Made the most of yesterday
Oddly when I think about how I want to tell the story of yesterday the conclusion I am heading to is that I need to replace my car with something that will allow is to go anywhere we are interested. What I still don't know is what to replace it with.
Anyway, yesterday morning our first stop was Woodside where we were meeting rip for breakfast. I used to work with him in Swindon where he was the local Californian, since then he has lived in Kenya and Austria. When he had to move back to the US he got a job with a company based in San Jose so he's often over here. He is enjoying the job and his area includes most or all of the east coast, the I95 corridor as he says. It's nice to see that coming together well for him. I tried to get our company to hire him but we were going through one of our frequent molting exercises and had stopped hiring while we moved to another building. Our loss.
From Woodside we headed over the hill on the twisty steep forest roads. I expected a lot more cyclists, but the road had a lot of tree debris from the Friday night storm. Not a problem for a car. We went up the coast to Devil's Slide then stopped at Starbucks. We must make a video of that bit of road before they open the new tunnel, I doubt it will survive many winters and they won't leave it open anyway.
In the spirit of looking for a new car I stopped off at Hertz South San Francisco used car lot. First thing was that they didn't have any of the three or four interesting cars they were supposed to have. No Infiniti fx 35 no Merc GLK 350 and no Nissan Titan. The salesman told us that the web site is basically garbage and doesn't reflect their stock at all. So since he couldn't help I asked about their fire. Didn't happen he said. Dude! We were there! No, it was a grass fire. So, the man is a liar. So can I trust anything he says? I think not. So we left.
We headed for the Embarcadero to drive round to the Golden Gate Bridge but there were signs saying the road would be closed, no matter, we just headed in to the city and bypassed it all. We messed around on Marin Headlands then went to Petaluma and over to the coast and out to Point Reyes just in time to miss sunset. But it was still pretty and we had a brisk walk out to the point. I think I saw a whale too, but the sea was too rough to get a good look.
On the way out there was a park ranger making sure people got away OK and that reminded me of something I'd wondered. So I wandered over and asked. He actually seemed gratified that I was interested. A couple of years ago two women were lost during stormy weather. I always wondered what happened. So I asked. One of them had just gone for a walk, and that's the last anyone saw of her. On the Friday night her car was reported on the last check round the park and on the Saturday morning they officially logged her missing. The other was walking three dogs, two were found dry in the car, one was found soaking wet and trapped on the trail up from the beach by a long leash which had got trapped between rocks. Neither of them was ever seen again. The ranger we talked to still looks for any evidence whenever he is down on the beaches and the mother of one of them calls a couple of times a year to check. We were lucky to run in to someone who knew. Sad that they were never found.
By the time we left I was chilled through, usually I have the car at 70F inside, when I have something with climate control, but this time 75F hadn't warmed me up in an hour. A quick change to 90F made the difference. After ten minutes.
So, after all that, and stopping for dinner at Max's we were home around 9pm.
And today we can't do that because I must make progress on finding another car. Driving a very very fast car is entertaining, but it is likely to cost me my license and there are still places we can't go. I'd like something that doesn't get too disastrous economy and can go places cars can't. Not rock crawling, but it would be nice if it could do that in the event it was essential If the FJ Cruiser didn't have bad rear visibility that might be just the thing. No perfect answer yet.
Anyway, yesterday morning our first stop was Woodside where we were meeting rip for breakfast. I used to work with him in Swindon where he was the local Californian, since then he has lived in Kenya and Austria. When he had to move back to the US he got a job with a company based in San Jose so he's often over here. He is enjoying the job and his area includes most or all of the east coast, the I95 corridor as he says. It's nice to see that coming together well for him. I tried to get our company to hire him but we were going through one of our frequent molting exercises and had stopped hiring while we moved to another building. Our loss.
From Woodside we headed over the hill on the twisty steep forest roads. I expected a lot more cyclists, but the road had a lot of tree debris from the Friday night storm. Not a problem for a car. We went up the coast to Devil's Slide then stopped at Starbucks. We must make a video of that bit of road before they open the new tunnel, I doubt it will survive many winters and they won't leave it open anyway.
In the spirit of looking for a new car I stopped off at Hertz South San Francisco used car lot. First thing was that they didn't have any of the three or four interesting cars they were supposed to have. No Infiniti fx 35 no Merc GLK 350 and no Nissan Titan. The salesman told us that the web site is basically garbage and doesn't reflect their stock at all. So since he couldn't help I asked about their fire. Didn't happen he said. Dude! We were there! No, it was a grass fire. So, the man is a liar. So can I trust anything he says? I think not. So we left.
We headed for the Embarcadero to drive round to the Golden Gate Bridge but there were signs saying the road would be closed, no matter, we just headed in to the city and bypassed it all. We messed around on Marin Headlands then went to Petaluma and over to the coast and out to Point Reyes just in time to miss sunset. But it was still pretty and we had a brisk walk out to the point. I think I saw a whale too, but the sea was too rough to get a good look.
On the way out there was a park ranger making sure people got away OK and that reminded me of something I'd wondered. So I wandered over and asked. He actually seemed gratified that I was interested. A couple of years ago two women were lost during stormy weather. I always wondered what happened. So I asked. One of them had just gone for a walk, and that's the last anyone saw of her. On the Friday night her car was reported on the last check round the park and on the Saturday morning they officially logged her missing. The other was walking three dogs, two were found dry in the car, one was found soaking wet and trapped on the trail up from the beach by a long leash which had got trapped between rocks. Neither of them was ever seen again. The ranger we talked to still looks for any evidence whenever he is down on the beaches and the mother of one of them calls a couple of times a year to check. We were lucky to run in to someone who knew. Sad that they were never found.
By the time we left I was chilled through, usually I have the car at 70F inside, when I have something with climate control, but this time 75F hadn't warmed me up in an hour. A quick change to 90F made the difference. After ten minutes.
So, after all that, and stopping for dinner at Max's we were home around 9pm.
And today we can't do that because I must make progress on finding another car. Driving a very very fast car is entertaining, but it is likely to cost me my license and there are still places we can't go. I'd like something that doesn't get too disastrous economy and can go places cars can't. Not rock crawling, but it would be nice if it could do that in the event it was essential If the FJ Cruiser didn't have bad rear visibility that might be just the thing. No perfect answer yet.