The Super Beelte

So, I was actually looking for a classic mustang. I found one, but the seller did not contact me back and I must admit, I got a little impatient. It was an average Saturday morning, and I was looking around on eBay when I saw a little Volkswagen bug. The auction only had about 30 minutes left on it and the price was in the range of what I was willing to spend. I am not really an impulse buyer, but, I think in this case, I may qualify. I put down a bid and won the auction. This was the easy part. I fully intended to pay for the car and then hire a shipping company to deliver it. Sounds simple right? This is exactly what I should have done. The seller emailed my back and thanked my for the deposit. We connected and thing started to get a bit complex. The clear title that the bug owner had in a different state, was missing meaning that he had to apply for a new one. No big deal, This is a hobby project and I am in no hurry. During this time, I decided to do research into shipping companies and found that it would be about $600 bucks to ship the vehicle right to my doorstep plus or minus $100. A few more phone calls took place between me and the seller and things are starting to get slow. He applied for the title and of course things have changed a bit since the last time he had gone through anything like this, not to mention that neither one of us has ever dealt with state to state car titles. The closest I have come to that was an old motorcycle I bought from a lifetime friend whom I trusted for many years. Still all a go for shipping the vehicle as he gave me permission to list him as my representative to sign the bill of lading for the shipping company. The next phone call revealed that the car had not been registered in 5 years. In that state, this means that the electronic records are the wiped out and transferred to MICROFICHE. We were both stunned at how anyone could still be using such a thing, but then we decided that it was typical government slowdown and that we simply had to wait for the designated person to pull and print the physical records. With the title still in limbo, I started to do more research on how to transfer titles in the state that the car was in. Just like many of the websites, these were not very helpful. It looked more and more like I had to personally sign the title and be present for for the title transfer. With this in mind, I started to work on figuring out how else to get there and then transport the bug back home. U haul to the rescue! They would rent me a truck and a car carrier for the low price of $800-$900. I also would have to drive 8 hours 1 way, learn how to move a non-running bug up onto a trailer that I know nothing about and then drive another 8 hours home. Oh Yeah, and then the COVID 19 starts up UGH! My wife then asks if we could borrow my father-in-law’s truck. This changes things. Now the cost of rental drops to $150. The truck only has a hitch, so I had to buy a ball. Finally, I get the phone call from the seller. The new title has arrived and he is ready to do the transfer. My wife happens to be the best trip planner I know. She took care of packing and planning and even picking up the truck and trailer. She truly is amazing. I think it is important to note as well that I wake up 345am each day to drive 1.5 hours to get to work. Keep in mind this also means that I drive that same distance home after working all day. Friday after work, we hop in the truck and start on our 8 hour journey to meet our new beetle. We have tried to keep this as a surprise to our kids, but they are just to observant to be kept in the dark. However, they are still not 100% certain that this is happening. All they knew is that Mom and Dad were leaving for the weekend. We drove about 6 hours or so, planning on having a nice 2 hour finish in the morning. The road conditions were wonderful and the spring weather was perfect. As a result, we only had hoodies with us as the weather is beautiful and we are both clouded by the adventure we are taking on. We stop at a big chain hotel that was the newest one on the strip. We went inside and asked for a room and they promptly started digging in to our personal information so they could sell it off and build up their marketing. I offered to pay in cash as this is what I had planned for. In today’s world, if you carry cash, people look at you like you are some kind of drug dealer or mobster. The person behind the desk informed me that they do not take cash at night. Very disappointing that a big chain such as this treats paying customers like we have the plague, but, I was too tired to fight about it. I handed over the card and then found out that their credit card machine would not take my card. We tried another. It would not take that one either. As a telephone repairman, at this point I am sure that their machine is broken or not programmed correctly and now am faced with the catch 22 that they don’t seem to take money of any sort. I ran out of pirate’s treasure at the gas station so they were just out of luck. I looked at my lovely wife and stated that it seems like this hotel wants us to find another place to sleep. The person behind the counter got really uncomfortable and sheepishly said that they would cancel the room as I was half way out the front door. I did thank them even though I was very unhappy. God had something else in mind. We drove next door and visited a Best Western where we got breakfast included (unlike the place that does not accept payments) and it was done at half the price. What a blessing. The breakfast was very good. We got back on the road and alerted the buyer that we were about 2 hours out. We then got a call from my dear friend whom we were going to meet on the drive back we were only about an hour away from each other. We chatted for a while which made the drive go nicely and planned our meet later that day. Things all seemed to be going smoothly. We found the place where our little bug was parked and were met by a friendly face which reminded me of my mother uncle. He was walking out just as we were pulling in as he had perfect timing. We were both pleased to finally meet in person and got straight to work on filling out forms and moving towards loading up and driving home. My wife opted to stay with the truck while I went with the seller to the local title office and wait in line. We went to the office and got there in the nick of time. We had just pulled our number and then the crowd started pouring in. we were only there for about 40 minutes. All was good and right with the paperwork and now we had to figure out how to roll the car out and load it up. By the time we returned to the bug, my wife had it pulled out and lined up to the trailer. I know “Amazing!” and gorgeous too. The seller was quite impressed and stated that we should just get out of her way as she was pretty close to being done without us messing it up. I had suspicions that this bug was not going to be easy to get up the ramps with only the 3 of us and 5 years of static storage. I found that I could buy a manual winch with a 32 foot steel cable for under $30 and with a couple additions from the local hardware store we could likely make this work at least once. With the car lined up, it was my turn to engineer the winch to do its duty and pull the car up. This was more difficult than I had anticipated. I got the device bolted on, but the space was awkward enough to make it so I had to leave the nut off of the hand crank to allow it to turn all the way around. Hey, even MacGyver’s devices often only worked once and then broke down. I am not ashamed. I cranked that winch until my arm hurt and got it just up on the trailer before the crank stripped the bolts and fell apart. After a quick breather, I was content that we only had to go forward now instead of up and forward. With all three of us, we managed to move the beetle to the right spot on the trailer and begin to strap it down. We did find a strap in the back of the truck, but , it did not seem to be in working order. It is possible that I just don’t know how to make it work. Fortunately, U Haul was correct that we did not require any additional straps to tie the vehicle down. After losing quite a but of blood from the broken winch and some other clumsy behavior, we got bandaged up and back on the road. We looked to the great google to find us an alternate route that didn’t involve another $85 in tolls. We were on our way to meet our friend and his daughter from dinner and thought we should at least check on different routes. The GPS lies! It told us that we could go around the toll road and save time and distance. BOGUS! We then went on what i call the tour of the airports. We saw 3 or 4 airports while traveling through every city and traffic jam near the coast. I soon realized that the tolls are totally worth paying. Then it started to snow and sleet. So there we are driving in the mountains and the storm was reminiscent of the hobbit when the stone giants were hurling rocks and the rain was so bad they could not see in front of them. We decided that if we stopped driving that we would miss our buddy and it might be worse in the morning. All this time, the GPS is telling us that we only have 3 hours until we arrive at our destination. It said that for about 4 hours. We called our people and they were pleasant and patient. They arrived ahead of us and waited there for us to arrive. We had a great dinner. The diner specialized in burgers, and, well, I love good cow sandwiches. We had a great little break with our good friends and got back on the road. We drove the rest of the way and got home around 2am. We crashed and then awoke to start returning the rental trailer and papa-in-law’s truck. We made the rounds and picked up the kids. It was a wonderful feeling when they saw it in the driveway and both got very excited. Of course they named it Bee and want it painted yellow. This was chapter 1 in the saga of the Bee.