Scion, we hardly knew ye

Hey, a post without an exclamation in the title! Well, that didn’t last long. Beware the evil power of the exclamation point; it’s stronger than you think. It already has called Becky over to the Dark Side (see all our previous post titles). I’m trying to stay out of its clutches, but it’s tough. Wish me luck.

Anyway, so in actual news we sold the Scion today. The buyer was a guy named Nate from Yardley, which might as well be in Jersey since it’s on the other side of Philly, and so we met in the middle. And I’m not just using that as a metaphor for a successful transaction. We met at a notary near King of Prussia to do the exchange, and it went off without a hitch. Actually, that’s not completely true since I forgot to bring a screwdriver, and we had to first drive to a Rite-Aid to buy a new screwdriver to remove my old license plate. So that would probably have to count as a partial hitch. But other than that, I can’t complain.

In a strange twist, the notary we used is located only about a mile from where I used to work as a Co-op student at GlaxoSmithKline in Oaks in 2001-2. One of my main jobs there was keeping up-to-date on all the urology drugs in development by other companies. If it sounds glamorous, that’s because it is. Seems like forever ago now, but being in the old neighborhood and commute brought me back to old times pretty quickly. But as they say, you can’t go back, and I saw that our old office is now a vacant medical office building. Whoa whoa, snap out of it man! OK OK I’m back. Nostalgia mode: off.

Back to the car transaction, I really have to say hats off to Craigslist, you’ve come through again. At this point, Becky and I are pretty impressed by the site, as we’ve sold a lot of stuff at good prices on Craigslist in the past year. I can’t say we had too much stuff in our apartment in Burlington, but what we had, we sold, and what we sold was probably sold on Craigslist. The remaining stuff was either thrown out (sorry Brita filter), or sold to extremely hard-bargaining Asian women at a yard sale by Becky.

I was a bit surprised to get more and better responses to my car ad on Craigslist than I did in a paid posting on AutoTrader. I would have thought that a car-specific site would get more interested traffic than Craigslist, but Craigslist must really have a good-sized audience. Either that, or we’ve been extremely fortunate to find the one interested buyer for our cars and for our furniture that we sold earlier. Which, though remote, is also a possibility. I know there are a lot of scams and junk being put on Craigslist, but in our experience, you can definitely find good buyers on there.

In the end, selling the car was a bittersweet experience. I know that I had to sell the car, and that it should come as a relief to be able to get it sold at a good price before I left and not have it hanging over my head, but I’ll miss the Scion. The toaster, box, Xbox, or whatever you want to call it was a really good car. Unique look, good gas mileage, excellent amount of space, relatively cheap price, I hate to sound like a commercial but it’s a pretty good deal.

Nate, hope you enjoy the car as much as we did. You can stop pretending that gas mileage was the reason you wanted to buy the Scion, and admit that you bought the car because you like the styling. And not that you would, but don’t let anyone give you crap about having a unique car, or as I call it for Becky’s benefit every time we see another Scion xB on the road, a sweet ride. Happy trails in the Scion, man.

Lastly, it’s occurring to me quickly that selling your car is a big step, and doing so is helping me to believe that we’re actually going to New Zealand. I guess I haven’t mentioned it earlier, but it seems like we’ve been waiting to go to NZ for so long that it’s somewhat difficult to believe that we’re actually leaving for there in 5 days. It’s a strange feeling, like I’m in some sort of denial that we’re getting to do this. Add that to not having a car for the first time in 5 years and it all seems pretty surreal, but in a good way. I guess we’re sailing in uncharted but interesting waters right about now. Happy New Year’s everyone.