Car #2 - Let's try to keep this one a little longer, eh?

Well, after a long and arduous search, and much pain and whining, I finally have my second car in a little under three months.

My dad was definitely one of the proponents for my finding a car, which I didn't really blame him for since it's harder to juggle cars when I don't have one, but sometimes I just got tired of looking for cars, especially when things happened like I would go to test drive a car and it would be bought while I was out giving it a test drive. It all just felt so fruitless and frustrating, but my dad convinced me to keep on keepin' on.

So I guess it was only appropriate that he was the one to find my car, eh?

He was on ksl.com, which he had been for basically that whole weekend nonstop, early Saturday morning and woke me with, "I just found a great car. Here's the phone number. Call them and set up a test drive in the next 20 minutes." I sleepily accepted the outstretched phone and did just that.

It was for a black 1994 Camry LXE - which means it was a luxury edition with leather seats, sunroof and CD player. It had 177,000 miles - which was a lot, but since it was a Camry, we decided it would last for at least another 100,000 miles - and for the price of $1,300, which it was listed under, it pretty much couldn't be beat.

We headed to Sandy, got there and met the dad of the owner of the car.

"It's my son's car - he was our youngest son and he just left for college, so he needs the money more than the car."

And with that, he gave us the keys, telling us that the sunroof wasn't completely sealed and the passenger's side door handle was broken. Besides that, he said, it was pretty good for 177,000 miles and 15 years old. We agreed - the exterior especially looked really good for how old it was.

Pulling out of the driveway, we went to the freeway and decided to test it out at high speeds. It smoothly transitioned from gear to gear, and I was quickly falling in love with it.

"Let's have Roger look at it," my dad suggested. Roger is his/our mechanic.

I agreed, but it was like a 20 minute drive from the car owner's house to Roger's house.

"I don't want him to think we stole it," I protested.

"He won't. We left the Prizm, remember?" my dad insisted.

Ah, yes. The Prizm. I then realized how awesome of a scam it would be to drive a piece of crap car to test drive a nicer car, and never come back. Heck, let them have that piece of 3-cylinder...love. :) Not that I didn't enjoy having a car to get to work - I did. It was just incredibly frustrating to putt up Parley's every day at 30 mph.

I finally convinced him that we needed to call them and tell them of our plan, and so we did so. It went to the machine and I basically told them we weren't stealing the car, and we actually wanted to buy it. Roger wasn't home, but we decided to go through with it anyway. I drove to the credit union, took out the money and went back to the house.

We chatted, accepted the price, listened while he explained that his price was way below anything you could get decently, patiently agreed, and listened to him ramble a little more about what had been done to the car in the last year or so. We wrote on a bill of sale all the necessary information, and I proceeded three times to count out the money while he was paying attention. He pretty much never paid attention and said he trusted me - so I gave up and my dad gave up telling me to count it while he paid attention.

He said he had a plate that was from another car, with registration that didn't expire until November. Only problem was, it wouldn't match up with the car if someone ran a check, so we took it off.

When I brought it home and told Becca of my happy news, she almost sobbed with joy she was so happy. Actually, a lot of my friends found out from Becca that I got a new car, before I was able to tell them, but that was fine. I understand her excitement. When you have to drive to school and work every day, it sucks to drive the van or get dropped off and picked up.

I asked her to christen and name my new car, since that's what she did for the old one.

"Do we have a bottle of wine around here?" she asked.

And, of course, we didn't. We didn't even have any sparkling cider. Darn.

But she took a gander at it and I told her it was pretty posh - leather seats, sunroof, CD player and all. She wanted to name it Posh, but my mom said it looked sleek and stealthy, too, and could we think of a name that incorporated all three aspects into it? I think then she suggested James, as in James Bond. He's posh, stealthy AND sleek. It stuck.

He's basically my love right now - I'm infatuated, I'll admit it. Pictures to come, to make you all jealous. ;)