kareina

After C. moved in with us this spring we occasionally started noting times when it might have been handy to have a second car. Nothing that wasn't easy to work around, like her dropping me at the University for the SCA meeting on her way to dance class, but one could see how it could make a difference in the future. Neither of them hesitated when the spur-of-the-moment trip to Finland came up and I took O. over to see his grandmother, whose health had taken a turn for the worse, but on that occasion it was only the fact that Monday's nyckleharpa night had been canceled that made it not an inconvenience for them that we didn't get back from that trip till later than nyckleharpa night would have started.

After that trip lord_kjar made it clear that while I am welcome to head to Visby for Medieval Week this year, he didn't want me to take our car--ten days with no car at home is more than he cared to work around, and he started suggesting that, perhaps, it might be time to get a second car. To my mind, the only kind of second car worth buying is one large enough to take pavilion and everything to SCA camping events, but I didn't really think we could afford one, so I didn't even look when he first suggested it.

But then we looked into the cost of a rental vehicle for getting to Visby. It turns out that one can rent a mini-van for a week for (don't quote me on this number, I am very bad at remembering numbers) something like 4000 SEK. However, one would need to spend a good bit more than that for the 10 or so days the trip takes if one wants to spend the full week at Visby. That total scared me a bit, and I started thinking it might be smarter to just buy something.

At first I daydreamed about a cargo van. Something with a huge amount of carrying capacity, and a bench seat that sits three people. But I didn't think one would be easily found, so I didn't look. Finally, this weekend, I decided to check blocket to see what was available. Much to my surprise, there was a white cargo van of exactly that description available, for only 24000 SEK. So I asked lord_kjar to have a look at the ad, and while he was looking, he noticed a smaller, more delicate blue van-like object that has seven seats, five of which are removable, for only 20000 SEK. Both were about the same age, with similar number of kilometers driven.

But the more we discussed it, the more the smaller one sounded like the better option. It still holds WAY more stuff than the car we already had, but it would be easier to handel, and more versatile, since for winter events, when we don't need the pavilion, we could take passengers with us, and still have room for a reasonable amount of stuff. Little extras like cruise control also added into the mix.

So I gave them a call, and agreed to go look at it today at 14:00. If I didn't like it then there would be no need for lord_kjar to get involved at all. However, after I looked at it and determined that, yes, I can pack what I need for a camping event in it, and having driven it, and determined that, yes, I am reasonably comfortable driving it, it was time to get him involved. Therefore, when he got off of work we went back over, and he gave it a test drive, pushing its limits much more than I would have done, and decided that it was in good enough shape to last for at least four or five trips as far as Visby. If he is right then buying this is a good bit cheaper than renting a car for those trips. So we decided to buy it.

Then came the part that I love about living in the future, and living in Sweden. To do the sale itself, the owner picked up his phone, opened the web page for transport styrelsen, used his phone to scan the box code on the top of his copy of the title, entered in his personal number, driver's licence number and expiration date, and pressed "next". Then I entered my personal number, driver's licence number and expiration date, and pressed "next". Then it showed us that the car would be transferred to my name, and we pressed "ok", and the car was mine. I will get a new title in the mail soon.

Then it was time to do the payment. We checked, and one can't just "Swish" the money from our phone to theirs, since that is limited to 3000 SEK at a time. So instead lord_kjar logged into the bank's phone app and we entered in the other guys's bank account number (by a lucky coincidence he uses the same bank, which made this a one-number to type transaction) to do the transfer. However, then the bank said that 20000 SEK was over the daily transfer limit. So instead he transferred 10000 to that number, and I pulled out my phone and transferred 10000 from the exact same account, and it worked. So now we have a second car, for the cost of two nyckelharpas.



We won't discuss the fact that now we will need to pay for insurance, that registration comes due soon, it needs new windshield wipers, and it is about due for a regular service.