It is now a year later and I have had no further problems with the Outback. We had a very mild winter in Seattle so I had only a few good opportunities to use it in the mountain snow. On those occasions it proved to be far superior to the Horizon and Saturn Coupe I had used for the preceding 18 years. If this winter is more normal I should have even more reason to appreciate it. In hindsight I was enormously lucky to have found a seller as ethical as Serge and a repair shop like Sauder's. My results could have been bad. Instead, I received a new head gasket and seals plus a new timing belt I had planned to have replaced. My cost was four extra days in Sidney at $30 per night.

     My final problem was one I never foresaw. Serge took care of all the paperwork and my title arrived quickly. When I went in to have the car licensed the attendant could not believe the price. She had licensed more than a few Outbacks and could not believe that the $6195 price was not made up to avoid paying sales tax. I showed her the bill of sale signed by a registered dealer and she finally relented. It's interesting to see what my total cost was. $160 for air, subway, and bus transport to Philadelphia. About $150 for gas. The price was only around $1.20 per gallon last November. I averaged about 26 mpg over 3100 miles. What should have been 3 nights in a motel ended up being 7 at about $35 per night. That's about $260 for lodging. That adds up to $570 + $6195 for a grand total of $6765. The travel costs were more than offset by the new head gasket and seals plus the new timing belt.

     The final question is "would I do it again?". The answer is "yes I would". Subarus are so popular that their resale value is way too high on the west coast. EBay created a way for me to take advantage of this disparity. The key was to deal with a dealer who had an overwhelmingly positive feedback rating and to buy a car with a third party warranty. Those were the two most important factors. Solo driving turned out to be less of a problem than I expected. The car had both a tape deck and CD player and I brought plenty of music. My longest day averaged 75 mph over 11 hours for over 800 miles. I was only three weeks before the shortest day of the year so much of it was done in the dark. I don't drink coffee and I had no trouble staying awake. Because of that I probably made a lot less bathroom stops than most others. With all the wind buffeting the car it was jarring enough to keep my attention anyway. The only change I will make in the future is to make the trip on a nice sunny week in the summer.