Police Auction...

So, I still haven't bought a truck.  I've gone and looked at some, but just haven't found anything I wanted to buy.  Mike Forsberg was kind enough to go look at this '89 Ranger for me out in Clarkston, and report back to me so that I didn't have to drive up there.  I feel a little iffy about it, but I think I'm probably going to buy it.  I just can't wait around anymore looking for the perfect deal.  I mean, I think that my hesitation so far has even been more about hesitation itself than about the trucks.  Probably better to just bite the bullet.  I keep trying to tell myself that the trucks I've looked at have only cost a fraction of what I paid for my motorcycle, so I shouldn't be so uptight.  But I'm still me, so what can you do.

Anyway, I went out to the salvage auction again today and looked at a couple of trucks.  There was a bright orange '89 F150 that I thought about bidding on, but when I got out there I found that if they'd had a key for it, it was now lost, and that the doors and hood were locked, and that the passenger side door didn't even have key mechanism in it.  So I looked at the undercarriage and it all seemed to be there, with about the amount of rust you'd expect for an '89.  Maybe a little bit more.  Oh well.

Then  I went out to the police auction, which starts after the viewing on the salvage auction, but before the bidding.  I was worried that they would charge for registration at the police auction, but they didn't.  You just had to show your driver's licence and they gave you a number.

The police auction was full of interesting characters.  Mostly they were hispanic men dressed in cheap flashy clothes.  There were even portions of hard, angry looking guys and jovial smilers among them.  Later it became apparent that the smilers were dangerous in the bidding.  A couple of them would start bidding after it got down to two guys fighting up the price, then one dropped out.  The winner of that first combat would have relief written all over him, and it would be going once, going twice, then one or two of the smilers would bid it up $20 more.  The guy would look stunned, then keep bidding.  The smilers would laugh, and read the other bidder's expression, then let him get it, after a few more jumps.

There was one smiler though who was doing it and unexpectedly won the truck I'd initially been interested in.  He grinned ruefully as he walked up to the shed, and his buddies all laughed at him.  I laughed a little too.  He seemed like a happy guy.  I'd spoken to the auctioneer earlier and he said these two or three guys would drive it up for fun like that and every once in a while they got stuck with something, and would just sell it on later at a small loss.  They were there every week.

There were also a couple of guys I think were Armenian.  At least I overheard someone say that they were.  I guess they were regulars too, and were pretty close dealers.  They stood together and bid viciously, looking furiously at the auctioneer and no one else as they stabbed their placards up in bidding wars.  They bid on two late '90's Chevy Impalas, and won one of them.  They left after getting their claim ticket.

Then there were a few white trash guys, who weren't together, but strangely all had women with them.  Both male and female they looked like methheads, bodies about 40 years older than their age.  The guys were all bald ontop, but had long greasy or frizzy strings of hair down around their shoulders.  And invariably, the women wore taktops and sweatpants and the men wore tshirts with the sleeves cut off.  And they were all sunburned.

And there were a couple of other white guys, young and it looked like half-way hipsters.  They were both goofy, but not in that way that has been embraced by the hipsters, rather just regular goofy.  They had spotted faces and their grins were guileless.  One of them won one of the Impalas after a bidding war with the Armenians that took the price over a thousand dollars.

There was a slick looking black fellow in a silk tshirt who lost the first lot, a huge '70's cabin cruiser boat with faded Nevada tags, to a fat old white fellow who looked a little bewildered at the end of their bidding war.  He looked like a first timer too.  Someone's grandpa who had somehow seen this boat and fallen for it.  The black fellow was bidding for a third party on the telephone, and both he and the old guy went higher and higher.  Everyone else dropped our around $450, but those two went on in $20 increments up to $1680.  When the black fellow ran out of juice he frowned with one side of his mouth and shrugged, then said goodbye to whomever was on the other side of his phone.  The old man was wearing a fleece sweater with a picture of forest, mountains and a sliver moon on a snowy night.  I don't think he entirely believed what he'd just done.

The belle of the ball though was this truck.  It was a '99 Mazda truck, a 4 cylinder manual.  Pretty much just was I'd have liked to buy.  It looks pretty good in the picture, but the description said it had been impounded as evidence.  That might mean that someone had stolen it and gotten caught, but the owner didn't claim it after, or... something else.

Turns out, this time it was something else.  You can't really see it from the picture, but in person the something else became obvious.  That scuff in the racing stripe is a bullet hole.  There are three more in the windshield.  The rear window and the passenger's window are both broken out, and the they are sealed up with plastic that is peppered with stickers that warn of biohazard.  The bed was also sealed with plastic, with the stickers.  It seems that bits of scalp, skull, brains and blood were dried up in there.  There was dried blood on the seat backs, and a large, rumpled piece of butcher's paper covered the bottom part of the driver's seat.  When I asked the cop walking around the lot about it, she said that was where most of the blood had pooled, and that the sphincters had gone in death, so there was feces and urine.

It all belonged to this girl.  Apparently, she and a girl friend had been on a spree of between 9 and 12 armed robberies all over the valley.  I guess it was mostly restaurants at the end of busy nights, and supermarkets.  Initially the police thought it was a guy and a girl, because this one went in and did the robberies while the other drove.  I guess she was kind of big, and she wore a disguise with a top hat, and Groucho Marx glasses, with the nose, eyebrows, and mustache   But in one of the later robberies witnesses identified her as a female when they heard her speak to a restaurant hostess.

She was killed when the police went to serve a warrant on her.  She jumped into the truck and tried to hit the officers.  Also, either she or the other girl had shot at a West Jordan officer at one of the last robberies when he got into a foot chase with her.  So when she went after the cop with the truck they just opened fire.  There were a few bullet holes in the back passenger's side too, and the truck had mashed into a parked car in the street after she'd been hit.  This happened over by Liberty Park.

Her partner was arrested at the Smith's on 8th south and 9th east I think, after having come from robbing another supermarket.  The cops called her on her cell phone and told her they knew where she was, and that they were coming to the store to get her.  She gave herself up.

The dead girl's father couldn't believe it.  He admitted she'd had a heroin problem years ago, but he thought she was clean, and had been for a long time.  She made a living painting murals, and was renting a house.  She played bass at their church services and taught sunday school.

Her mother had asked the other girl not to come around anymore in the old days, because she was still using after the dead girl had been arrested for heroin and had gone to rehab.  The dad didn't know that they'd been hanging out together again.

Kind of a sad story.  They were a few years older than me.

That grinning latino guy got the truck by accident for four hundred dollars.

The Salvage Auction...

So a few days ago I bid online on a 1991 Chevy S10 on a national salvage auction site.  They have a local lot by the railroad tracks, across the street from the refinery.  I didn't go look at it.  It was kind of a spur of the moment thing.  They said it ran and moved under it's own power when it hit the lot, and I thought it was worth a try.  The best bid was $400, and I bid $425.  Six seconds later I had won.  Oh, happy day.

Then, I found out this auction had a minimum price that the seller had set.  It was $550.  They had the option for 24hrs to approve the sale at my $425, or I could just pay the $550.  I decided to stay at the $425, and wait to see if they went for it.  They didn't, and it was to go back to auction today.

This time I decided to go out there and look at it to see if I thought it was worth $550.  I got there late, and didn't know my member registration number, but they looked it up and let me out into the lot.  It was kind of fun.  You walk around in this enormous muddy lot full of rows and rows of smashed up vehicles.  Some of them are whole, like the one that I was thinking of bidding on.  They are usually ones that have been donated to some charity that contracts with the auction company to sell them.

So I went out and poked around, and eventually found the truck.  It was terrible.  In way worse shape than it had appeared in the pictures, and when I opened it up and put the key in it wouldn't start up. The frame was straight, but super rusty.  And the front tires were almost totally bald.  I'm not speaking hyperbolically.  You almost couldn't see any tread, except in the middle.  Bad, bad shape.  And worst of all, it wasn't a manual transmission, like it said in the ad.

Also, the instruments in the dash are about the grimmest, most terribly dull design I've ever seen.  Seriously.  it's the Soviet apartment bloc of vehicle interiors.

The other truck I was considering was in even worse shape.  It looked like a complete derelict.  It seemed like one of those cars that gets left to rust away at the edge of a field.  You couldn't even get in to try the engine, which like the other was supposed to run, because the door handles didn't work.

I did however find a 1979 Ford F150, with an amazing, though austere interior.  I love the old gauges.  They are so much cooler.  And even though dash boards now are made of soft plastics and rubbers so your face doesn't split open when you crash, I so much prefer the look of the steel dash.  In fact, everything about the looks of the truck were better than what you see today.

So I stuck the key in and turned, figuring that given it was as old as I was, and had obviously not been maintained or refurbished  that I wouldn't even get spark, but it started right up and ran beautifully.

If only I could get past the fact that I'd be lucky to get gas mileage in the low teens from it.  I'd definitely have preferred it to any of the others.  Not only do I prefer the style of these old trucks, I like that they are so simple.  I look at vehicles today and all I see are networks upon networks of gadgets that can break.  And even though they aren't necessary to the essential function of the vehicle, if they break the can render it undriveable, or at the very least, unsaleable.

I'd be very happy to just have something that was just an engine, some gauges, windows you can open and close, a heater, and that's all.  I don't even need a stereo.  I'm happy to listen to my little mp3 player.

Oh well.  I'd better go back to the classifieds, because I can't get over that gas mileage thing.

Beardless...

Yesterday I was cutting my hair, standing there looking in the bathroom mirror, and decided to cut it all off.  Well, not the eyebrows.  Or the little bit under my lower lip.  I haven't cut that bit since my mission.  And I haven't shaved my eyebrows since... never?

It's been two years since I've been totally beardless.  The first counselor at church today said he thought it looked good, but I think it makes my face look too short.  Like it needs a couple more inches on the bottom.  I think it's also the fact that my neck has gotten thicker and saggier.  Aging.  What can you do?

Anyway.  Here's my face.

Oh.  And Scooter is officially gone.  I sold the car to the Pull and Save.  I contacted six different scrap yards, but the Pull and Save bid the highest.  The guy hassled me a little about the title, but we worked it out.  It was a little bit of a do to get it to the lot.  It's out by Magna, and I'd siphoned most of the gas out of the tank.  There should have been a couple gallons left, but I found out that the fuel pump doesn't go all the way down into the tank.  And there was a lot of rusty sludge down in the bottom.

Anyway, I only got two blocks away before I ran out of gas.  I'd arranged with Mark LaRocco to meet me there and give me a ride back, so I was really worried about the time.  I ran home as fast as I could, and got the gas can and strapped it on my motorcycle and went back down there.  I put about a gallon of what I'd siphoned out back in.  I also sloshed a bunch all over.

Gas cans are horrible these days.  They have these new nozzles mandated by California law.  They have preventative emissions and safety measures, which make it almost impossible to get any gas out of them.  I disabled two of the three, but there is a little plastic bit on the end that is supposed to make it open a little spring loaded gate in the nozzle when the weight of the gas depresses the nozzle end.

Unfortunately the plastic bit hits the edge of the gas tube before the nozzle makes it in to the little trap door that guards the gas tube.  So the weight of the gas in the can on the catch depresses the nozzle and opens the spring loaded trap door in the nozzle, opening it up and dumping gas all over in the mouth of the fill tube.  Problem.

So you have to wrangle the can and nozzle in a weird way to get them all the way into the fill tube.  It's just irritating.

Anyway, I put in a gallon of what I'd painstakingly siphoned out, and got on the road.  Then it started dying again by the time I got to the 21st south freeway.  So I got off and put another gallon in at a gas station.  By the time I finally got to the Pull and Save I was half an hour later than I told Mark I would be.  Luckily he got lost, and arrived only a couple minutes before me.

It was nice of Mark to drive me back.  He had Jameson with him, and they came in for a few minutes.  These few minutes were enough to teach me that I have the least toddler-proof apartment in the world.  Mostly we just chased him from one dangerous or delicate thing to another until it became obvious that it was time to go.

That was a long and rambling post.