Surfing Ruined My Life

This week as I mentioned in my previous bullshit blog was Westmont College’s spring break, being my employer I had the week off as well, unpaid of course.  I actually am ahead financially (or was?) and with many backed up errands to run and Kooky Kyle’s adventure tour the time was rather welcomed.  One of those errands I had to handle was car shopping.  I know just the thought of getting rid of Sammy the Saturn and our countless plights together is a somber one.  We ran up and down the east coast dozens of times for multitudinous round one losses and embarrassment at surf contests. Sammy and I survived the arduous task of driving cross country to California, where I slept in the back seat of the car at truck stops and nearly froze to death in Alabama of all places.

I rebuilt the chassis from junk yard parts when I was ran off the 101 by some random idiot and we survived 200,000 miles of insanity together.  Sammy had a great run and as far as cars go all I can say is that an ’02 Saturn despite the gripes of others did me well.  If I put over five grand in repairs on that car over the nearly ten years of ownership it was a lot.  I was sorry Saturn went under or I would have definitely went back for another.  If you mess around on the myspace.com blogs you can find tons of Sammy and Chris adventures.

Lately driving Sammy around has been like riding in a ticking time bomb.  The whole car shakes over 60mph, the driver side mirror was broken and hanging on by epoxy, the passenger side was repaired with bondo, the tires were bald, the brakes were going, it ate two quarts of oil every 200 miles and god only knows what else was about to blow up under the hood.  Sammy needed to retire, especially with all the driving that constantly plagues the Santa Barbara surfer.   Car shopping I went.

I dont know if anyone out there has ever went car shopping before (Im sure you have) but it is exhausting both physically and mentally.  Maybe its fun when you have a decent supply of money to work with,but when your playing with six grand and bad credit it can be a nightmare.  I wanted something that had under 50k on it and preferably a Honda Civic.  I had been looking online and at auto shoppers for sometime, but I know very little about cars and have no friends that are mechanics so buying a used car that way is very risky.  That being the case I resolved to go the dealer route where I could at least get some type of warranty.

Shopping at car dealers is like being a scantly clad, sexy female at the bar, as soon as you step on to the lot you are being lurked by all the salesmen there.  They let you peruse the merchandise for a little while and then they pounce.  Some were intelligent and when they heard my situation pretty much sent me on my way.  Others were a bit hungrier.  I was at a Toyota dealer looking at the selection of pre-owned vehicles. I told the sales man Steve exactly what I was looking for yet he still attempted to sell me a super charged Scion Xb including a high speed test drive where at one point we found ourselves coming up to a 180 degree turn at 75 miles per hour.  My hear was in my mouth for a moment when we practically drifted the turn at  55.

I couldn’t help humoring the guy, I mean he was so excited about the car.  In the end I found myself at a Buick dealer looking at a 2010 silver Honda Civic two door coupe for $16,800, way out of my price range.  As I was about walk off a sales person, Moses was his name, approached me.   I thought his name was a sign and worth hearing what he had to say.  He claimed they had a comparable Civic for 13.5 on their other lot and we would take the Civic I just described to it.  That ended up just being a ploy to get me to test drive the car.  It was a really smooth ride and I was digging on the car but I knew I could not afford it.

I told him as much and then Moses said “If I could make the numbers work would you be interested”.  Now I love to humor delusional people so I agreed.  When you get inside with a car salesman its a ton of fun.  They try all these ploys to get you to pay sticker price and the like.  After about an hour of negotiations I was over it. I got up to split and then his sales manager shows up, which always happens in such a case and offers me $500 for my Saturn.  I laughed and kept on walking.  Then he offered $1000, Then $2000.  At $2000 for a car barely worth $200 how could I not go for it.   Then the idiots were somehow able to get me a loan as well.

I ended up buying the thing locking myself into a five year $219 a month contract.  Now I hate committing myself to one place for that long, but I figured between school and the chef thing and my ultimate ten year New Zealand goal I will pretty much be planted in Santa Barbara for a while anyhow.  Why not spoil myself with something nice to drive for a change?  Im going to be getting a better job really soon and can most likely pay the thing off faster anyhow.  I guess Im growing up a bit and becoming less of a recluse.  I know its a bit sad, but even Moon Doggie in Gidget had to move off the beach and get a real job.  Dont worry kids Im still in the game and as long as I get a session in a day my core can not be questioned.

I own this...sort of.