The people who were selling the car lived out in the country, I would guess probably on at least 20 acres. I think they told me, but I don’t remember for sure what it was.
Anyway, to get on to their property, I had to drive across a very narrow bridge with a sharp right angle turn right as you got on the other side. That was a little challenging with the trailer. Or maybe not challenging, maybe just a little nerve-wracking. I made it on the first try with no issues, but I wasn’t free of nerves. 😅
I pulled into there driveway and parked next to the shop that I figured the little blue 2001 BMW Z3 was in. And there I waited, just doing things on my phone.
I think it was about 12:30 a.m. that They rolled in–drunk. 😆
Fortunately, they had a designated driver. 🙃
When they rolled up the shop door, so I could see the little Z3, it just made my little heart smile.
It was beautiful. 😊
It had a few little imperfections here and there on the outside, a few little dings and paint imperfections, but overall, it was just plain beautiful.
I’m not sure exactly what color to call it. It’s like a really vibrant sky blue.
When I got ready to take it for a test drive, there was a little bit of a hiccup, though– I couldn’t get it into reverse.
😶
I figured it must be something that I was doing incorrectly. It’s one of those cars where reverse is all the way to the left and up on the shifter (manual transmission, My mom’s favorite). So I figured I’d probably just wasn’t used to it, so I asked the seller to get it in reverse for me, but he couldn’t get it in reverse either. It took a good long while, before he was finally able to get it in reverse.
He was drunk, though, so when he tried to drive it out of the shop, he drove it off the side of the concrete ramp That goes up into the shop.
😅
Gratefully, it was just the last little bit of the ramp, so all that happened was that he scraped the plastic of the bumper cover as it went off the side.
At least, I think that’s all that happened. I didn’t actually check 🙃
So I took it for a test drive, running it up to about 60 mph, or so, on the old country road there. And it felt pretty good!
It’s been a long time since I’ve driven a stick, but it seems to drive well, and with them being willing to sell it to me for that price, I would have been stupid not to buy it.
The seller made me promise to get him a picture of my mom with the car, and he and his brother told me about how they had done the same thing for their Mom, finding her dream car and getting it for her.
😊
That was the biggest reason that They were willing to give it to me for the price that they did, sort of reliving their own experience and giving me the opportunity to experience the same thing.
By the time I had done the test drive, filled out bills of sale and whatnot, and gotten the car loaded up and ready to drive away, it was about 2:30 in the morning.
😅
I also realized that they had improperly signed the title. I hope that maybe I could get it signed over into my name with the title the way that it was, but I knew that could be a bit of a stretch.
Despite the risk with the title stuff, I decided to go ahead and buy the car and bring it home.
I did find myself running into one more snag, however. The emergency brake didn’t work. Which meant that the only thing that would be holding the car on the trailer was the three heavy duty ratchet straps, which by themselves were probably sufficient, but I don’t really like the idea of not at least having the wheels locked up, and then the car being in first gear.
So I started the drive back driving a lot more like a grandma, concerned, likely unreasonably, for the lack of emergency brake.
After probably an hour and a half of driving, I decided to pull over and see if I could rig up the emergency brake. So I grabbed a small ratchet strap, wrapped it around the roll bar inside the car, and ratcheted the e-brake into position.
Success! 🥳
Though it probably didn’t really make much of a difference either way, I did feel a lot better having that e-brake ratcheted into place.
So that was nice.
Amazingly, though I had not slept a wink, I found myself mostly wide awake and not dealing with any significant drowsiness.
🥳
That was pretty shocking, but definitely a welcome reality.
I kept munching away on the food that I had bought on the drive down, and I just rolled on down the road, hour after hour.
One thing I forgot to mention was that late at night as I was driving down to Mississippi, the gentleman I had replaced the battery for head connected with me to tell me that he was at work and his car wouldn’t start. Not even a light on the dash.
😶
Ugh.
Given that it was a Ford escape, and given the fragility and the frequency with which their battery fuses crack, I figured I must have cracked one of his main battery fuses as well I was replacing the battery. I’d never seen it happen after a job, but I had run into it multiple times with customers where I got to the car and found that they had a cracked main battery fuse.
Thus, I expected the issue was likely my fault. I figured I could walk him through how to get the car home so he wouldn’t need a tow, but he didn’t want to try anything, and had already called the toe company to bring him home before he let me know that he had gotten off of work.
I told him that I would swing by his place on the way back from my trip to Mississippi
Miraculously, I made it all the way to sunrise without needing to stop for a nap, and I ended up driving all the way to his place, getting there sometime around 10:30 or 11:00 in the morning, I think.
When I got to his apartment, and started pulling everything back apart, I noticed that the car lit up when I touched the negative battery cable.
So I grabbed the negative battery cable, and I found that it was loose where it was bolted to the frame.
🤔
That was a bit of a head scratcher.
He asked me if I had loosened that up at all to take the battery out, and I said no, and then he admitted that he had loosened it up earlier when he was trying to do the job himself.
It was nice to find out that the issue had not been my fault. 🥳
I didn’t charge him for coming back, although I certainly could have. I was just glad it wasn’t my fault at that point. 🙃
After finishing up at his place, I mosied on home, arriving at sort of the perfect time, where my mom had just barely left for church, and that allowed me to pull the truck and trailer onto the property and line the trailer up with the lower road, such that I had the trailer backed up against the lower road so that it was basically a straight walk off from the trailer to the road.
I didn’t mention that before, but that was one of the challenges of getting the car on the trailer. Being so low to the ground, I couldn’t just drive it up the ramps. I had to back the trailer against their driveway, so that the ramps were a lot less sloped.
So I did the same thing against The raised road in the lower pasture to get the car back off the trailer that I did against their driveway to get the car on the trailer.
Gratefully, it worked out perfectly, and gratefully my nephew Hunter was coming home just at that time, so he was able to help line me up with the ramps and help me get the car off the trailer all together.
🥳
Success!
With the car off the trailer, the next step was to find a place to keep it hidden, as I didn’t want to surprise my mom with it until the following Sunday. My vision was to have her open up the door from the house to the garage the following Sunday morning and find, not her car in the garage, but the little blue BMW Z3. 😊
That was the hope! 😁
But where was I going to keep it in the meantime? Liz doesn’t have a garage. Jim and stuff don’t have a garage. I couldn’t very well keep it an hour garage. 🙃
But I had an idea. I’ve made friends with our neighbor Dan, so I decided to drive the little Z3 over there. I pulled up in front of his shop, pop the door open to a shop, finding him inside, and asked him if he wouldn’t mind if I left the car parked there for the next few days or so until I found a place for it. He was
Up for it, happy to help surprise my mom, and even suggested and offered that we put the car in his dad’s shop! 🥳
So we went over to the shop, he pulled his dad’s truck out, I drove the little Z3 in, and then he pulled the truck back in behind it.
Success!!!
The makings of a great surprise were now in the works. 😎
After getting everything unloaded and straightened out, I went to our monthly family meeting, which was very sparsely attended for some reason, made some plans with the family to get stuff done, and then headed home for the night, mouth zipped about my trip and what I had purchased.
Oh! I guess it’s probably obvious, but I didn’t tell my mom that I was continuing on to Mississippi. Once I realized that I was going to continue, I just simply told her not to expect me back tonight. I was already quite a ways away from home, and it was already quite late, so I didn’t think it would be much of a stretch for her to not think much of me not turning around and coming back. I had what I needed to stay warm in the cold weather, so I was…good.
🙃
Lift the world.
~ stephen
Lift the World 