When I came to from this Chinese torture (see end of last post) two weeks later, my emotional pendulum was still moving – ever so slowly – towards one of its maximum displacements – the one I labelled “deep frustration” or “paralysing depression”.
While staring at this pendulum like the rabbit at the snake it ocurred to me: once it hits that point it’s got to reverse direction.
So what if I just waited a little? Things would surely not get any worse, they might actually improve a tiny bit.
Now waiting for me doesn’t mean twiddling my thumbs. In this case it meant going back to scanning all imaginable sources to find my plane and not day-dreaming about a friend’s of a friend Super-Cessna. And as the days went by the week turned into an unprecedented “13 – Cessna 170s”-week.
Yes, thirteen new ads had shown up, for birds from Maine to Montana, from Arkansas to Alaska.
A lot of them were flawed, one way or other, of course, but the rest kept me busy and helped to forget about a certain blue and white beauty.
With Greg’s help I had homed in on an Alaska-plane which an acquaintance of his had offered to check out.
So when, a couple of days later, Greg calls again announcing “exciting news”, I thought a trip to Anchorage was in my immediate future.
“Wrong” he said “much closer to home! Actually right around the corner: I convinced my friend to sell his plane!”
What?
“I drafted a special contract and he finally warmed up (tentatively agreed) to it. I’ll send it to you – look it over and tell me what you think!”
I couldn’t believe it!
After all this agony the pendulum appeared to have been suddenly propelled toward the other extreme by much more than simple gravity!
And even before I started to look at the proposed contract my cellphone went wild with a series of pings : Greg was sending my a deluge of photos to help getting my thinking aligned with my desires. All the goodies mentioned in his instagram post – and then some – turned into highly attractive showpieces in his images.
My excitement cooled down some when I got to the proposed purchase price: 50% above my first budget! Now, I had to literally up-date this original one a couple of times already to adjust it to the ever increasing prices of used 170s, but still….
However, when I added the cost of all the add-ons and modifications to an average price of a solid and well maintained but bare-bones 170B of the same vintage Greg’s number seemed quite reasonable – which is to say, that I had found a way to rationalize my emotional response.
So I told Greg what I thought: that I accepted the proposal – which, btw, had a couple of clauses which would save me quite some money on obligatory inspections over the first two years of my ownership – and would he please communicate that to the owner and get his final “go” for the transaction.
He called me two days later: “I have bad news” he said.
Oh no! Please, not again…!!
He continued: “You have to spend more money – you have to buy a ticket and come to Boston! He said yes!”
Yes?
Yes! Yesss !
Is that real, or what?
Yes!
Back to that liquor-cabinet – it’s Margarita-time !!