Sullivan, Clinton and Broadhead Trail 1779

Day 6: September 8th, 2000 Pittsburgh (Car Buy)

With a little bit of luck this will be my big day. I get up early to be back from breakfast by half past seven. This is usually the best time to reach Shawn. As expected he is not really happy to hear that there will be no money today. I suggest to get any kind of confirmation for the money transfer. I am lucky that he is very cooperative. As soon as he receives a confirmation he is happy to do the title transfer. Great!

Now comes the hard part with my bank. After I got all information from Shawn I call my bank. They tell me that my prefilled printed form is not around and also the employee, with whom I have discussed everything already in Germany, is not available. Great, now I have to epxlain everything again on a long distance call. After a long discussion, also within the employees, they allow me to start the transaction by fax — at least something!

My bank also promises to check what they can send as confirmation to the other bank. I call Shawn with the good news. He also has called his bank and told them to immediately call him as soon as the confirmation has arrived. But he points out that he wants to use the fastest possible money transfer. I call my bank with the new informations again. They explain that they cannot send a confirmation but my filled out printed form with a date stamp on it. I hope Shawn is happy with that. Regarding the transfer options I have to call the headquarters of the bank. The headquarter tells me that it is already too late for the fastest transfer option. Now I realize that it is ten minutes to 4pm in Germany, the time when the bank starts to close. Now it’s getting really tight!

I have all informations to fill out the form and I hurry up to get everything done. I run to the reception and check for international fax. They tell me that the first page is $7.50 and every further page is $6! Wow, but I have no other choices. It is already too late to drive to my friends. The banks in Germany would have been closed by that time. Go for it! The employee has a bit of trouble to get the two pages through, but with a little bit of fighting with the fax she made it. I am not really amazed that she is not used to use the fax when looking at the costs for a fax…

I get the sender receipt for the fax and walk back to my room. I call my bank and they say that they have received my fax. They now start everything to get the transfer going and also send out the confirmation for the other bank. Let’s hope the best. Now I can only wait. I call Shawn and tell him that everything is now arranged from my side. He should call me as soon as he receives the confirmation from his bank.

After a very long half an hour he calls me back. His bank has received the confirmation! We make an immediate appointment and I call my friends to take me up to Shawn. Shawn takes me then up to the AAA office for the title transfer. Currently he is the driver. But in a few minutes I am the proud owner of a Chevrolet S10 Blazer. We have to wait for 15 minutes until we can start the transfer. This takes another half an hour to get everything sorted out as I am from Germany. Then the transfer is done and the truck is mine now! Shawn asks me if I could give him a ride to his parents. Sure, not a problem, anywhere he wants to! He also explains me again how everything works in the car. Then I hit the road! It is quite different to be this high up. But I like the truck from the beginning! Only the gas acts a bit rough. I will take a look at that later.

I drop Shawn at his parents and drive back to my Motel. There I remove the “For Sale” signs from the windows. Then I take a look at the manual. It looks like my truck has pretty much of every available extra. I have the feeling that this truck was a good deal. To celebrate the car buy I decide to have dinner at the Outback Steakhouse. When looking at my travel plan I see that I would have to leave tomorrow. But I think it would be worth to check the truck thoroughly through tomorrow.