Ashes to Ashes, Rust to Rust.

 A Few Words from Pete:

Tuesday, I spent most of the day looking for a place to dispose of Carla. I hated to do it. She was an essential part of the trip and a fantastic comrade, but it was necessary because we couldn’t fly back home with her. She’s fairly overweight and we’d have to buy two plane tickets for her along with one of those seat belt extensions.

In the state of Rhode Island, despite being hard-asses about registration and vehicle inspections, makes the process of “junking” a car fairly simple. You drive (or tow) said vehicle to a scrap yard, sign over a piece of paper that says “I relinquish my car to XYZ Auto Salvage”, take off your license plates, and leave. Apparently, in the state of Washington, it’s different and more complicated. Naturally.

Before we arrived, Liz’s godmother, Patricia, was nice enough to do a little research and found a “Cash for your car!” pamphlet from a local auto-recycling center. I called them and found out just how complicated things really were.

In Washington state, every car has a title. In Rhode Island, cars 10 years or older are not issued a title. You need a title to scrap the car. The guy on the phone told me, in nicer words, that I was SOL and then hung up. Lovely.

So, I spent the rest of the day driving around in search of a place that would take such a vehicle (and hopefully give me a few bucks for it). Nobody spoke English at the first place I stopped. It looked sketchy and we could not communicate at all, so I continued. But, I wanted coffee and Seattle is the place for coffee. So I slacked a bit. Before I knew it, it was noon and I was still out of luck, just like the Cash for Clunkers guy said I would be. This is when I thought about scratching off the VIN numbers off Carla and driving her off a cliff. But, that would be too much fun.

I had also promised some friends I’d try to get Carla to give us one last performance, a burnout. Using vice grips as a line-lock, she gave the right front tire all she had.

I continued the search. 

I approached the “industrial” district of Seattle, which was certainly not a place to raise your kids, and started feeling rather hopeless about the whole thing. I was literally just driving around and saw a “Cash for your car!” sign, so I pulled in. The owner, a particularly vulgar fellow, had long grey hair and was smoking Marlboro 100’s back to back. His name was Steve and he was gross. I explained my story, hoping to wow him with my gusto and impressive travels, but he was rather unimpressed. Apparently, he took in a car from a couple just last week who had been traveling across the country, but they’d been living in it for TWO FREAKING YEARS. So, Liz and I seemed like amateurs. He was impressed, however, with the amount of rust on Carla and the Styrofoam that was holding her together. I explained how I hated to part with her, as she ran and drove just fine and had a bunch of new parts, working A/C, blahdy blah blah. But in the end, I really didn’t care as it was nearing the end of the day and I just needed to get rid of her. He offered me $250 for the car. Naturally, I took it because that’s what we paid for it in the first place. He acted as if he was doing me a big favor and I acted as if I wasn’t kinda ripping him off. Once again, Carla is lucky.

Then, he realized RI didn’t issue a title. Cue legal shitstorm! I won’t bore you with details, but evidently if a car doesn’t have a title, a form must be signed between seller and buyer and must be stamped by a notary. Again: Blah blah blah. It wasn’t notarized, but “he knew somebody”,  (which, we assume is the west coast version of “I know a guy…”) and so I left with the cash and my license plates and didn’t ask any more questions. Steve was not a guy of whom you ask too many questions. He said it was to be donated to the local fire department to be cut up with the Jaws of Life for practice. Well, at least she’s being put towards another good cause.

Total driven mileage: 6134. 

Carla's final mileage:  245,464.
 

Sounds like a triumphant death to me. I’m sure that St. Peter will open the pearly gates for her should there be a car heaven. May she rust in pieces. 

Seattle post soon, followed by the grand finale. We've been having too much fun to post all week! I suppose that's a good thing, but sorry to leave you all hanging.

Off to SEA TAC airport we go!

~Pete, Liz, and Carla in Spirit