It was a cold rainy Thursday in February, and a Craigslist ad pops up for a free yellow in SW Massachusetts.
Craigslist pic:
I'm stuck at work in NJ, but I contact the owner anyway. He's moving across country, and getting on a flight early the next morning. As a last ditch effort, I ask him to leave it at the dumpster at the condo complex when he leaves. I put out a feeler to the local-est WKCer I know--someone I've only PM'd with on a couple of occasions. Logic be damned, he agrees to take the 90-minute drive in nasty weather in the hopes that this decidedly non-mint yellow will still be at the dumpster.
Sure enough, it was:
After the grill was secured, I tried to convince him to keep it for himself, as he's been looking for a yellow for a long time. He won't hear it. Eventually we'll make arrangements so that I can pick it up . . .
Although ideally I would have loved to find another yellow to hand off as a token of my gratitude, that was not in the cards. However, a couple weeks ago, a CL listing popped up in Ohio for an SJ with a model number I hadn't seen before. I researching the model number here, I find a thread where my New England super agent congratulates someone else on finding this same logo SJ, and puts out a B.O.L.O. for it. I find a local WKC agent in Ohio who agrees to snag and ship this:
Fast forward to yesterday . . .
I meet up with this WKCer at a rest stop in Connecticut. We have a real nice chat about grills, life, etc. The yellow moves from his trunk to mine. I pass off my token of gratitude and a little something that I had been cellaring.
I have a separate thread for the cleanup (posted
here), but this one's about the backstory. The selflessness of WKCers never ceases to amaze me. A huge thank you to
@charred and
@randy. Without you guys, this would not be in my backyard:
First blush: