Our Sweet Ride, Take 2

Hooray, car!

We anxiously awaited a call today, expecting to hear from the dock about our car. Apparently they had my Kentucky cellphone number, which doesn't work anymore. I gave the Seattle office my new numbers here, but thankfully I didn't wait to hear from the dock.

We went down in the afternoon, and saw our Canyonero sitting outside the city office downtown, but it was fenced in and no one was there. Turns out that they were still down at the dock, loading the barge with stuff bound for Seattle.

The saga that followed is not altogether interesting, but sufficeth to say that around 6pm, I went down to the dock office and caught the guys on dinner. We went over and freed the Canyonero from its fence-y prison. Hooray!

So here it is, parked outside the house.

Now, I don't want to speak ill of the crusty Jeep we were loaned, since you can see that it's been snowy. I'm very happy that we didn't have to walk in that snow the whole time we were waiting on the Canyonero. We're really going to have to do something nice for the Clerk of Court, Tonya, who loaned it to us. But...

I'm looking forward to cruising around with seatbelts, valid registration, seats that adjust, fresh air-freshener scent, and a CD player. I missed our car.

After we got it home tonight, we unpacked all our stuff that we've been waiting on for weeks. Here it is, stacked in the living room.


Once the car was free of its burden, it was time to fill up the gas tank. See, the shipper won't let it on the barge unless it has less than 1/4 tank of gas. Unfortunately, gas here is about $6.30 a gallon, and the Canyonero has like a 21 gallon tank. We put in 18+ gallons of gas this evening, for around $120. I don't think I've ever spent HALF that much on a single tank of gas, so all you folks in the lower 48 had better count your blessings when you're buying gas.