Buying a car: Buracracy Part II

So here we are - a family of 4 including 2 kids with pretty healthy appetites. Which is fine by me cause I'd rather have them eat than not. So you can imagine my discoOmfort as a mother when I had to sit down and tell the kids that we would be moving to a system of eating on alternate days.  Girls on Tues, Thurs, Sat and Boys on Mon, Weds, Fri. Sundays, Bailey the Dog will eat. True to form, Caroline immediately started a list about what meals her days should include and Jamie just stared at us and uttered 'macaroni and cheese'. I realize that this seems like a harsh policy but it is the reality when you need to walk miles for your food, slay it in the grocery store and then bring it back in your knapsack. If we were anything but suburban, white, Torontonions with big butts and an appetite for computer games then this might not have been such an issue.  Mighty hunters we are not - except maybe in a virtual world.

The Albert Hypermarket is a 15 minute walk from our house. Well, 15 minutes for most people; 20 for me. I have bad knees you know. The daily walk to Albert was fun at first, but then the operative word became 'daily'. Fun quickly becomes drudgery when you need to walk every day in order to build up any kind of inventory in the fridge or the cupboards. Keeping food in the house when the only vehicle you own is a vintage '64 FEET, is a challenge - volume is simply not doable and deciding who gets to eat the 1 yogourt you could carry home, is no fun at all. Well, who is kidding who, it was fun when I won the yogourt. - especially blueberry. I like blueberry. It didn't take long to figure out that the alternating feeding schedule and yogourt contests simply weren't working. The kids were whining about how unfair it was that the other kids got to eat everyday. And I totally got their point. I was cranky too as hard as that is to imagine. It was time to buy a car.


Except, in the Czech Republic, unless you are an EU citizen, you need to have a long term visa in order to buy and register a car with the SFPD (Secret Foreign Police Dudes) and of course, we only have a short term visa for now. So out on the internet I searched on 'cheap porsches, Czech Republic, 500ck, low mileage, driven by old lady'. While that search didn't yield much, it did lead me to Ciarnan Kelly, or 'just call me Kelly', for short. Kelly is an American living in Prague who has been selling cars there for years (at least that's what it said on the internet so it had to be true, right?). I decided to email him first as I didn't want to appear too eager. He replied immediately with the information that we wanted - and a solution to our problem; I couldn't believe our luck. Because he was so helpful through his emails, we asked if he would send a car to come and get us so that we could look at cars on his lot. Kelly works for AAAAuto and immediately cause of the name I got this whole image in my head of Herb Tarlek sitting behind his desk - which would be situated outside on the car lot - and who has trouble trying not to laugh at the rubes coming by to look at the crap he has for sale.

True to his word, he sent a car for us and after it was an hour late in getting there, we finally did manage to meet him. The image of the lot wasn't far off, but Kelly wasn't any Herb Tarlek; unless Herb is wondering around in Levis and a Red Sox t-shirt. Turns out that Kelly doesn't sell cars anymore, but is instead something much more important in the AAAAuto world but he had decided to take us on as a charity case. I knew the alternating feeding schedule would work in our favour somehow....

After looking at car on the lot which I had deemed as being 'cool' and pretty I was ready to buy. Stu however felt that perhaps we should do a test drive. Details details... At any rate, after 4 hours of backing and forthing and Kelly being very patient and us having endless discussions about what happens if the car we've chosen doesn't have cruise control, or brakes, would that be a problem...we decided to buy. (Its now 10pm and I'm glowing orange again because I am so tired).

But now comes the hard part. Paperwork. Turns out the contracts would be in Czech. The insurance would be in Czech and, this is my personal favourite, because we didn't have the right visa, we would have to register the car in someone elses name. So in essence, buying a car means that you sign a legal document that you can't read, deposit $20,000 into a secret bank account, and then hand the asset over to someone else. Sounds about right to me. So that what we did. Martin, whom at the time we had known for 2 weeks, 'agreed' to own our car. Kelly 'agreed' to keep our $20,000 in his bank account and the SFPD agreed not to arrest us for not having the right visa. Another tick in the win column