Selling Cars - Not as easy as buying them. . .

Well, as my stay in New Zealand comes to an end, I have decided that it is time to get rid of the oh so reliable Larry. At least I decided this about 2 weeks ago, in the middle of my skydive training. So what would anyone do that wants to sell their car in two weeks do? Well, they'd post fliers at every single hostel in town, 14 of them to be exact. They'd put up ads online, 2 backpacker sites to be exact. And they'd even go to a few dealers in town to see how much money they could possibly, at a last resort, get from a car. Oh, and they'd wash and clean the car, of course.

Now, with that said, I've found that the most effective way to sell a car is to sell it to unsuspecting Hitchhikers! I've done all the above things, and for the past two weeks, I have only just now gotten a reply on someone that may be interested! But also, in the past two weeks, I have picked up three hitchhikes, and two of them were interested in buying. One of those two is following through and looking at the car this Friday. So, forget the fliers, forget the internet, and instead pick someone up that is looking for a lending hand! They may be able to return the favor!

Also, in my endeavor to sell my car, I have learned a few things about Larry that I never knew, and am glad I never had to find out! First, I'll start with the Dealer that I brought Larry to. The dealer took one look at the car, and more or less said "you'd have to pay ME to take that off your hands!" I was gutted! Larry is worth more than that! Well, he took a little closer look, and noticed that the front tyres (yes, that is how they spell tires in NZ. Actually in Thailand and Kenya too for that matter. Oh and they call Math maths. But that is a different story) are in not the best condition! He then told me that if I had a spare, I should slap that on right away, because if I got in an accident with those tyres, even if it wasn't my fault, I would be blamed. So, he was nice enough to loan me his garage and jack to put on my nice looking spare tyre. The spare was a little low on air, so I just drove to the petrol station across the street, and filled it up. No problem, right? Wrong. . .

Enter the next day. I get up to start working on making my car even more presentable to potential buyers that are consistently not calling me. Today is the day that I go to find a car wash. So, I go outside to jump in, and during my daily walk to the passenger side of the car (I walk to that side every day because I still insist that the driver should get in on the left hand side of the car!) I noticed that the spare had gone flat overnight! Doh! It had a slow leak that I was unaware of! So, I open the boot (trunk) of the car to get the jack to start changing the tyre back. Lo and behold, no jack! SWEET! So, I borrow a jack from Kris' car, and jack up my car. Then I try to take of the lug nuts. Sure enough, my tyre yron (get it? Tire Iron) is the wrong size! I try Kris' Tyre Iron. . .also the wrong size. I look more in my boot, and find, you guessed it, my foot! Oh, wait. . .I looked in the trunk and found another Tire Iron. Finally, this one fit the lug nuts.

So I removed the "new" tire, put on the old one, and let the car come to a rest again. Now, I can finally take Larry to the car wash! So, I'm not going to lie. Larry has what I like to call "character." Meaning he has a lot of duct tape holding him together. Well duct tape doesn't make for very good weather sealing as I demonstrated today! Sure enough, here I am in the car wash, taking a shower! Not intentionally of course. I went to one of those hands free car washes, and as I'm sitting there cleaning the ash tray in the car, water is spraying into the door at mach 3! Water is dripping from the windshield right on to my lap! You should've seen me holding my hands at all the cracks and seams of my car trying to keep the water from spraying into my face! I'll bet the car behind me was laughing it's head off at larry! :)

So hopefully when I show Larry, it'll be a bright sunshiny day! And hopefully I can either sell it to another backpacker who is looking for adventure in their car, or some type of boy racer that wants a fixer up! Ahh, good 'ole larry! My hat is off to you my old friend! Now good riddance! :)

And yes, I do realize that there are once again no pictures on this blog. Have you ever noticed when you become "local" in a particular place, the magic of everyday things seem to disappear, even though it still exists? Well that is exactly what has happened to me this past month. I've been in the same location where I haven't felt it important to carry my camera. But then I'll see something fascinating, or experience something bizzare, and have no way of sharing the images with you all! So I feel really bad about that, so I'm gonna work on improving my style in these next few days. On that note, I saw a lady that had 8 great danes on the dog beach the other day. 6 of them were spotted like Dalmations. I really wish I had my camera with me that day! Oh well.