This has been an interesting week so far. I drove down Friday to visit my father for the weekend and to pick up the remnants of what I had from SF and take it back home. I had scheduled a bunch of appointments for this week since I leave for PyCon on the 25th and I wanted to get things done, including my car registration which required a smog check.
But while pulling back on to the highway after lunch at the south end of the island, I heard a pop in my car and a sudden rattling. I pull over and pop the hood in hopes that something obvious simply dislodged that I could somehow reattach. No such luck, though, so I close the hood and start to drive down the highway.
And that's when I notice the car doesn't do a lot in second gear. As soon as the car accelerated to 20 mph and the car shifted gears there was no speedup in the car and the engine began to race. That spells transmission problems which are never cheap.
After parking in a parking lot right off the highway I figured out where to have the car towed. The car and I arrived at the garage at 15:00; two hours left in the garage's workday. The garage said they would try to diagnose the issue by the end of the day, but it didn't happen. And because it is the island they were closed all weekend. That left me plenty of time to reflect.
Transmission repairs are expensive things. Typically you either end up with your transmission rebuilt or you end up buying one already rebuilt. Either way it ain't cheap as the part is expensive and it takes hours of labor to deal with. Knowing this I looked up the blue book value of my car: about US$2,000 in excellent condition, but more realistically under US$1,400 for fair condition. So I set myself a ceiling price; if the car repairs came in over $2,000 I would not bother to fix the car. A slightly bold move on my part considering I learned how to drive in Los Angeles and was an active driver for about a decade before I moved to Vancouver.
Come Monday morning I get a call from the garage about the price: $2,385 + tax. Being over my ceiling I ask if they know whether a car registered in BC can be scrapped in Washington State. They didn't know, but said they would look into it. While I wait I make a smattering of phone calls (I tried to stay off the line as my father does not have call waiting and my cell gets no signal here; not exactly cutting edge here in terms of technology) and I find out I can't donate my car as no one wants the hassle of dealing with BC stuff. But once 17:00 rolled around and I knew the garage was not going to be calling that night I began to investigate. I mostly get a bunch of numbers of places to call in the morning (thank you very much Washington AAA!).
Tuesday morning I get up and start calling around. Turns out the local recycling company will take the car (it also turns out the garage asked what it would take to tow the car back to BC which I didn't ever plan to do). So I go to my car one last time, clear out what I want to keep, strip the license plates off the car, and then drop off the paperwork at the recycling company (since BC has the same crown corporation run both the registeration and provincial car insurance there is no title for the car, just the bottom part of your current registration). And at that point I no longer owned a car.
I have now inadvertently extended my stay here at my dad's by a week (he is not available to drive me back until then). That means I only get one full day back in Vancouver before I leave for PyCon. Ironically, though, the only thing I had to really deal with before I left was car registration.
I also need to choose a carshare service. I am not stupid enough to think I will not want to have a car available to me on occasion. In Vancouver there is Zipcar and the Co-operative Auto Network (CAN). Basically Zipcar has a few cars really near me at Safeway, but CAN has more cars overall nearby, just not none quite as close as Zipcar. CAN is also cheaper than Zipcar. But the big issue is that CAN wants a BC drivers license which I don't have. Since I am a student I get to drive under my California license. Now I could take the written test and surrender my CA license for a BC one, but that would mean getting a new CA license in two years (assuming I stay on schedule to graduate, I still plan on working for Google in SF or MTV, and I don't meet some girl that causes me to not move back to the Bay Area). I don't think CAN will save me enough to warrant the hassle. Plus Zipcar is also in the Bay Area so I would be able to keep my membership when I move back to the States. I am giving myself a few days to think about it, but chances are I will go with Zipcar.
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