The End

September 2002

Well, here we are at the end of my story. It took a while for me to decide that I wanted to sell the jeep, and when I finally put it up for sale, actually selling it took quite a while as well.

I listed the jeep for sale in the local Truck Trader and thank god, paid the "list till it sells" rate. In March I took the jeep to the yearly 4x4 swap meet in Puyallup in high hopes of selling it there. Lots of tire kickers but no takers. Many people knew the jeep from reading these webpages, which was sort of fun. I must be famous or sometime, ha.

After the swap meet there was a constant trickle of people interested in the jeep. Some of the better ones:

A guy from the 4x4 Museum in Utah was interested in buying it.
A guy from Albequerque wanted to know if it would make it down there. I didn't think so, then he had me measure the width to see if it would fit in a u-haul. Then we talked about trying to get it the closest Airforce base as he was in the military and they might ship it for him.
A guy from California wanted to know if I would deliver the jeep.
A couple from Germany working in my area came and looked at the jeep and wanted to ship it back to Germany, but didn't think it would pass import restrictions.

Finally in September I got the following email:

From: "Liliann" liliann@attbi.com To: chris@chriskate.net Date: Thu, 5 Sep 2002 20:26:43 -0700 Subject: The Jeep

How's it goin, names Kyle

Just got done laughing my ass off reading your jeeps story. God that brings back memories of my highschool days.

My best friend back then got to adopt his dads early 70's CJ-5 as his first auto! I bounced around that guy smiling every time he even mentioned off-road. We spent countless hours with his dad working and breaking that thing over and over. Never did get old.

Well, i'm 30 now and damnit i'm gettin one! I'm currently a dissapointed owner of a '96 Chev 1/2 ton Silverado that just wont stop breaking down. I hit 130k miles and all hell is breaking loose. Problem is, I pop the hood and can only stare at all the hoses, wires, and tubes for so long before I cringe and slam the hood down. God I miss working on my buddies old jeep. Just pop the hood and start unbolting stuff.

Anyhow.. i'm trying to decide what to do. Right now I got a broken down pickup in my driveway, and come next friday about 5.5k in the bank. Now.. got a question for ya, in the Truck Trader you have a tag of 4k and on the web site its 5k.. Personally i'm not all that concerned with the price. Mostly contemplating how I can pull this off . I could just dump all that cash into fixing my truck "ew" and be without transportation for a couple weeks. OR just buck up and slap down some cold cash for that incredible machine, and wait a while to fix up the chevy, or just sell it as it is and take a loss. If it's 4k it shouldnt be a problem at all.

At any rate, i'm hoping to take a look at it maybe this Sunday if at all possible. Saturday is out, gotta work. I live just down in Auburn.

I'll try and give you a call tomorrow about it.. and to ask ya why the hell your gettin' rid of it !

Take it easy.. thx

Kyle sounded exactly like me 9 years ago whey I bought the jeep. After my wife Kate read the email she even said "he's perfect, he even has crappy gramar like you." Not sure if that was a compliment.

So, a couple weeks later Kyle and his fiance came to look at the jeep. Kyle took it for a test drive and was gone quite a while. I was a little concered that maybe it broke down, but eventually he returned with a big grin on his face and I knew he was hooked. After a little negotiating on the price and it was a done deal.

Kyle returned a week later with a friend and drove the jeep to it's new home and to hopefully start a whole new round of Adventures...