The Great Peanutbutter Car Conspiracy
Today was the great car turn over and PriceSmart/Costco run. Jim must have his gross peanutbutter. He has to eat that in another room away from me I'm so peanut allergic.
Our Canadian buddy asked to store his old purple rattletrap jeep-esque 30 year old tenement on wheels at our house. For free. Starting in early March 2020. Today marks the first day he could be back during the Pandemic. He wanted us to bring his old jalopy to the airport, park it, put the keys under the floor mat and stick a ten mil note in the visor.
We did. I freely admit I've been saltier than the ocean about this situation. Why? Because we somehow went from keeping it on our property for free and starting it every now and then to keep the engine from seizing up to (in his mind) renting the car from him. When the riteve came due three months later it took multiple repairs and trips to get it to pass. Buddy said he'd pay right up until it took nearly three hundred bucks of work for it to pass. Suddenly Buddy said that the costs of the repairs, the riteve and the marchamo were the costs of him renting it to us, even though we had zero genuine use for the car.
I could not even ride it in for more than ten minutes without having asthma because the car had been in a flood at some point and you could smell the mold. Just awful!
When Buddy said we would bear all the expenses as a rental fee I disagreed mightily with Jim. He finally did say something to Buddy about it and Buddy agreed to pay half. I told Jim I was sorely tempted to push it outside of our estate walls and leave the key in the ignition for some nice Tico to take off our hands with a sign reading "Gratis" because somehow the favor we were doing him by storing it here turned into us renting a car we could not use.
Jim, being Jim and too nice, went along with it, even if I grumbled over this purple pile of clattering clinking nuts and bolts.
Buddy didn't want us to pick him up from the airport. He was insisting we drive it and park it. We did. The car park at the Liberia airport is merely a grass verge behind the tourismo bus pick up and drop off. The concreto gives way to gravel for a few rows and then it's small grassy area. Behind it is a field that the taxis use. It's not a large lot, but it's plenty big for we expats. Jim and I routinely leave our car there when we go back to the States for the week. Of course I never would have done that had I not checked with the airport. Small lot.
We dropped it and ran, first to Walmart and then to PriceSmart. It wasn't until we were almost done with our PriceSmart run that the angry phone calls from Buddy started. The first ten or so were because he couldn't find the car. We kept telling him parked near the fence line two rows back. Then the calls were complaining about various things. The last one we got about 8 pm tonight. He's upset the clutch is "too tight". He thinks the battery is too weak and we should have changed it out. Part of the bumper is gone too. It was attached with one thin strip of duct tape, and fell off somewhere.
But it wasn't just us he's pissed off with. He'd arranged to have his stored possessions delivered to his house and about half of them were missing. I don't know for sure, but knowing his nature I would not doubt he went by the cheapest storage place and likely tried some shenanigans over payments. Karma, baby, karma.
Everyone warned Jim if we stored the car there would be shenanigans indeed.
On the good front our neighbor that's been calling us for favors feels better and asked for nothing today. Plus I managed to score a large fig tree looking tropical plant from Walmart. Buying plants for our house has taken time. Back in the States I had quite the collection. It takes time.
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