Month: June 2012

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Off to Edmonton to Buy My Toad!!!

I just got hold of the dealership in Edmonton. The truck is available and they are expecting me late this afternoon to close the deal! The reason for the low price became evident when the guy told me “It’s available, but it’s a manual.” This truck is perfect for me! Four door, 2WD (easier to tow than 4WD), less than 200K, recent enough to not need the insurance inspection, has a topper, and it’s dark green. I know, I know, colour isn’t important, but it is. 🙂

The warranty wouldn’t do me much good since I’m not from the Edmonton area, but it is surprisingly comprehensive for a used, 12-year-old vehicle, so that tells me they stand by their inspections. I therefore feel good about going ahead with this. I will of course do a test drive first.

Now, do I pay $30 and get on the noon bus to Edmonton or do I try to find a car rental place that will let me drop the car off there? Budget is out because they were impossible to deal with and Enterprise has no availability today and only works airport to airport. I have a couple of hours to figure that out. But first, I need to call the insurance company to get the ball rolling at their end. And I need to figure out how late I can get a car registered in Edmonton.

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Gaffes

I’m not sure who screwed up, me, Orbitz, or Budget, but my car rental was for yesterday, not today. Thankfully, I found that out through calling rather than after navigating the bus or taking a cab. So that’s $50 down the drain, but I would have probably lost it anyway.

The dealership in Edmonton is unreachable. 🙁 The phone number on their site goes to a fax machine. I am hoping that is the night phone service and they are simply not open right now. I’ll keep trying on the half hour. I’m really tempted to just get on a bus to Edmonton since I’m not seeing anything at all in Calgary, but that would be way too rash.

There’s a used truck dealership right around the corner from the hotel, so I will pop in when they open and see if they have anything suitable.

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Bumpy Landing in Calgary

It only hit me as I tried not to lose my dinner landing in Calgary with a thump thump, thump, BANG that, while I’d landed a number of times at the airport, I’d never stepped outside it. I therefore had no clue how to leave it beyond the general knowledge that there was a free shuttle to my hotel.

First order of business, then, was to find an information kiosk. The first one was closed, but the folks at the second one knew exactly what I needed to do. They told me which exit to take and which pillar to find with a bright yellow phone next to it from which to call the hotel shuttle service. That was easy and the shuttle was already on its way. Not quite as luxurious as taking a stretch limo to McCarran and back, but it was nice not to have to wrestle with my luggage or find a bus.

The hotel is the Travelodge on Sunridge and all I can say is that my room is lovely and bedbug free. Looks like I scored another winner with Priceline!

It’s 8:00 here, but my body doesn’t know that, so I’ll be heading to bed shortly. First order of business tomorrow is to call the dealership in Edmonton. That will determine if I need to pick up my rental car or not. I am going to check Kijiji tonight, but I’m fairly confident that Moya is patiently waiting for me in Edmonton.

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Winnipeg Layover

I made it safely and even a little early to Winnipeg, where I have a two-hour layover. I just had dinner at the TGI Fridays (didn’t know we had one in Canada) and now there’s only an hour left till boarding starts.

It was a painful flight. I’ve been fighting a cold for about a week now and am still stuffy. So the change in air pressure was excruciating on the ear drums and my left ear refuses to clear. I’ll be glad when I get to Calgary tonight.

I did manage to squeeze in a solid hour of work on a translation and coding project, but I have to admit that a 17″ MacBook Pro is too big if you have someone sitting next to you. Thankfully, this wasn’t the case today since I was in a row of three seats and the middle one was unoccupied.

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A Response!

I just got a response about the 2003 Ranger in Calgary! The guy replied that I must have missed some options when I did my valuation and he gave me a link to the tool he used. I’d used the same one and while I did miss some options (some of which were not listed in the ad) so did he.

So my offer was on the low end but in the ball park and his belief that he was priced on the low end of the scale was wrong. I made a new offer of $4,300 pending the inspection and he said that while that’s very reasonable, he’s not ready to accept it.

The magic number is going to be about $4,700, but that’s too high for me at this point. I could do it and have money left over for the tow package, but it’s cutting it really close. I’ll see what the dealership in Edmonton says and if that’s no go, the guy with the 2003 is expecting a call or email from me on Tuesday.

Both trucks are dark green, my favourite colour option for the Ranger. 🙂