I felt like I won the lottery when Ben's mom decided she wanted to sell me the Escape back in 2014. I've always wanted an SUV because it was higher off the ground and I could see the stuff around me better. I've had a ton of hand me down vehicles since I started driving and don't get me wrong, I was thankful to have those but some of them were very unreliable and I didn't know when they were going to strand me places. Some of those vehicles did strand me and this was before cell phones.
I remember when I was in high school and I got into the van to go get the mail from the post office and once I was there, I got out and went inside to get the mail and came back out to start the van and the starter wouldn't turn over. I had to sit there for almost an hour and I am sure Mom wondered where I was for an hour. It should have taken me maybe 15 minutes. Then I got a flat tire going into Mom's office to pick up money for gas and the power steering fluid was low and I miss calculated the turn and I hit the curb pretty hard. We had to have Bill's Towing come over and put the doughnut tire on so we could get back to Rainier in time for our basketball game.
Also, when I was high school, the muffler on the van came off as I was heading home. It scraped against the asphalt on the road and it looked like the back of the van was on fire even though it was just sparks from the muffler dragging on the road. I had several people try to flag me down to let me know but I did know and I was trying to make it home to tell Dad. The heater/defroster stopped working in the van and I had to drive home one night after an away basketball game and it snowed. I had to Ace Ventura it home. For those of you who don't know what that means it is when you have to drive with your head out the window because you can't see through your windshield. It was so cold part of my hair froze. The radio didn't work because my friend, Brandon, his horse ate the antenna off the van. At one point, the van's speedometer didn't work and I could start it without the keys for about three months.
Nothing super weird happened when I drove the truck except that no one told me the gas gauge didn't work and I ran it out of gas once on the way home from school. When I was in college the Intrepid didn't give me any problems except that I ran over a screw and had to drive back to Pullman, pulling over at every major town along the way to put air in the tires. Once I got there, I was able to get into Les Schwab to get my tire fixed.
Then there was the Taurus. Oh man, the Taurus. It ran good for about three years and then the transmission died in it. Luckily, I was not that far away from home when that happened. Dad managed to find a place and people to put another one in for fairly cheap. That lasted for another two and a half years pretty well. Then the disasters started to happen. The Taurus started lurching and revving and I knew it had to do with the transmission. I was really hoping that the car would last a little bit longer. Then a hose broke and Dad helped me fix it. Then the car would overheat and I had to carry a bunch of antifreeze with me when I went places. It was stressful driving it.
Then I started making a little bit more money and I could maybe afford something different. This is where Ben's mom came into play. She was worried about me and thought I was going to get hurt or be stranded somewhere so she offered to sell the Escape to me because she wanted to get a different vehicle. Dad looked at it and thought it was a pretty good deal. So I bought it from her for $8500. I would pay her $200 a month and she would take care of the title transfer, license stuff and all of that. There were some months I couldn't pay her the appropriate amount because I was working at a hotel that didn't pay me very much so some months I paid her all I could. That prolonged me paying it off a few months.
I bought car insurance for the first time through Progressive and they even gave me a discount for being a safe driver. I put on seat covers because Ben got chocolate on one of the seats and just took really good care of it. I had to buy tires for it in 2016, I had to fix an alternator, should have fixed the crack in the windshield but I didn't, I had to fix some of the baring's and replace the battery once. It was a great little SUV and I drove the crap out of it. It went on many adventures over the years including driving in Canada, which was weird driving my vehicle in a foreign country.
I was sad and frustrated the last time I took it in to the mechanic because it kept making noise I thought fixing the baring's would help. He said it wasn't the baring's but the differential and eventually the transmission. I had to make the decision into getting a newer car rather than dumping more money into something I didn't want to dump money into. I didn't drive it as much as I used to until I could figure out what other vehicle I wanted and could afford.
I did finally find something I could afford and brought my new 2017 blue Escape home. The red one sat in the yard as I cleaned it up, took the stickers off of it, vacuumed and wiped it out and got some For Sale signs and dealt with it as I had time. It took a few months just to clean it out and whatnot because the weather was either rainy or really hot. I thought about posting it on to some of the marketplaces, auto traders and craigslist but I didn't get that far until we had our yard sale.
I really wanted at least $1500 for it because it was still a really good vehicle but it did have a lot of repairs that needed done to it. I was hoping to make some money off of it to pay a couple of months towards my new car. That didn't happen. I had a couple people who were interested in it but for some reason they weren't sure or never came back. There was a guy who was at our yard sale who came back to check out the Escape one more time. He showed up right when I was doing my calls. I stopped and went outside. He explained that he wanted to buy it for his grand son and it had a lot of stuff that needed fixed and that he was willing to offer $500 for it. I honestly, just wanted it gone so I agreed to it. He gave me the money and I gave him the title. He said he would be back later on that day and we agreed upon 6 p.m. because I had to run a few errands.
He came back with his wife around 6 p.m. and Ben and I watched him drive the Escape away. I was sad watching it drive away because there were so many memories had in it the 7 years I had it. Farewell red Escape, you served me well. Onto another chapter with the blue Escape.
Today also marks the 3rd year we've been without Grammie. I am pretty sure she helped me sell the Escape. Why would it have happened today, right? Miss you Grammie!
Next Adventure: Mariners vs. Royals with Alicia
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