I swear, I have found the best used car salesman ever. I didn’t know such a thing even existed, but here he is. I’m not even going to disguise it; if you’re in California and looking for a truck, go to Newman Auto Plaza and ask for Norris.

I was a little worried about the timing problem of getting in at 2 AM on Friday and having to drop my truck off in the morning and still making it home in time to pick up the kids. I was also looking for a better muffler to put on the truck (the noise is driving me crazy.) I called the dealer, and he said not to worry about it, he’d give me a car and I could pick the truck up on Saturday. Oh, and they do stock the Banks mufflers, but don’t worry about it, he’ll give it to me. Wow, you don’t usually get that kind of service once you’ve signed on the bottom line. It’s sure different than the dealer for the trailer I bought last year, and had to sic the DMV on to get my registration ten months later.

So early tomorrow morning, I head out for D.C. I’ve only been to the East Coast once and didn’t have time then to look at anything. I’m stuck in a corporate bullshit class for four days, but my evenings are free. I’m going to try to be brave and navigate the metro system, another thing I’ve never done. I’d like to see some of the sights, especially the Smithsonian Museum. I hope they’re open late.

I am always packing my cell phone, but today I was just running down to the gym to pick up my stuff and quit (sadly, it was the building next door that burned down) and I didn’t bother with it.

Of course, today would be the day I’d need it.

I was waiting at the stop sign behind a car and a pickup. The pickup went straight across when the traffic to the left was clear and I remember thinking, “I hope he stops in the middle and waits for that car.” He didn’t.

The next thing I knew, bumpers were flying everywhere and the car was spinning right towards me. The people in front of me scooted off to the right but I didn’t really have anywhere to go.

Fortunately, she went through the yard on the corner, somehow missing both the tree and the street sign, and finished her spin by whooshing right by me on the left. She came to a stop out in both of the lanes to the left. He’d hit her in the rear quarter and spun her out. His truck wasn’t too damaged but her fender was crunched right down into her tire.

I jumped out of the truck and checked on her, and she was understandably upset. Actually, she was pushing hysterical, but I got her to back the car up just out of the lanes because traffic was flying at us. She did and then I put her in my air conditioned truck to catch her breath. The guy in the pickup stopped on the other side of the road and ran across the street. He was just a kid, and clearly upset too. The people in front of me stopped and helped too, and a guy going the other way called the police for us. The other people swore that the kid had been on a cell phone, and spent the whole time discussing the evilness of them.

So I spent a lot of time standing around in the sun being a witness and settling the poor girl and her 15 year old brother in law down. Deputies showed up and got us all to get our cars out of the way and then left it for the Highway Patrol, who weren’t too far behind. They took all of our statements and sent us on our ways, but it took about an hour. A hot hour.

She finally got it together though, and everything was taken care of. She had insurance but I don’t know if the kid did. The old lady whose yard was ripped up was talking to the kid who did it—I think she’s going to have that boy doing yard work for a month. And I shudder to think of how narrowly things were missed, like hitting my truck too or the traffic coming at us not stopping in time. What a mess.

You know, sometimes this being a grown up thing really sucks. A kid would be bouncing off the walls to get a new toy like this, and instead I’m stressing about being the proud owner of two truck payments.

Yes, I’ve gone and done it.

The old truck really was turning into a money pit and this was the smart thing to do. A diesel will last longer, pull stronger, and get better mileage (20 mpg coming home last night!) I have to throw some more money into the pit before I can get rid of it though, because no one will buy it with a dent in the side. I lived with that dent for a long time, and now I have to fix it for someone else.

The new truck is really good. It’s extremely loud though, and I have to see about getting the tailpipe routed back further. Putting a muffler on it will do bad things to my performance.

It’s a little better than the old truck in other ways too, but not those that really worry me. It has a CD player in the dash, which is nice since my changer broke more than a year ago. The seats are electric rather than lever-activated, which matters not to me. The front windows are tinted, which I’ll take off if I get a ticket. And it’s got some after-market taillight covers that just look stupid to me but everyone else thinks are cool. Oh, and the fuel tank is ginormous, which is lovely on trips but not so good when you’re faced with sticker shock at the pump. Seventy bucks? Ouch!

Now I can take the kids camping without worrying about getting dumped halfway up the mountain.

The kid in me cheered when the gym burned down last night. Yeah! I don’t have to feel guilty about quitting any more! This is as good as the school burning up for a kid.

But I will miss my shoes.

Are we sure it’s not a Monday?

Because if the fire wasn’t a Monday symptom, the transmission sure was.

Let me back up a bit.

The kids and I pulled up to their summer daycare place just in time to see flames shooting out of the dumpster right by the door. Fortunately, whoever had set the fire thoughtfully pulled it away from under the eaves, so it wasn’t really hurting anything. Another parent had just called the fire department, so we sat and waited and watched while they put it out. The owners of the place were late and missed all the excitement.

But all was fine and the kids were safe, so I dropped them off and went on.

Going on was not so easy though.

Put my foot on the gas and the engine roars, but nothing moves. Crap. The transmission?s going out again. Of course, after the 12,000 mile guarantee for getting it rebuilt the last time expired.

I took it down to the shop, and he gave it a quick check but won’t have time to really get into it until next week. And I’m in D.C. next week; he said I’d better not drive it down to the airport.

So I’m either going shopping tonight to plunk down a ton of money or I’m renting a car and parking it at the airport for a week. Neither option looks good.

I’d really planned to keep this truck for a couple of years after I’d paid it off, which will be in October. I definitely didn’t want to add a new set of truck payments with my job up in the air in a year and a half. But I can’t afford to keep fixing the damn thing either. I’m still paying off the transmission that was installed less than a year ago, and I got lucky when Uncle Lonnie hardly charged me anything to rebuild the rear end in January. I wish I still had an Uncle Lonnie to lean on.

But Marv to the rescue!

His neighbor, who’s a dairy farmer/truck salesman, is always yapping at him about good deals. So Marv called him up, and the only diesel on the lot right now is an ’05 Dodge with the Cummins 6 Liter engine and the Banks controller upgrade. It’s four wheel drive, crew cab, and sounds exactly like what I’d like. So they’re bringing it over today, and I shall look at it and then I shall go make arrangements with the credit union. What the hell, if my job goes kaput and I have to sell it later, I’ll deal with that then. The guy doesn’t want my dented old truck as a trade-in, but if I have something else to drive, I can see if the neighbor around the corner who does body work out of his garage can take care of the dent so I can sell it myself.

It’s not an ideal situation, but it might work out OK.

I didn’t schedule any fishing trips when I went on the cruise for two reasons. One; I didn’t want to have to deal with shipping a frozen fish back home to rot on the porch for a week, and two; I figured that I live close enough to the coast that I can go fishing any time. Never mind that I’ve never actually gone deep-sea fishing, despite having a grandfather who was a commercial fisherman for at least ten years. I always regretted not getting to go with him too.

But today out at lunch with a bunch of work people, someone mentioned that the salmon were running and boats were limiting out on big ones. And I got a bug up my ass and decided to put together a fishing trip.

I wanted to go next weekend, and most of the people had that one free too, so I started calling around. Of course, I’m living in a fantasy world, and none of the boats had openings with that short of notice. And once I started trying to book further out, everyone’s schedules fell apart and I couldn’t get more than three of us booked at any one time.

So that’s what I did; booked three of us. My friend JJ and Chris (one of the contractor’s site managers) and I are going fishing out of Half Moon Bay on the 30th on this boat.

There’s room for six people on it, so we’re going to do a little scrambling to try to find three more and drop our prices a little. And then I guess we’d have to get two motel rooms the night before because I seem to be the only one crazy enough to be willing to get up and drive at two in the morning. It’s not that different from hunting, I figure, and I’m willing to get up at the ass-crack of dawn to do that. I can’t stay up that late, but I can get up that early.

So, anyone in California want to join us? Drop me an email.

So on Friday, we were finally off, loaded onto three buses full of old fogies.

It took a while to get my particular old fogies loaded, as there were only two buses at first, and it didn’t look like out luggage was going to fit, but eventually we were moving. Some two hours later, we pulled into San Francisco and into the giant terminal next to the ship. The cruise people got Grampa a wheelchair and whisked him off while I stood in the endless line to get checked in. It must have gone faster than I thought though, because I beat them to the ship.

I immediately checked out my room and started exploring. My luggage was to be put in my room later in the day, so it was a good thing I brought a sweater—San Francisco’s always cold.

I was amazed at the tiny bathroom in the room, which was a little smaller than a standard hotel room, perfect for one person but a little crowded for two. I found Gramma and Grampa in time to go have a snack (along with everyone else on the entire ship) and then I wandered through the ship and finally found myself on the top to take pictures. We were taking off at five, so I went and got the good camera and staked out a spot that would be towards the city when we sailed. I met some nice people and took their pictures for them. I ended up running into them at least once a day on the whole cruise; they were seated at the table behind us in the dining room.

Only one tug boat was along for the ride—the ship backed out on her own thrusters. When the tug left us, it spun donuts and honked its horn to wave us off.

Going under the Golden Gate Bridge was pretty spectacular. Of course, I ran out of film just before we got far enough under to get a picture of the bridge with the city in the background, but I pointed out the scene to my new friends and they got one. It seemed that nobody was looking back, and most of the people missed that spectacular scene.

People walking on the bridge waved us off.

 

 

The last picture on the roll—the bridge in full sunlight.

As soon as we got out to sea, it started getting rough. I didn’t even think about taking my Dramamine until after dinner, when I was starting to regret eating, but I never was that seasick—just a little queasy. Only half of the people made it to dinner that night, and even fewer the next morning. Walking was a challenge, and even some of the crew members looked a little green around the gills. They said it was unusually rough, but meds and whiskey did just fine for me. Gramma and Grampa are old sailing dogs and they were fine, and the few kids on the ship were happily riding it like beach balls bouncing around in the surf. I guess my inner ear just didn’t expect so much motion out of what it thought was a giant hotel, because I don’t get seasick on smaller boats. It was very nice to be rocked to sleep at night though, and I slept sounder than I had in months.

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