Got a new truck

Considering this whole trip was not even planned, the transaction went pretty smooth. Trading three cars for one and getting exactly what we wanted, when we wanted and where we wanted – WOW.

Internet Shopping

Tuesday, April 20th, 2010 – Yesterday Patti looked in AutoTrader.com for trucks in this area (Dickson City, PA) and found a 2005 sierra 3500 at a small dealership in NJ, around 75 miles away. This tool is amazing, and saves you the running around. Without it, we would have never gone to a small dealership to look for a truck.
I called the guy, a salesperson named Alex, and told him the details of the deal – three cars for one. Verified that the car is still there, and after all was OK we drove to the dealership with the Chrysler 300m and the F-250.

Getting the deal done

Alex is very nice young salesperson and he tried to help us get all the information and details of this transaction straighten out. Not a simple task! 
We forgot the title for the truck in the RV so we had to call the service department at Camping World and have them fax us the title from our RV. We also had to call progressive and have them fax a proof of insurance for the new vehicle.
In the meantime, the wire transfer I made last night did not show up, so we were still waiting on that. We still had to drive to John and Birdsong Winery and get our Durango, so while Alex worked out the details we started to drive to Dushore, PA – over 100 miles away.

A visit to the Winery

Jon, the owner and spirit of the winery was in a great mood (Like always) and was extremely happy to see us. After few glasses of Sephardi Red –  a great Port wine, and Ricket’s Glen – another great red wine, we were in the best mood ourselves. We chatted and listened to the great south-american music that plays there all the time, and listened to Jon’s stories and endless jokes. After couple hours of fun we were ready to roll back to the dealership and finalize our deal.

Jon, Patti and I at the winery

John presenting the wine in the tasting room

Some complications

I called Alex to make sure the payment went through, but nothing…  Called my bank, and turned out the branch cancelled the wire! I call the Branch and they said that they tried to verify it by calling me, but did not have a phone number on file. Yeah right… I had her look it up and she said “As of a sudden it showed up, it wasn’t here before” That is bull… Oh well – tried to make the wire still go through but it was too late in the day. So we decided to go back the next day to complete the transaction.
Wednesday, April 21st, 2010 – First thing in the morning we called Alex and made sure the money was there, and this time it was. So everything was ready to get he deal finalized. Drove again with two cars to the dealership, and within couple hours we had all the cars cleaned up, and we were ready to roll on our new big truck.
I love this truck! Did not even know it takes so much to describe a car, but this is what we got:
GMC Sierra 3500
4X4 Dually (That means 4 rear wheels, 2 on each side)
Duramax Diesel 6.6L V8 with Allison Transmission
Crew Cab (4 doors) with 8’ bed
and on top of that – the truck is fully loaded with DVD player, XM Radio, Bose speakers, and many more.

Our new Truck

Nice interior – fully loaded

Saturday, April 24th, 2010 – In the last couple days we got some errands done, and visited with Allen, Patti’s oldest son who lives in the area. It was a nice visit since we did not see him for some time, and spent the whole afternoon together, telling him about our ventures, showing pictures and just having good time.

We met with our friend Steven, from Clarks Summit, and planned to spend some time on Sunday. In the meantime, Steven has offered us to stay at his Lake House, on lake Wallenpaupack – that was a great idea as the views are spectacular from the house.

Views from Steven’s Lake House

So the plan is to stay here through the weekend, and start heading south to Arizona by Monday. Hopefully the RV will be done by then. Will see how it goes.