So after my experiences at Katie’s Cars and Coffees, I felt confident that finding Jessica a new home would be straightforward. A day or so went by, and I had not heard from the young man I had spoke with at Katie’s. so I went about the process of listing her for sale on a couple of venue’s.
The first was Craigslist. I’ve never listed car for sale there, but I bought Jessica from an add placed there, albeit, 9 years ago. I got all my photos set up in an album on Google Photos, and built my ad which included a link to the album. Of course, Craigllist complained that a direct link to Google was not allowed… So I built a forward page here and used that. The other weirdness is CL didn’t want to display the phone number I had placed in the ad. Anyway, after a bit a futzing, I got it where I was happy with the ad and published it.
The next venue was s2ki.com. You have to become a “premium” member to post for sale their, so that done, I basically replicated the info placed on CL. Fairly easy. I had posted a link to the posting in the “Vintage Users” section of s2ki, and subsequently got several less than positive remarks about the pricing.
A couple of days later, I got an e-mail from Evan, the young man who I had spoken with at Katie’s, asking about the car. At this juncture the only feedback I had gotten from either ad were messages asking the lowest price I would consider. What a great way to start a communication. None of these trolls were responded to.
We communicated back and forth a bit, and I sent him a link to the photo album, and included a fairly detailed dissertation of the state of the car. A file listing all the service info was sent with the other stuff. After a bit of to and fro, we settled on a drive at Safeway in Springfield on Friday afternoon.
On Friday, the weather refused to cooperate. It was nice and clear in the morning, but by late afternoon it was raining heavily. We waived off the drive and tentatively planned for Saturday after lunch. This worked out well as Meghan, Rob and Rob’s mom were coming over for dinner, and the test drive would have been smack dab in the middle of that. Dinner was fish taco’s and they worked out well and we had a pleasant evening with them.
Saturday morning it was a bit overcast and still wet, but I was hopeful that it would clear up by the time I had to leave to meet Evan. My hopes were fulfilled as it was clear, cool and dry when I left. I had sent him a link to what I thought was to SafeWay in Springfield, but in actuality it was a Giant…. Doh. I sent Evan a text, and he said no problem, he was using the link as well, so it worked out.
I arrived a few minutes before him, and was parked in the lot waiting next to the Shell station. A young man came by to get a car parked nearby and complemented the car. Evan arrived shortly thereafter, we talked for a bit and he got in the car for a drive. We took our time and he drove the car for about half an hour before finding our way back to Giant. Getting out of the car, we chatted for a bit, and he made a financial offer that was within my pricing “fiddle-factor” so I accepted his offer. The only complication was he asked if I would deliver the car to his house as after a recent move to Virginia, he didn’t have a VA driver’s license yet, and thus could not directly insure the car until his appointment a VDOT.
When I got home, we went about the process of finding the title of the car, and of course it wasn’t with the other titles in the fire box. H’mmm. We went to bed and I was thinking about where the title could have been. In thinking about it, the title was in the file cabinet that was downstairs, along with a plethora of other documentation that we had collected over the years. One of the first things that we did when deciding to sell the house was to clean out the file cabinet and the cabinet went to Meghan and Rob’s. Most of the documentation was OBE (overcome by events) and disposed of, but a few critical items were placed in a moving box.
So, on Sunday morning I went out in the garage, and lo and behold, it was the first box I looked in. Yay! So, I let Evan know that I found the title, and we agreed to meet at Suntrust bank in Springfield to get a cashiers check on Monday afternoon.
On Monday afternoon, I left work a few minutes early, came home, got the car and headed out with Melanie in tow to the bank. Evan arrived shortly after us, and he and I went into the bank to get the check cut. It was obvious they don’t do this much as it took a bit of time, but all was done and we departed to deliver the car to Evan’s house.
It was about a 30 minute drive, and it was definitely a mixed feeling driving to his house. While happy to sell her, we had spent 9 good years together and I know that I would miss her. We arrived at the house, Evan printed out a bill of sale from VDOT, we filled it out and I signed the title, and were done. After chatting a bit, Melanie and I left in her car, but I grabbed this farewell shot:
She’s obviously in good hands as Evan is definitely a car enthusiast, but I will miss her. Oh, well life goes on.
Next time, I’ll finish up a post that was started last summer which is a continuation of a post I started shortly after the Pandemic began. Yea, I’m slow….
Henceforth the blog will be primarily photographically related. I’m not entirely happy with this WordPress theme and am trying out some others that allow me the customizability that I’m looking for. While WP allows a fairly straightforward way of creating websites, customization can be a challenge.
Until then,
