My parents want to see me more before I head east, and so (sorry Maria!) I’m flying down back to LA on Friday night, returning Tuesday and will see most of you guys on Thursday!
I introduced Rachel to boogie boarding yesterday. She seemed to take to the waves pretty well.
Before Rachel and I got on the road to head northward, I finally sold my laptop. So for $100 difference (with a rebate), I’m getting something similar to Boyk’s iBook. 6 hrs of battery life, a bigger screen, and a 66 MHz speed boost. But in order to sell this, I went through the worst craigslist experience ever.
So I posted my AlBook on craigslist LA and SF both. I got an offer from this dude from Topanga. We exchanged a few emails and finally he called me this morning to ask me about it — asking why he should buy it when he could get something better for a few hundred dollars more, and I said that he’d get Bluetooth, and audio in and a few other things. But I also pointed out that it would be about $100 more than the list price because of sales tax. “Oh — Apple is a California company?”
Red flag number one.
“Well, forget about it, then. Go sell it to someone else.”
So close to an hour later, we were all ready to go, and I got a call.
“Hi Cyrus, this is [redacted]. I changed my mind. I’d like to buy it.”
“Ok, good thing you caught me. I was just about to leave.”
“Well, can you come down to Santa Monica?”
“Not really. I have my car, and I could get there, but I have all my stuff set up — could you just come meet me here in Topanga?”
“Alright fine.”
So we got underway. We drove up the 405, up the 101, into Topanga from Woodland Hills and after driving up and down some of the canyonside, we finally found him. He was a hippy, house-sitting for someone else. The house was adorned in Buddhist stuff, a marijuana pipe (that Rachel pointed out to me later), a stack of shoes outside the door, sparse furniture, a futon, and several djembŽs (West African drums). I showed him the computer, created an account for him, deleted my own stuff. All was going smoothly. He had me sign a contract — and then, as I was asking for the money, he said:
“Oh, I told you that I had to go to the bank.”
“No you didn’t.”
“Yes, I did. Well I have to go over the hill (10-15 drive away) to the bank to get the money — or I could get you a check, but . . .”
[annoyed] “Ok, but you didn’t say that.”
He said he was from Arkansas, and moved to Venice Beach to get into the movie business. He only likes Topanga and Venice in LA. As we pulled out, reaching Topanga Canyon Blvd., he points to a delapidated school bus parked on the shoulder.
“That’s my bus. I make candles in there. I could have taken it, but I try to drive it as little as possible.”
It also was revealed that there were problems with the brakes.
We got to the bank, he withdrew $900 in 20s, and gave them to me. Rachel, understandably, was seething at me. I got him back in the car, drove him back over the hill while Rachel waited for me, trying to say as little as possible and trying to go safely, as quickly as possible. He tipped me $20 (which I gave to Rachel) “for your shuttle fees.”
*sighs*
