The story of my car - Part 2

I bought this car on e.Bay without actually realizing how far away it was. It was in Ballina NSW and I live in Blacktown NSW I half expected that the seller will be able to drive this thing home for me but that was not true I actually had to take a plane to go get this thing. I had to match my off days to Andrews( the dude i bought the car from) and that had to be matched to plane times and then i also needed someone to drive the car home because I was just an inexperienced automatic car driver and this was a manual. This blog is about all the troubles I faced in trying to get to my car.

With driving the car home there was no problem because my awesome brother said he would drive it home for me so that was cool however I needed to get us to Ballina first. We had two options on how to do this the first was to go by train and the second to go by plane, I don't exactly remember why but we picked the plane option. We found a fairly cheap flight to Ballina mid week and we picked that one. Neither me or my brother had ever done this before so there was a bit of grief in getting our tickets but we eventually got what we needed. We could not book online because we needed credit cards to be able to do that and neither of us had one so we had to do it through a travel agency. The agency charged me a bit extra but it was worth it for me to go to the agency because they told me exactly were I needed to go and everything I needed to do on the day which not really much when I think about it now but at that point I was pretty confused about this whole plane travel thing.

After getting my brothers OK I had to deal with was my boss I asked him if I could have the following week off to which he said no which sucked because that was not an unmanageable request the health club were I worked had enough staff to make up for me when I was away. I wanted the whole week off because I wanted to bring the car home and just practice driving it a bit because of my inexperience in driving manual cars. OK fair enough I can't take a week off with such short notice so I just asked for 3 days off so I could bring my car home to which he said no again and that was so disheartening because apart from all the other things I had to get right getting time off work was something I never anticipated I would have trouble with. When he said no the second time it was probably the most heart broken I was in a very long time and I do not get heart broken easy I prefer to get mad and had so many reasons to get mad because it was unfair:

• For one thing 3 days was only 3 days people got sick and they have to take time off just pretend i was sick.
• I had raving about how exciting it would be to finally get a car and he knew how much it meant to me. Every meeting we had uptill that point were talked personal goals or what i was doing during my free time it was always I had been looking at cars online or going to car yards or what kind of car I wanted, having a car was the only goal I had.
  
• At that point I had worked there full time for more then 6 months and in this time other staff there had either quit or had taken at least 2 weeks off already.
• I made more money for the club then anyone else there. Since the first week I worked there I had not once gotten paid more money then I made for the club and I was not just barely paying my wages more often then not I was making more then 10 times what I was getting paid.
  
• I was always covering for other staff who kept getting sick or had family troubles and this happened often. There was one time I had worked 12 days straight without any days off. it was not just me covering for others I more often then not stayed back longer just to be more productive.
• Every piece of training material i could find I would take home read re-read, take notes and revise notes just so I could be a bit better.
  
• Not that I wanted or expected anything in return for all this my manager was probably not even aware of all this I just wanted to be good at what I did but I deserved better and that is the thing that hurt.... I deserved better.
• Not being able to get the time off that I wanted would mean I would have to reschedule things with an increasingly impatient seller, I would have to reschedule things with my brother who would be fine with it but he had a life of his own, I would have to get another plane to Ballina and they all seem to be all booked out for 1 week in advance.

All these thoughts were at the back of my head when I was asking for time off but I did not say anything perhaps he saw the reaction on my face and ended our conversation by saying "I will think about it". I have been in sales for a while and I know when someone says "I will think about it" it means no but that reaction made me feel better because I thought he might grant me my request so I went on planning as normal. A few days later he gives me a call and tells me "he can't give my few days off but I can have an off week following the time I had requested" to which I lied "I have already bought my plane tickets" and after a bit of grumbling I got what I wanted. I was very angry at my boss with this reaction for a long time but I did eventually forgive him because though he is not perfect I have had many employers and this one is fairest and the one I look up to the most.... :) most of the time anyway.

It had already been a week since I bought the car and the seller was getting pretty impatient asking me for a deposit I of course was not gonna give it to him I had to at least see the car and test it out first. He was demanding that I come faster and get the car sooner because he was moving away and he needed the car to be taken I do not think he was actually moving away he just wanted me to come over faster... after a few emails he understood my situation and stopped giving me unnecessary stress. Apart from the grief he was giving me he was also not gonna be very helpful when i got to Bellina I asked him to drive me to the RTA office in Ballina and he said he could not because he needed to get back to work after he gave me the car..... this was not too much trouble I knew I could find the RTA building when I got there but I was not gonna give him any money until I was sure the car was alright because I could not have the car break down half way home Ballina is actually more then 500 kilometers away from were I live and I was going to use up all my savings when I gave him payment.

Speaking of money I was running pretty low on my budget for this car. Before that day I was saving a thousand dollars a month towards the purchase of a car I also had a special savings account were I put ten percent of everything I earned I do not take money out of this account unless I really need it and when I do take money from it I have to replenish it as soon as possible. With having to buy this car I would spend all this money I can't remember exactly but I think it was around seven grand in total spending all this money would have been fine if the car was close by but because it was in Ballina there were so many extra costs. I still needed money for fuel, a motel, food, a GPS device and I also wanted a camera so that we could take pictures of things as we were coming home, there was always the possibility that something could go wrong on our trip home so we needed extra cash to be able to get back. There was only one person I could turn to with my problem .... my mom and god bless her beautiful heart she gave me one grand and that would more then cover for everything we needed. I had written about my personal heroes during my last blog and my mom is one person who has never ever disappointed me.

After all this there was one more person I had to deal with my father. When he found out our plans he kept on insisting on us not going, the guy could be a fraud, the car could break down, get the car here by some other means. All this was really frustrating because my Dad when he gets his mind set on something he just wants to get his way and in this situation he was throwing every possible problem at me, living at home is great because you save so much dow but then you have to contend with parents who are opinionated about the stuff you get up to. Well I got my father to stop giving me grief but I did this by having to verbally beat him down ... not the proudest of moments but at least I got my way. My dad was actually quite helpful once it registered that we were going to do this he actually pointed out something both me and my brother had overlooked which was insurance we had to get that as soon as we got the car it was way too dangerous to drive a car without insurance.

We bought a camera and a GPS device. The sales guy from whom we bought the GPS at JB HIFI kept giving me trouble because I had to come back about three times to get all the parts as they were not all packed when I bought the thing. We made a print out from Google maps of the route home, We called a motel between Ballina and Blacktown and got the prices, we saved a route on the GPS device of the trip home and the stops we wanted to make, I got a check made out of the money I was going to give Andrew. With the help of my dad I made we made a checklist of all the things we had to check in the car before we started driving it back. We did all this in the few days leading up to the flight and on the afternoon I came back from work we went to Ballina I charged everything, I rechecked everything through a checklist I had made earlier packed everything rechecked it and repacked it again and I was pretty ready but that night the biggest problem imaginable struck.

What was this problem well you are going to have to wait till my next blog to find out because that is enough for part 2 of this series. I will have part 3 up very soon

Thanks again for reading
Have a great night or whatever the situation is when you are reading :)
Dpak