Island hot rod

Just in time to save our marriage, we found ourselves a car. If you think picking out wallpaper is hard with your spouse, you should try picking out a used car from a bunch of college students on a tiny island.

In total we looked at eight cars before we found one that we liked. I should say, we found one that C.J. liked. After car number seven tensions were high. I was accusing C.J. of being too picky and he was saying things like "Just buy the car you want. If you want an oil leak and bad tires." Right.

Saturday was the height of our car buying conflict when I set up a time to meet with a person named Jamie to look at their car. I assumed Jamie was a girl. Of course the posting said some bit about "runs fine, gets you around town" yadayada. Jamie turned out to be a guy that I had just seen that week at trivia.

He had told me he was selling his car but that I wouldn't want it because it was a piece of junk. When we met him on Saturday he had a sheepish grin on his face. When I reminded him of his earlier description of the car he said "Yeah, but I'd been drinking."

We got in the car and turned the key, and it died right away. Jamie said "turn the air conditioning on, it helps keep the idle up." Great. Besides that the passenger window didn't roll down and there was an ant infestation under the hood. I tell you, ants are everywhere here, even in a car engine.

So we weren't going to buy that car, and we were tired from looking and I was ready to go back to one of the previous cars we'd seen and make an offer.

But C.J. was persistent. He wanted to look at a 1998 Mitsubishi Lancer on the post that I had completely ignored. It had all these features that we do not need like Tiptronic transmission and a Pioneer stereo and a security system and racing tires. I thought it was silly to even look at a car like that even though it was in the price range.

In the spirit of compromise, I agreed to look at it and the guy was available when I called. He showed up at our house in about 30 minutes. Right away he started talking about this car being really fast and having some awesome high-performing Mivec motor and this Tiptronic thing (clutchless manual shifting) and how he's all into racing cars. And C.J.'s eyes began to glow.

The motor turned out to be really clean, no oil leak, cold A/C, everything worked, new tires. All around really good shape. And about the same price as everyone else was asking for their car. It was the first car where we felt like he could have asked more for it.

So here it is, our new little hot rod. I'm going to be the coolest mom on the island cruising in this thing. Won't a car seat look great in the back?

Obviously by American standards it doesn't look like much but if you saw what we had to sift through to get to this one you'd think it was a jewel.

We'll get it from the current owner just before we leave in the second week of December. Since we don't have a bank account here I have to draw the money out of the ATM machine. There's a limit on how much we can get out in one day so I have to go back to the ATM about eight days in a row to get out all the money. Isn't that annoying?

Anyway, I'm just glad the search is over and that we found a car we both agree is worth the money. Ironically, it will be the nicest and newest car we've ever owned. I've never had a CD player, an alarm system or keyless entry in a car.

Right now it is the one thing C.J. is looking forward to - driving this car around the island. By the way, the highest speed limit on the island is 40 mph. We'll really be able to let 'er rip!