fun it would be test drive that Mustang; just so I could say I had!
That night Cale and I talked with his Dad and I ended up getting convinced to go back the next day for the sake of a couple test drives and maybe a dry run at the negotiation process. I couldn’t help thinking how much easier my life would be if I could find a car I wanted on this vacation as well as the possible hook-ups that could be involved since Cale’s Dad was a manager. With everything else I had dealt with I really wanted the purchase of my next car to go smoothly. I couldn’t afford to be “screwed” over or suckered into feeling secure about an older car that would just end up costing me tons of money in the long run because of maintenance. The more I thought about it, the more I really hoped the little red Jetta was the car for me.
I loved the fact that when I showed up that next morning, the sales man had already been prepped with the understanding that one of the cars I was to test drive WOULD be that Mustang. When the Jetta and the Mustang were pulled off the display in order for me to drive I felt horribly guilty. The Mustang would be purely a flight of fancy, but with the way the salesman’s eyes had lit up at the idea I knew he was hoping I was going to spend some real money on a car. He was in for a terrible surprise.
I showed my darn responsible side when I decided to take that Jetta out first for a drive; at the time, with keys dangling in front of me, everything was screaming at me to take the Mustang and run. Right as I got in, to pull the car into the back neighborhoods, I realized I hadn’t been behind the wheel of a motorized vehicle since my accident. Everything felt wrong and foreign. As it would be, the first thing I encountered as I followed the salesman’s instructions of where to go driving, was a car rolling up to the stop sign of an intersection I was going through that didn’t look like it was going to stop. I had a minor mental freak out. Whatever unresolved issues I had about driving, because of my accident, were surfacing and I honestly had no idea what to expect. I was scared of being hit again, especially since I was in a car that wasn’t even mine.
Like a freakin’ Grandmother I rolled through town at several miles under the speed limit feeling the whole time like I was taking my drivers test over again. I had my parents’ distrust in my ability to drive setting into my brain so I was horribly worried that the salesman would think I was an unsafe driver as well. Not a single detail did I remember about the way the car handled or what the inside even looked like. I was in a zombie like mode that would get me through the test drive and out of the car. Suddenly this wasn’t about buying a car; it was me being able to operate one again.
I was loosening up by the time I rolled back into the dealership. Cale got to talking to the salesman about the car from a buying prospect and that cleared my head of all the retarded fears that were taking over my brain. The accident was in the PAST and I was shopping for a car that would be my future. I needed to snap out of it and start paying attention. I also had a Mustang waiting for me, and I was not about to waste that opportunity by driving that car as if I was my grandmother.
I was like a kid at Christmas when I was handed the keys to that Mustang. Everything up to the moment I turned the key in the ignition was gone. There was nothing else in the world but me and that car. The salesman had to crawl into a backseat that wasn’t really meant to hold a human being. The back windshield slanted at such an angle that there wasn’t room for something larger than a five year old to fit back there. I just sat in the driver’s seat for a moment taking it all in. The seat was laid back and low with the dash and the consoles wrapping around it. You didn’t have to move from your laid back position to reach anything; it was all at your fingertips. The seat was meant to hug and hold you while you flew down the road. Finally shifting into drive the car reacted like the animal it was named after. This engine wanted to run and I had to ride the break the whole way off the lot in order to keep her under control.
Taking the same drive through back neighborhoods I was almost impatient to get back up on Highway 101 to let this car really do what it was capable of. Both Cale and the salesmen gave me detour directions in order to do just that. Get me out in the highway ASAP. From a dead stop to almost eighty miles an hour the acceleration was hardly noticeable; the car just seemed to smooth out and purr as the speed increased. This time around I had to remember to keep it down to the actual posted limit, but it seemed like such a travesty to the design of the car. Flying past town and heading toward uncharted territory I knew the road would turn back into a two lane scenic route along the coast that would leave me with few options for a turn around.
Seeing a traffic light up ahead Cale advised me to turn off the highway there in order to get going back into town. Waiting for the turn light to change, I also decided to pull a u-turn through a wider part of the road in order to get back to the traffic light and onto the highway. Right as I steered the car into the u-turn I prepared for the turning radius that the Alitma had had, when the Mustang turned like it was on ice and in a fraction of the space I anticipated I had to laughed right out loud. Everything that car did was smooth and graceful.
Pulling back into the parking lot was the saddest thing I have ever done. To hand over the keys after having scoured that car from hood to trunk, and knowing I could never afford to drive one was absolutely heartbreaking. The car was perfect and if I had been shopping for real I would have bought it right then. I don’t regret taking that car for a test drive. I never would have had the courage to go to a dealership and do it any other way. My only solace was that after I was rich and famous I knew exactly what car I would by first, the wondering was over.
The salesman stood there looking expectant as Cale and I stared at each other, lost for what to do now. Since I had pretty much wasted the test drive on the Jetta lost in ridiculous worries that had nothing to do with my actual ability to drive, I asked to take the car out again. This time the salesman handed me the key and said he’d leave the two of us with the car. My confidence bubbled right up at relief that the salesmen wouldn’t be sitting in the backseat this time.
The drive went very differently this time. Cale and I sat in the car for several moments poking and prodding at all the buttons on the dash. We discovered that even though the deck had a cassette player in it, there was a button for CD that gave us a “No CD” readout which meant there was probably a player in the trunk. That was good news indeed. I hadn’t been thrilled about having to go back to the car cassette adapter for my music collection. Finally out on the road we were bumping the radio to see how the system sounded. It wasn’t fantastic but it wasn’t like listening through a tin can. I was also taking the back neighborhoods at a lot faster rate than I had the first time. I really wanted to know how it handled. Without the salesmen with me I feel a whole lot more freedom to mess around and really see what the car could do. It cornered really nice, that I quickly discovered. It was also a 6 cylinder so it accelerated with a whole lot more power than my four banger ever had.
Choosing to keep going past the point I had turned around with the Mustang, I was having too much fun driving the car. When I saw the open ocean I realized I had to turn around and promptly did using a little gravel scenic spot on the opposite side of the road. I was still doing about forty miles per hour when I turned across traffic and did an awesome controlled slide through the gravel. The car came to a stop parallel to the road and when the dust settled I pulled right back into traffic heading back to town. I hadn’t lost my touch and this car was definitely fun to drive.
Parking the car back on the dealership lot I began exploring the interior and exterior, checking under the hood and trying to take in all the little details that would be important if I decided to sit down and start bargaining. The passenger side view mirror had a crack in it and I knew how much that cost to get replaced. I made the mistake of asking the salesman about the CD player, he had no idea that it even had one. In the trunk we discovered a six CD changer which made me very pleased indeed. I had been all jealous of the fact that my parents had just purchased a brand new Nissan Sentra that had come with such a changer as stock equipment. If I bought this car, I would be set with the extra bonus of having it safely stashed in the trunk.
The time had come to give up the pretense that the Mustang was a viable purchase for me. So I announced this to the salesman when he pointedly asked me what my decision was so far. The Jetta would be the only car I was going to think about and felt a little part of my heart break as the Mustang was taken back around to its display spot on the street. I was suddenly reminded of the part from “Gone in 60 Seconds” when Nicolas Cage’s character strokes the roof of the Shelby GT500 Mustang right before he hotwires it and drives away. That 2005 Mustang was my Eleanor and one day I would conquer it.
Asking for some time to think, the salesman melted away again while Cale and I took a turn about the lot and I took the time to think out loud. I kept coming back to the same thoughts I’d had last night. If I could get this car now, things would be so much smoother. Into the showroom we marched deciding to take a crack at this whole negotiation process.
The process of buying a car went about the same as it had the last two times I had sat in on that sort of thing; when the Altima was bought and when my boyfriend at the time bough his truck. I felt a strange sort of detachment through the whole thing because it wasn’t the end of the world if I couldn’t get the car. This was the first choice I had come across in a search I figured would either go very quickly or just the opposite and take forever.
In the end he couldn’t get the price where I could afford it and I walked out. There was something really powerful about seeing the guy run back up to us as we were pulling out of the parking lot. “If I can get the price you want, you’ll buy the car?” The guy definitely wanted the sale and I was willing to agree. I wouldn’t be in town the next day so whatever the guy came up with after Thanksgiving; it would have to be good. Some part of me didn’t care. I was just glad to have gone through that warm-up round of car shopping. On the other hand it was a fun car and it wouldn’t be a bad purchase. My boss who’s a total car nut has had several since I’d known him, so they couldn’t be bad cars to own.
Friday I got a call while I was at work, from the Ford Dealership saying they had found a bank that could do my loan at the price I wanted, which meant all I had to do now was get back down there and finish the sale. There was a ton of loose ends I had to figure out in the mean time. I had my belongings that were still sitting in the Alitma and after that got figured out, and I had to sign and mail out the Power of Attorney in order to get the money I was using as a down payment. Transportation back down to the dealership was also a problem. The last thing Cale wanted to do was make that long drive down again only for us to turn around and come back up in two cars. I agreed. I really didn’t want to try and follow him home. That meant we had to find another way down there.
It wasn’t going to happen by train that weekend. The holiday had booked them solid. But after calling everyone else we know that was in the area and heading back to Oregon, we were left with Amtrak as our only option and December was my arrival date at the dealership. The salesman was less than pleased to hear that news. I’m sure it had something to do with monthly sales ratios or something. I was wrecking some sort of quota for him. Too bad!
Yesterday I accomplished several things that had been on my To Do list. The first was calling the auction yard. The woman I spoke was very helpful and seemed to have the same frustration with my insurance company as I had. She also gave me some news that was both infuriating and fortuitous at the same time. The company did have my car, but it wasn’t in Spokane. Spokane was just the headquarters for the company but they had several lots in Washington State. My insurance company being based out of Texas merely assumed that since the company was based out of Spokane that was where the car went. When I got the address for the lot that actually had my car I wanted to cry for joy and annoyance. Since being towed on October 28 it had been sitting less than a block from my place of work. This entire month I’ve sat here freaking out about how to get my stuff back and worrying that I’d never get to see my car again, and it had been a two minute walk from where I spent eight hours a day, seven days a week. AHHHHHH! It was the perfect end to the retarded roller coaster of events that had started with a jackass that had decided not to yield to oncoming traffic (me).
Cale gave me a ride over to the auction lot shortly after I found out where it was. Calling ahead I was told they would “stage” the car for me so I could get the rest of my belongings from it. Following the instructions that were given to me at the office when I arrived to check in, I traced a yellow line into the huge warehouse I had only seen from the road as I went back and forth to work.
Inside was a horribly depressing wasteland of broken vehicles as far as the eye could see. So many were far worse than my Altima and each one of them had a story. A story that was as heartbreaking to the owner as mine had been to me. Nearby a large Explorer had a rather frightening pattern to the way the windshield had shattered. The pattern matched that of one that would come from a high velocity hit of a human head, i.e. the driver. That horrible thought made me look at the rest of the wrecks around me with new horror. What if some of these cars had involved fatalities? All that pain and suffering was stuffed into one large building and that creeped me out hard core.
Turning my focus to what had once been my baby, I dove in to get the items I knew about first. I immediately encountered a problem. Inside the car, who ever had towed or stashed this car to ready it for auction had managed to get the front bumper completely wedged cross wise inside. I knew that I had cleared out my glove box the last time I had been in the car, which was fortunate because there was no budging the bumper in order to get into it. In the backseat, besides the other end of the bumper that was leaving a permanent greasy imprint into the upholstery was the fender that had been completely crumpled at the time of the impact. The license plates and my customized frame were waiting for me in the driver’s seat, which was a good thing because I had forgotten to grab a wrench. Rooting through the trunk I grabbed several things I had forgotten were there and closed that for good.
After taking several pictures from an angle that left the damage out of sight I realized that it still had the warehouse in the background. I could never pretend those pictures were anything other than the last shots of a broken vehicle. But I was glad to have the pictures; at least I would have the memories to go with it all.
As we packed up the things we had gathered out of the car, a forklift rumbled by with a car precariously balanced on its forks. Cale and I both stared up in shock as I mentioned how sad it would be to see your car being moved around like that. “I think that’s how they staged your car,” Cale murmured as forklift rolled out sight. That was too much for me to think about and I had to leave. This was truly it I realized as I walked out of that building, the car was no longer mine and that was the last I’d see of it. I hoped that it went to someone that would fix her and take good car of her. She had been cut off in her prime and I just didn’t have the means to get the maintenance done.
And so the saga ends and a new, hopefully happier, chapter begins with a VW Jetta. I still need to get down to the dealership to sign paperwork, but the accident half of this story is at an end. I really hope this is a good decision. Only time will tell.