Darlene and Picasso's new car
Donation protected
as you know, I came to realization that I just could not do any more shows, the driving was just getting to be too much. Since our lease was up at the end of July we felt it was a good time to end our traveling and relocate to a warmer climate. That was something we had been considering for a while. Our last shows would be Collinsville Illinois and then Grapevine Texas. Then off to Knoxville Tn. to find a new place to live. That was the plan.
We had an airbnb in Collinsville...and stayed over on Monday so I could have a chance to see my sister who was visiting her husband's family in Springfield. Also had a chance to do laundry and relax for the rest of the day since the previous 6 weeks had been pretty frantic...packing up our lives, having an estate sale to sell off most of our belongings, arranging with a moving company to pack up the remainder of our goods and put it in all in storage until early August, clear out the leftovers, clean the house and hand over the keys to the landlord.
We were staying in Belleville Il, just a bit south of Collinsville and stopped for a late lunch in town on Tuesday.
When we went back out to the car, where we had parked in the lot, I turned the key and this very odd growl noise was the result....a sound unlike any I had ever heard before....at which point a man in a plaid shirt and jeans came over and said, "Lady, you have a real big oil spill under your car. You should take a look under the hood." I agreed and he and I opened the hood. He pointed out the dark oil stains on the hood insulation and the leak under the van. "You had better call a tow to the nearest mechanic." These are the words you NEVER want to hear. But worse was to come.
Called AAA and waited in a state of total anxiety.
The tow driver was very nice but seemed to agree with the plaid man. We went to a local garage.
The mechanic there made some very growly kind of sounds as he poked around under the hood. "Do you have a regular mechanic? Did he ever mention that your head gasket was leaking?" I answered in the affirmative. I also said that my mechanic felt it was nothing we had to worry about for awhile. He said, "I think your time is up. There are more than 215,00 miles on this van and that is more than I have ever seen on one of these. You have to rebuild with this kind of problem and I don't think it will be worth it, since the value of your van is probably not even twice what it would cost to do the repairs. You should contact your insurance company." We did.
The mechanic and the insurance people talked on the phone awhile and then they talked to me. An adjuster would be out to see the van soon.
Progressive is really a good company and we only had to wait about an hour until the man showed up with his ipad and his checklist. He agreed with the mechanic. He said that now we had to talk to the finance company and have it declared a loss.
This turned out to be the sticky part.
The agent from the insurance and the person from finance had differing views. Apparently based on some sort of percentages the repair would still leave several thousands of value in the van. Actually it would be very few several dollars of value left in the car, but enough in the statistical view of the finance people to warrant repairs. The mechanic felt this was stupidity in the extreme, as did the insurance man. They felt that the repair of the head gasket would be severely detrimental to the value.
I decided to consult another expert, my nephew who owns a lot of car dealerships in Chicago.
After a round robin of conversations with the mechanic and the insurance agent my nephew agreed that we should just call it a loss. The finance company could argue but without further payments they would have to take the car back. The problem would be the reprocess on my record. He could help me with that.
So the final result was a very heated conversation with the finance people, a tow out of the mechanic's lot to a lot outside town and a ride with the tow man to the nearest Super 8 along with a few pieces of our luggage.
At the hotel we tried to find a van to rent. There was nothing available, not even in St Louis, until after the weekend.
Now we had no car, a van full of our stock and personal effects sitting in an unattended space. Not an optimal situation. We had the van packed with a month's worth of clothes and things we would need after the show to hold us over until we could find a place to live in Tennessee. The plan being to do the Grapevine show, visit my niece and her family and head out to find a new home. Now here we were in a hotel without any transportation at all.
We finally found a rental company that would pick us up. Then we located a storage space with a reasonable rate. We got a car and then made about 6 trips back and forth with the stock and put the boxes into storage along with any items we deemed unnecessary on our trip. The bare essentials we packed into the car and headed back to Chicago.
We returned the car to the rental company and took a cab over to my nephew’s offices. He gave us a car to use for a few days and started looking for a cheap, safe, fuel-efficient car for us. We checked into a hotel and fell asleep for what seemed like two days. The stress levels dropped considerably.
He found us a Kia Soul, a boxy compact, 2012 with only 900,030 miles. It is an odd mossy green color, so we call it Froggy. It ranks 3rd in safety on the road and gets good gas milage. We worked out very good terms.
We set off for Tennessee yesterday with a stopover in Kentucky. We are in Tennessee today and have started searching for a new place to rent to call home and a place we can set up the shop again and make stamps and open up the website.
We ended up paying out a lot of the $$ we saved for our move, the moving company costs, the first and last deposit on a house on hotels and car rental and the storage costs and car payments. We still have to make a trip back to Collinsville to get our stamp show inventory out of storage. We have tp be very, very frugal for a while.
But we have had some very helpful angels come to our aid along the way and we have faith that this will be a good move in the end. Challenging situations seem to be the ones that increase our level of gratitude, however taxing on the nerves while it is going on.
luv
Darlene
We had an airbnb in Collinsville...and stayed over on Monday so I could have a chance to see my sister who was visiting her husband's family in Springfield. Also had a chance to do laundry and relax for the rest of the day since the previous 6 weeks had been pretty frantic...packing up our lives, having an estate sale to sell off most of our belongings, arranging with a moving company to pack up the remainder of our goods and put it in all in storage until early August, clear out the leftovers, clean the house and hand over the keys to the landlord.
We were staying in Belleville Il, just a bit south of Collinsville and stopped for a late lunch in town on Tuesday.
When we went back out to the car, where we had parked in the lot, I turned the key and this very odd growl noise was the result....a sound unlike any I had ever heard before....at which point a man in a plaid shirt and jeans came over and said, "Lady, you have a real big oil spill under your car. You should take a look under the hood." I agreed and he and I opened the hood. He pointed out the dark oil stains on the hood insulation and the leak under the van. "You had better call a tow to the nearest mechanic." These are the words you NEVER want to hear. But worse was to come.
Called AAA and waited in a state of total anxiety.
The tow driver was very nice but seemed to agree with the plaid man. We went to a local garage.
The mechanic there made some very growly kind of sounds as he poked around under the hood. "Do you have a regular mechanic? Did he ever mention that your head gasket was leaking?" I answered in the affirmative. I also said that my mechanic felt it was nothing we had to worry about for awhile. He said, "I think your time is up. There are more than 215,00 miles on this van and that is more than I have ever seen on one of these. You have to rebuild with this kind of problem and I don't think it will be worth it, since the value of your van is probably not even twice what it would cost to do the repairs. You should contact your insurance company." We did.
The mechanic and the insurance people talked on the phone awhile and then they talked to me. An adjuster would be out to see the van soon.
Progressive is really a good company and we only had to wait about an hour until the man showed up with his ipad and his checklist. He agreed with the mechanic. He said that now we had to talk to the finance company and have it declared a loss.
This turned out to be the sticky part.
The agent from the insurance and the person from finance had differing views. Apparently based on some sort of percentages the repair would still leave several thousands of value in the van. Actually it would be very few several dollars of value left in the car, but enough in the statistical view of the finance people to warrant repairs. The mechanic felt this was stupidity in the extreme, as did the insurance man. They felt that the repair of the head gasket would be severely detrimental to the value.
I decided to consult another expert, my nephew who owns a lot of car dealerships in Chicago.
After a round robin of conversations with the mechanic and the insurance agent my nephew agreed that we should just call it a loss. The finance company could argue but without further payments they would have to take the car back. The problem would be the reprocess on my record. He could help me with that.
So the final result was a very heated conversation with the finance people, a tow out of the mechanic's lot to a lot outside town and a ride with the tow man to the nearest Super 8 along with a few pieces of our luggage.
At the hotel we tried to find a van to rent. There was nothing available, not even in St Louis, until after the weekend.
Now we had no car, a van full of our stock and personal effects sitting in an unattended space. Not an optimal situation. We had the van packed with a month's worth of clothes and things we would need after the show to hold us over until we could find a place to live in Tennessee. The plan being to do the Grapevine show, visit my niece and her family and head out to find a new home. Now here we were in a hotel without any transportation at all.
We finally found a rental company that would pick us up. Then we located a storage space with a reasonable rate. We got a car and then made about 6 trips back and forth with the stock and put the boxes into storage along with any items we deemed unnecessary on our trip. The bare essentials we packed into the car and headed back to Chicago.
We returned the car to the rental company and took a cab over to my nephew’s offices. He gave us a car to use for a few days and started looking for a cheap, safe, fuel-efficient car for us. We checked into a hotel and fell asleep for what seemed like two days. The stress levels dropped considerably.
He found us a Kia Soul, a boxy compact, 2012 with only 900,030 miles. It is an odd mossy green color, so we call it Froggy. It ranks 3rd in safety on the road and gets good gas milage. We worked out very good terms.
We set off for Tennessee yesterday with a stopover in Kentucky. We are in Tennessee today and have started searching for a new place to rent to call home and a place we can set up the shop again and make stamps and open up the website.
We ended up paying out a lot of the $$ we saved for our move, the moving company costs, the first and last deposit on a house on hotels and car rental and the storage costs and car payments. We still have to make a trip back to Collinsville to get our stamp show inventory out of storage. We have tp be very, very frugal for a while.
But we have had some very helpful angels come to our aid along the way and we have faith that this will be a good move in the end. Challenging situations seem to be the ones that increase our level of gratitude, however taxing on the nerves while it is going on.
luv
Darlene
Organizer and beneficiary
Patricia Azevedo
Organizer
Wylie, TX
Darlene Domel
Beneficiary