From the Archives - Bits & Bobs Volume XVI

Introduction

This is the sixteenth installment in the “From the Archives – Bits & Bobs” series. Volume I is here, Volume II is here, Volume III is here, Volume IV is here, Volume V is here, Volume VI is here, Volume VII is here, Volume XIII is here, Volume IX is here, Volume X is here, Volume XI is here, Volume XII is here, Volume XIII is here, and Volume XIV is here, and Volume XV is here. (The different volumes have nothing to do with one another and can be read in numerical order, alphabetical order, in birth order, or in whatever order your Ouija Board advises.)

What are Bits & Bobs, in the context of this blog? They’re like little literary snacks … brief passages from old emails or essays, or things I’d have scrawled on a bathroom wall if I were a vandal. Though generally written to a friend or family member, they’re tidbits I figure my albertnet audience might get a chuckle, snort, chortle, or at least a smirk out of. Read these aloud to your friends, family, colleagues, or a stranger on the phone, ideally a telemarketer. Or copy them onto Post-its and stick them all over your house for inspiration!

January 17, 2005

Welcome to Gmail! I’m glad my special exclusive invitation hit its mark. I hope you consider me kind of elite to have made this new platform possible for you. Of course, it’s hard for me to feel superior when you got a cooler address than I did. Alas, dana.albert is always taken when a new email platform sprouts up. Anyway, as you start using Gmail I entreat you to never click on any of the Adsense “sponsored links” (i.e., ads), lest you help launch a new way to advertise, which is the last thing this country and world need.

Gosh, that’s a less-than-cheery paragraph, I now realize. I’m pretty fed up, I guess. We took the kids to San Francisco today for a nice stroll along the new waterfront, where they’ve restored a wetland. It was absolutely frigid, with a howling cold wind. L— cried continuously. A— had a blast, though: she saw her first helicopter, her first container ship, her first motorboat, and her best (if not first) view of a seagull, quasi-hovering not 10 feet away. Then we went to House of Nanking, where A— pronounced most of the food (scallops excluded) “too spicy,” and L— tore up the place, even flinging food at the couple at the next table. We had to take turns walking her outside. We got home and put both kids to bed, and tried to get a nap ourselves (I’m fighting some bug), but the phone rang every 20 minutes, and no handset was near. So I have half-napped, which is a recipe for grogginess and a sour disposition. So, have a better one!

December 3, 2006

What do I mean by “damn fritjes?” Why, I’m glad you asked! “Fritjes” is a Dutch word, the diminutive of “frites,” which needless to say are fries, as in French fries. There’s a story behind this. When my mom was married to the man who had formerly been her landlord, and whom we thus always called The Landlord, or more precisely The Landlo’, they traveled quite a bit. This was fun for my mom except that the Landlo’ was, well, a total dick. I doubt you could find a single living human who would describe him in any other way. I suppose if he’d met a nun somewhere along the line she’d choose a different description, like “sinfully cruel and unredeemable,” but you get the idea. Anyway, he didn’t really “tour” places, he “did” them. As in, “Do you think we can do the Sorbonne in under twenty minutes?” Travel, to him, was a way to check off all the “been-there” lists. He was terribly impatient in general and I think travel just exacerbated the trait. Anyway, G—, when showing them his adopted country, went for the slow-absorption style that reasonable people tend to favor. The Landlo’ was having none of that. If there wasn’t a famous landmark to be checked off and mentioned later to some disinterested, and doubtless uninterested, third party back home, he wasn’t interested. About the only specific thing on G—’s list was fritjes. He really loves the fritjes in Holland, and for good reason. They really do them right. There are stands all over the place. As far as he (and thus I) know, everybody in the country always orders “frites mit.” That means “fries with.” You’ll be happy to know that there’s no need to specify with what; of course “mit” means “with mayonnaise.” They don’t skimp, either. As far as I can tell, frites mit is about the only luxury that the temperance-addicted Dutch allow themselves, unless you count raw herring.

Anyway, as the Landlo’ dragged my mom and my brother around at his breakneck pace, cussing and looking at his watch every five seconds, poor G— decided to cut his losses and forget every single local attraction he’d planned to show them, except fritjes, since that at least still seemed possible. He reminded the Landlo and our Mom to keep an eye out for a fritjes stand. Finally the Landlo’ decided he (and thus they) were done with Holland and started to drag them back to G—’s place. G— meekly protested that they hadn’t had any fritjes yet, and the Landlo’ blew sky high and gave the poor guy a blistering diatribe about “you and your damn fritjes!” From that moment forward, G— has never called them anything but damn fritjes, and neither has our mom, and once the rest of us heard the story, the name has stuck with all us brothers, kids, nieces, and nephews as well. It’s gradually spreading from there (e.g., to my friends and colleagues). Needless to say, if you ask one of my daughters if she’d like some damn fritjes, she’ll know exactly what you’re talking about. “French fries” might throw her, though.

February 29, 2009

[I sent the following email to a mass audience of family and friends.]

I am pleased to introduce my web log, or as they say in the Internet space, my “blog.” (It is with great trembling thrill I use these élite modern words like “space” and “blog.”) Please stop whatever you’re doing and go—right now!—to www.albertnet.us, and check out my Intro post and my first (real, non-intro) post, “Wrecking the Car.” While you’re there, click the “Follow” button and become an official albertnet follower. To the first person who does this, I will send a spanking new patch kit from biketiresdirect.com, postage-paid. I’ll bet you’re wondering, “What’s in it for me, a man or woman of acclaimed Command Presence, to become a mere follower?” Well, for one thing, when you do this something will be enhanced about your “dashboard.” I was reading about this somewhere but I can’t remember where. Think of being a follower as social and/or intellectual Armor All for your dash. (If you happen to know what a “dashboard” even means in this context, please drop me a note and explain it to me.)

Anyway, the main benefit of following my blog is that you’ll help me gain other followers. Right now I don’t have a single one, and it’s kind of embarrassing. I had hoped that before I turned forty I’d have scores of minions, not just followers, but as so often happens I’m needing to adjust my expectations. By clicking that little button, you’ll be seeding my future success. (Think of me as a virtual busker who doesn’t yet have a single coin in his violin case.) Oh, and please leave comments for me on the page as well. If you don’t have anything nice to say, say something arch.

March 2, 2009

No, I didn’t get a Prius [to replace my 1984 Volvo wagon]. Fuel economy be damned: I’m tired of Priuses. They’re kind dorky and far, far too common. (I used to call Albany the Volvo Belt, but now it’s clearly the Prius Belt.) What we bought is a newer Volvo wagon, about which Robert Frost would write:

Whose car this is I think I know;
It’s not his old grey Volvo, though.
This fly-ass ride is newer, so
I’d have to guess he’s pimpin’ ho’s.

Okay, that was lame, but at least it rhymed. Anyway, the Volvo we have now is a barely used (pre-depreciated, I like to say) V70. I couldn’t get a stick shift model without going to like Miami, which was, alas, out of the question. It’s my first automatic transmission but surely not my last <sniff>.

March 15, 2009

I have a couple of household items I no longer need, that I hereby offer “free to a good home,” as they say.

Item #1 is a Silca floor pump (they call it a “track pump” for some reason), black. It’s less than fourteen years old. It’s made of a Columbus tube (Cromor, their cold-drawn seamless chromium molybdenum tube, in this case non-butted for obvious reasons). The brass chuck is only a few years old. It works okay on presta but shraeder is a pain in the neck. The gauge sort of works, sometimes; its clear cover is gone and the needle does its own thing. The hose leaks at both ends so you have to pump really fast and there’s a constant hissing. It’s possible to repair this pump by cutting off the stretched-out ends of the hose and crimping a fresh, tight section over the chuck and pump base with the little wire doodad. I did this repair a number of times before something in me just died and I couldn’t do it anymore.

I also have a microwave oven by Sharp, and it is. Works great, and you can turn off the beeping. Carousel. Dedicated Hot Dog button (like a macro). Popcorn button (though microwave popcorn should be illegal because it’s gross, and air-poppers work so well). Compu-defrost. Auto-sense. Interactive help menus. It’s eleven years old. The catch? It’s pretty disgusting in there. It’s rusting. There’s an accumulation of food shrapnel on the ceiling and walls that we’ve given up trying to remove. In the heady dot-com days we’d probably have just pitched it, but times have changed and who knows, maybe you belong to a nursery school co-op that wants a dedicated microwave for defrosting mice for its snake. Or for your home. Yours if you want it.

March 16, 2009

You’ve probably read about the shocking revelation that cyclists tend to have poor bone density, because we don’t carry enough weight around on our skeletons. For some reason cyclists, among other very lean athletes, are singled out by these studies. It is true that, statistically speaking, runners suffer far fewer broken collarbones than cyclists do. But some researchers have proposed that this is because runners almost never get driven into the pavement at 30 or 40 mph. I would like to propose a follow-up study comprising a control group of typical runners plus a test group who are subjected to high-speed impacts with asphalt to test their collarbone strength. I think YouTube would be the ideal way to showcase the results.

In light of this disconcerting stuff, I want to share some good news for a change. We’ve all known for a long time that ice cream and cheese are chock-full of calcium. But that’s not the only way forward for bone health. New studies are showing that alcohol suppresses bone-weakening hormones, so we should be including more of that in our diet. Meanwhile, there are minerals such as boron and silicon that occur naturally in beer (more so than in wine) and that also promote bone health.

Below are some links on the great news about beer.

• http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-385602/Drink-beer-beat-crumbling-bones.html
•  http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/490673

Meanwhile, running is hard on the joints, plus I’m no good at it, and it doesn’t give you great belches like beer does. So stop worrying about your bones. Ride your bike and drink your beer (though not at the same time). That’s my 0.71 rubles, anyway…

November 18, 2008

Thanks for the email! Gosh, so much to reply to there. To start: the way you describe the dread you felt when you moved that furniture, worrying that it would crush you? I had to chuckle because that’s how I’ve felt my whole life! At least you have an upper body. “Gosh, I wish I had a cyclist’s body,” said nobody ever. Swimming has been good to you, even if you haven’t done it in years and years. You’ve still got the muscle memory there (literally hundreds of miles of muscle-feeding capillaries that dudes like me lack) so you’ll get it back the moment you go back to the pool or get a rowing machine or whatever. I’m trying to rehabilitate my shoulder still, and I want to add some muscle there to hold everything together now that the ligaments are permanently severed. Maybe when you’re here for Thanksgiving, we can do my little circuit training regimen together (barbells, this weird sport-cord thing, a soccer ball, and a big exercise ball—you’ll see).

But what’s this about cigarettes? You literally smoked a whole pack in one day? What’s up with that? Don’t punish your body, dude, it’s done nothing to deserve that. I assume you’re not planning on smoking during your visit (not in front of my kids, or I’ll stub the cigarette out on your arm!). I’d recommend you quit right now, so if there’s any withdrawal it won’t be distracting you during your vacation.

Wow, I just picked this big booger and flicked it away, and I heard it hit the window. It’s like that sucker had wings.

—~—~—~—~—~—~—~—~—
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From the Archives - Nash Bridges Towed My Car!

Introduction

I’ve blogged before, here and here about my dearly departed 1984 Volvo 240 GL wagon. In fact, my first (non-intro) albertnet post was on the subject of having that old car wrecked. The car I have now (a newer Volvo) is nicer and quieter, and I don’t really miss the troubles I used to have. That said, a comment my brother Bryan left about my second Volvo post gives a nice perspective:

In a way, it’s a shame that you have moved from the uncertain and exciting cowboy world of the old car to the mundane but consistent world of the reliable new car. You were so good at living that cutting edge life, where your thoughts on a road trip are consumed with whether you’ll even make it to your destination, not whether you’ll make it in time to beat the rush hour. Or contemplating what you’ll do if the latest broken thing acts up, or if your “ultimate set of tools” has everything you need to perform a roadside repair. No one really wants the kind of trial an old car can present in his life, but he sure feels good when he comes out the other end, scathed but alive.

He’s so right about that. But old cars are only the beginning. So much can go wrong in life. Here’s a tale from my archives of when I tangled with a TV crew and lost big.

(Here’s a photo so you’ll appreciate how cool a car you’re reading about.)

Nash Bridges Towed My Car - March 14, 1999

For your amusement, the sordid tale of the latest trouble I’ve had with my car.

The weekend before last, my wife and I were planning to drive to Sacramento to visit her mom and stepfather, and our car wouldn’t start. We’d used it the weekend before and it ran fine, so this was a big surprise. I called my brother Bryan, and he recommended checking the battery posts, and the cables that clamp to them, for corrosion. This had made the difference several times with his old Darts and Coronets.

He has plenty of experience in fixing cars; I don’t. I tried to disconnect the positive cable while the negative was still connected, so I kept making contact between the wrench and the car body. Huge sparks would fly out and I would curse, both as a reflex and in wonderment—like, this was real electricity I was dealing with! It had to be draining my battery to keep sparking like that, and it made me really jumpy. I found plenty of corrosion, but scraping it off didn’t help. The car still wouldn’t start.

I need a good car manual and don’t have one, and I’m remarkably poor at troubleshooting car problems. I understand the principles of the four-stroke internal combustion engine (I’d learned it in my high school physics class), but everything else is a fog to me. I was at a loss to troubleshoot further. (Robert Pirsig, in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, writes, “Traditional scientific method has always been at the very best, 20-20 hindsight. It’s good for seeing where you’ve been. It’s good for testing the truth of what you think you know, but it can’t tell you where you ought to go.” This is certainly how I felt.)

Since we couldn’t the in-laws, they came out to our place. My mother-in-law was eager to visit Erin, and her husband was eager to fix the car. It was parked about five blocks from my apartment. By the time we hauled my stepdad’s toolbox up there, it was after dark. By the time we hauled the battery down to my apartment to plug it in to his charger, I had stopped caring about the car altogether. We were both tired, and a bit cranky, and couldn’t agree on what was meant by the position of the needle on the charger gauge.

The next morning, I called Bryan again. We discussed the gauge on the charger, and we had an interesting side discussion of Ohm’s law. I wasn’t at all sure the battery had taken, or was holding, a charge. As it turned out: neither. So my stepdad and I tried to start it using jumper cables, and failed. I found an auto supply place that offered to test the battery for me for free. We took it in and they said it was shot, which was just their luck since it meant they could sell me a new battery, which they did.

I installed the new battery and the car still did not start. At this point I decided I could do any of the number of things about the problem. The top contenders were as follows:

• I could do nothing, try to stop thinking about the car, and hope that it would just go away; 
• I could have the car towed to my mechanic; 
• I could attempt to roll-start the car; 
• I could leave the car for the time being, and consult further with somebody knowledgeable about cars. 

Option one, ignoring the car, is always tempting whenever I have any kind of car trouble, be it parking, breakdowns, driving in the Bay Area, or pigeon damage. But, this option always loses out because Erin and I have spent too much on this car to give up now. We feel the need to amortize all the money we’ve shelled out recently to fix it (new clutch, new clutch cable, tune-up, replacement of overdrive, something expensive involving the rear suspension). I try not to think about the prospect that the car’s useful life is over and things might only get worse from here. [Note: as it turned out, the car lasted us close to ten more years!]

Option two, towing it to the mechanic, was a real front-runner, but my mechanic is closed on Sundays so this decision would need to be deferred, and thus didn’t satisfy as an immediate course of action.

Option three—roll-starting it—was very attractive indeed. First of all, roll-starting a car is something I’ve always found thrilling. (I remember a cycling teammate whose VW bus never started without roll-starting. Whoever rode shotgun was in charge of pushing the vehicle until the engine caught; this process became as natural as fastening the seat-belt.) Another benefit of roll-starting the car was that it would cost no money. Furthermore, I could picture myself pushing the car, jumping in, closing the door, getting it running, and then just driving off into the sunset, never to be seen or heard from again.

Unfortunately, this third option had a major drawback: available runway. It wasn’t that I didn’t have it; on the contrary, I had too much of it. I was parked on Lombard Street. If I pointed the car west on Lombard, toward Van Ness, I would be rolling down a very steep hill—steep enough that if the engine failed to start, I wouldn’t have the power-assist on the brakes and might have trouble stopping the car. (It was probably not a huge risk, but I have a recurring nightmare that I’m trying to stop a car but no matter how hard I push on the brake pedal, it isn’t enough. Both feet, still not enough. Usually the car is rolling very slowly towards the edge of a long drop-off.) Not being able to stop would have grave consequences because I would spill out onto Van Ness, which is one of the main thoroughfares of the city.

Of course, rolling westward on Lombard was only one of four options. But, if I rolled the car to Hyde and turned right, I would be pointed uphill and would probably have the car roll backward over me, crushing me to death. If instead I went straight and rolled the car past Hyde and down the other side of Lombard, I would be on another steep grade, which also happens to be the famous Twistiest Street in the World, [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lombard_Street_(San_Francisco) ] featured on countless postcards. If the car failed to start, negotiating the tight curves with no power steering and no power brakes would be almost impossible, and if I missed a turn I could destroy an old Victorian house, or at a minimum destroy some very expensive decorative foliage. (I happen to know the foliage is expensive because during the renovation of this landmark, the city paid guards to watch over the as-yet-unplanted plants, around the clock. One of the guards told me he caught somebody trying to steal a whole truckload at about two in the morning.)

The fourth and final runway was northbound Hyde street. This section of Hyde is one of the steepest hills in the city (and, by extension, in the entire world). If the car failed to start and I couldn’t stop it, I would build up huge amounts of speed. The street terminates in a pier down on Fisherman’s Wharf, and I would probably run over a bunch of tourists. Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad, but unless I hit some really fat ones, they probably wouldn’t stop the car. Likely the only object large enough to stop me would be the Balaclutha, an antique sailing ship docked at the pier. It would be a shame to ram the ship, but the alternative would be to land in the Pacific Ocean, and I know from helping write wharf safety manuals that the fines for littering petroleum products in the ocean that close to land would be enormous. (Curiously, it’s perfectly legal to dump anything at all into the ocean as long as you’re far enough from land—but I digress.)

So, I had to settle for option 4, which was to consult a knowledgeable car person. I called Bryan, and he said, “Dude, you’re bummed.” This was perfectly true, but not very helpful. I decided to call my mechanic on Monday and get the car fixed the following weekend. The good news was that the car was parked in one of those rare parking spots that has no street cleaning, has no special times during which it becomes a tow-away zone, and was a spot for which we had the correct permit. And, it was only five blocks from our apartment. In short, it was a parking spot that could have been a centerfold in “San Francisco Street Parking” magazine. I could leave the car there as long as I wanted to . . . maybe for good.

Erin volunteered to make the call to Fernando, our mechanic. I think the reason she volunteered was to prevent me from bursting a blood vessel. (According to a personality test I took in high school, I should have died of a heart attack years ago because of my high-strung, hard-driving disposition.) I was openly fuming at this point, yelling about taking the car out and shooting it, or rolling it down Hyde street by itself and then going into hiding. I couldn’t relax and enjoy life, knowing that car was an unresolved problem looming over us from up on the hill. Erin informed me that Fernando suspected a bad fuse. I resolved to investigate the fuses on the following Saturday.

Well, that Friday, as we walked home after a night out on the town, Erin remembered that we needed to visit the car to stick on the new registration sticker. I agreed, of course, although I confess I was irritated at the number of car-related administrative hassles we’d had to deal with recently—sending in registration forms, applying to renew our parking permit, renewing our insurance, and making Erin a new key after she’d lost her old one, to say nothing of my hapless repair attempts. It seemed like a lot of work just to have a car available for weekend trips—especially since the car was now incapable of doing anything useful. If it had been parked closer to home we could have used it as a storage locker, but in justifying the expense and headache, even that would have been a stretch. By the time Erin and I reached the parking spot, I was already grumbling profanely about the car’s very existence. Imagine my reaction, then, when the car was gone!

It’s our own fault, of course. We should have monitored the ongoing legality of our parking spot, in case a TV crew needed to clear that section of road to film “Nash Bridges.” Nash Bridges is a TV show starring the arguably washed-up and unarguably age-stricken Don Johnson. I’ve never seen the show, but I’ve watched them film it. It was probably a year ago; the scene I saw was filmed on Vallejo near Columbus, and consisted of Don Johnson driving by in his mustard-yellow convertible. The footage, when edited, must have lasted about five seconds, assuming it didn’t get cut altogether.

I watched for half an hour as they filmed the scene over and over again, never getting it quite right. Between takes, which was most of the time, Don Johnson looked incredibly bored, and tired, and his skin looked brittle, like if he smiled his face would crack. Perhaps creating the illusion of youth was why the simple scene took so many takes. As I watched the filming that day and pondered grand themes such as the loss of youth and the largely unacknowledged tedium of stardom, what did not occur to me was that when a TV crew needs room to set up in the street, they don’t have time to wait around. They bring the cops in and tow all those cars away. Unjust as it may seem, I am quite certain that there is a law on the books prohibiting people from unknowingly obstructing television crews. I’m sure I could write tactful letters, stage peaceful protests, circulate petitions, and even go to court to fight for my rights, and that it would all be for nothing.

My first step in reclaiming my car was to go to the police station and fill out some paperwork proving I own the car. It was here that I began circulating among hardened criminals for the first time. (Actually, I didn’t, but what a marvelous sentence, rooted in a thousand crime stories.) I did pass through the strangest medical detector I’ve ever seen. Actually, the instrument itself wasn’t unusual, but the aura surrounding it certainly was. Unlike an airport, this was a place where it seemed likely somebody might try to bring in a gun or a knife. There was a big sign posted saying something very ominous; I can’t remember the exact wording but it was something like “We take this metal detector very seriously. You must remove all traces of metal from your person, and have your bag wide open for immediate search.”

I looked at the very bored-looking guard and opened my bag up wide. She gave a dismissive snort, ignored the bag, and said, “Well, walk through!” I began emptying my pockets but she implored me not to bother. I walked through, setting off the alarm, and she didn’t bat an eye. Then, a woman behind me walked right through the detector, carrying a huge purse. She, too, set off the alarm, but just kept walking. No reaction from the guard.

I shrugged and continued on, looking for a cop. I found one, behind glass (bulletproof, I assume), and talked to him over a phone like the ones inmates use during visits from their friends and family. The cop had me process some paperwork and sent me off to another window to pay the towing and storage fees ($275). I paid, and was given some more paperwork to fill out. Then they sent me away, down Seventh Street, under the highway, to the police impound lot.

You’re not allowed behind the fence—you give the guy your paperwork, he drives the car out. I dabbled with the idea of playing dumb and blaming the cops for somehow ruining my car. With an internal sigh, I dismissed the idea. Then I told the guy, as casually as possible, that I needed him to let me back there to replace a fuse. He did, and—following Fernando’s instructions—I tried replacing fuses 3 and 6, which correspond to the fuel pump. Then I tried replacing the fuse near the battery, on a cable somewhere. I never found this fuse. Then I tried putting a jumper between fuses 3 and 6, in case there was a bad connection out of one of the fuse holders.

Connecting the jumper caused an interesting crackly hissing noise from the back of the car, which somebody knowledgeable about cars might deduce was the fuel pump finally kicking in. I believe, to this day, that the noise was actually some horrible short-circuit or something, that continued to drain my battery. (I had become very protective of the new battery.) The car still would not start. Having, I felt, nothing left to lose, I removed the jumper and tried starting the car again with no special intervention. Einstein once said, “Repeating an experiment over and over, while expecting varying results, is insanity.” He was right.

Eventually the impound lot guy, after watching my amateur repair efforts with apparent fascination—perhaps morbid fascination—silently walked away, came back with a fork-lift type vehicle, dragged my car closer to his little hut, disappeared into the hut, came back out with a jump-start box, and tried unsuccessfully to jump-start the car . He was a nice enough guy, although strangely uncommunicative. He probably considers English his first language, but throughout our protracted transaction he communicated through a simple system of grunting and non-verbal gestures such as staring off into space.

I made several trips next door to the sheriff station, which is also the main prison building in San Francisco, to call Fernando for troubleshooting advice and, eventually, to call the guy my mechanic uses for towing worthless shells of spent vehicles such as mine. I spent a lot of time in the waiting room with people waiting to visit their imprisoned loved ones. At all times there was a toddler or young child bawling. I couldn’t blame them, what with felons in the family. To pass the time I read a supposedly charming book about a college professor fixing up an old house in Tuscany. Given my surroundings, the book seemed totally unreal, a fairy tale.

Meanwhile, I had the strangest feeling of—simultaneously—alienation from, and yet kinship with, the other people waiting. After all, I wasn’t visiting a convict, but I was paying the price for my own lawlessness, and felt like a prisoner. If I gave up the fight and went home, abandoning my car, I would end up paying ongoing storage fees or eventually losing the car. And there was no end in sight. The tow-truck guy had originally promised to come get the car, but changed his mind twenty minutes later and drove to Sacramento instead. I was without a plan.

Finally, I went back to the impound lot and managed to get permission from the lot manager to try to roll-start the car right there in the lot. This permission was hard to get because the manager was barely more communicative than the first guy I dealt with. But, after a long pause as he considered my request and finally (I guess) decided to grant it, the manager communicated something non-verbally to the first guy, who set about dragging a bunch of cars around with his fork-lift to create a runway for me. Everything was now set, except there was still one tow-truck in the way. I thought I might be able to steer around it, but with no power steering and no power brakes I was loathe to try. It seemed pointless, though, to communicate my misgivings to the impound crew, because they’d obviously done what they thought was necessary. I also didn’t want to break the spell by asking for too much, like the Fisherman’s Wife. For about five minutes the situation was a deadlock, with each impound guy staring blankly off at some imagined vista, arms folded, a cold winter wind howling through the lot.

Finally I mustered some reckless courage, released the parking brake (which doesn’t really work anyway), took the car out of gear, cranked the wheel hard over, and began my maneuver. Running next to the car, holding the steering wheel with one hand and the door frame with the other, I missed the tow truck by about a foot, which the impound guys must have gauged perfectly. To my surprise, the car seemed much lighter than I’d expected. In no time I had a good bit of speed up. In fact, a totally inexplicable amount of speed. I couldn’t believe how fast the car was rolling through the lot. Finally I looked back to see four guys, grinning from ear to ear, pushing my car with all their might. Why is it that whenever a car needs to be rolled, guys materialize out of nowhere? Is there a female equivalent to this phenomenon? Ah, yes—the public restroom. But again I digress.

“Jump in!” someone yelled, and I did, just in time to slam my door before it would have smashed into a pillar I passed by. I put in the clutch, put the car in gear, then released the clutch, giving her plenty of gas. The result was a silent, but quite violent, lurch as the car instantly came to a dead stop. I half expected the guys to slam into the back of the car. It was like being clotheslined. I was heartbroken. I put the clutch back in, and the car instantly began picking up speed again. The guys were still pushing! I tried popping the clutch again. Again, that bunjee-jumping sensation. We tried once more. No dice. It was all over.

I ended up negotiating with one of the car pushers, who was the driver of the tow truck that had obstructed my path, to tow me out to Fernando’s for $70. Not cheap, but a fair bit better than what I’d paid to have the car impounded. Problem was, I didn’t have $70; I told the tow-truck driver he needed to stop at an ATM if he wanted his fee in cash. He was about as communicative as the impound guys and ignored me completely. We got to Fernando’s, and Fernando loaned me the money to pay the towing guy, and in the process achieving legendary status.

Fernando discovered that when I installed the new battery I neglected to attach a certain cable to the positive post. (It was because this cable was unattached that I hadn’t been able to find the fuse Fernando was talking about.) For future reference, you should note that an ‘84 Volvo 245 GL has three cables coming off the positive post, and only one cable (the normal one) off the negative post. I can guarantee you, flat-out, that the car will not start if one or more of these tables is disconnected. (I had encountered this cable when I installed the battery, but I knew it didn’t go to the negative post and at the time it made more sense to leave it dangling than to connect it to the positive post. As I said, I’m terrible with cars.)

Fernando shook his head and said, “Dana!” His tone meant, “You bonehead! How did you get to be such a complete idiot?! I pity you!” He also fixed a broken wire that I wish I could say was the cause of the problem, and then he charged my battery while I found a taqueria. (I hadn’t eaten all day.) I paid him back the loan with three twenties I’d forgotten I had all along, in my wallet (duh), and a ten I found in my pocket. He didn’t charge me for the repair—certainly the black comedy of my utter humiliation was more than adequate compensation for his minimal work, at least this time.

Now I’m parked on Lombard again, but down near Polk. It doesn’t look like a scenic enough intersection to film Nash Bridges on, and anyway it’s close enough to home to check daily. (That said, it’s been a week already and I just haven’t gotten around to checking it.)

From the Archives - Farewell, ‘84 Volvo

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Introduction

A year ago today I drove my beloved ’84 Volvo to a wrecking yard to be utterly destroyed (in exchange for $650 that Alameda County paid me to get my “gross polluter” off the road). To commemorate this anniversary I am posting here my farewell letter for the car (that I’d sent around as my holiday newsletter that year). But first, here is a movie I made at the Goodbye Volvo party that morning:



Farewell, ’84 Volvo - December 23, 2008

I’m going to share with you a long goodbye to the only car I’ve ever owned.

For awhile it seemed the car would live forever, a position emphatically held by our stellar Volvo mechanic. But alas, after more than a decade of solid service the car began to deteriorate rapidly, such that our program of maintenance came to seem like one of hospice. A shocking turn of events this past June led us to finally replace our beloved car. What follows is a eulogy of sorts, in the form of a timeline of the car’s life, told in fond memories.

AD 1984 – Our car, a grey Volvo 240GL wagon, is born in Gothenburg, Sweden. Over the next twelve years, it has at least one owner, perhaps several—who knows? Eventually it is sold to an independent used Volvo shop in Richmond, California where it becomes the errand vehicle during its Corduroy-like wait to be given a good home.

February 16, 1996 – We haven’t had a car in two years (since Erin had a company car), but Erin now needs a car for her new job. She meets our mechanic for the first time, and purchases our Volvo from his shop for $3,994.45 ($3,500 plus the tax, smog, license, registration, etc.). Mileage: 206,000 (with a newly rebuilt engine).

February 20, 1996 – My second time driving the Volvo. Erin is fighting a flu, and—after a terrible hour-long commute in the dark and rain from Fremont to San Francisco—doesn’t feel like driving around looking for a parking spot. I head to Hyde Street, a grade so fiendishly steep that most people won’t park there. Using a driveway to turn around, I stall the car. I sit there trying to crank the engine, with a chorus of angry honking cars piling up behind me. I decide to try roll-starting the car. I roll backwards down the hill, in the rain, in the dark, and did I mention on one of the steepest hills on planet earth? Soon enough I have a good head of speed, and I pop the clutch. The car dry-heaves, but I get nothing out of it. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to me, I am losing vacuum pressure in the power brakes, and they began to get harder and harder to apply. (No engine means no power brakes; as a freshly minted motorist, I don’t understand any of this at the time. I simply assume things are taking on the semblance of a nightmare, the one where your car is rolling toward a precipice and you can’t brake hard enough to stop it.) Now I’m starting to get closer to Bay Street, a major thoroughfare; after that, open ocean. I’m not dead yet, but I’m fairly hurtling down the street with an occasional heave as I pop the clutch. Suddenly I spot a gap between two cars: if I can just get the car pulled in there, I’ll be saved! Miraculously, I end up perfectly parked, two inches from the curb. Lessons learned: 1) this car has a loose ignition wire; and, 2) this car is easy to parallel-park because it’s got a really tight turning circle.

October 20, 1996 – An airport shuttle van backs into our Volvo at an intersection. The driver tries to claim Erin rear-ended him. Witnesses scare him into submission. $987.48 in damages.

November 30, 1997 – A huge pickup truck backs into our Volvo at a gas station. Because the driver starts his trajectory from at least fifty feet away, I watch in horror as the disaster unfolds before me. I don’t have time to start the engine and back up, but I have time to honk the horn, which gets the attention of the gas station cashier, who becomes our star witness. The driver tries to weasel out of paying for the repair, and I eventually have to call his insurance company directly. Why do these jerks have it in for the grille of our innocent car?

February 15, 1998 – As of the two-year mark, the car has been costing us six cents a mile to operate. We have virtually no problems until a ski trip with Kari, Erin’s friend from the newspaper. On the way back from a ski resort near Truckee, we get stuck in a horrible blizzard, and the windshield wipers go out. I have to drive along with my window down, manually dragging the left wiper across the windshield, the car sliding all over the road. Kari seems certain that we are all going to die. The blizzard closes the highway and we have to get a motel in nearby Reno. When we have finally returned to the Bay Area, Kari affectionately dubs our car “the PLP” (from its license plate, 3PLP090), and to this day she looks back fondly on our shared ordeal, as one would a mining shaft cave-in we survived together.

February 27 thru March 6, 1999 – The PLP, parked on Lombard Street at Hyde, won’t start, despite my attempts to roll-start it, jump-start it, and charge the battery. I put in a new battery but it still won’t start. So I decide to just leave the car for awhile and at some point have it towed to the shop in Richmond. The following Friday, walking home from dinner, Erin and I decide to visit the car. Imagine our surprise when it’s gone! Turns out it’s been towed because a TV crew was filming “Nash Bridges,” and it’s actually illegal to park on the street where a TV crew is filming, even if you were there first. So I have to go to the police impound lot, pay a ticket, and pay for the towing and storage of the car ($275). But I can’t get the car out, even after dinking with some fuses and attempting another roll-start. I end up getting a tow truck driver there to tow the car to his shop for $70 in cash. I don’t actually have the money, so our mechanic spots me, in the process unknowingly achieving legendary status with the Albert family. He discovers that when I installed the new battery I neglected to attach some secondary cable to the positive post. He shakes his head in disbelief at my cluelessness, but doesn’t charge me for the repair—the black comedy of my utter humiliation is more than adequate compensation for his work, at least this time.

September, 1999 – Erin and I drive the PLP to Moab, Utah for vacation. The car performs very well—in fact, we make remarkably good time. On the way back, we’re pulled over in Nevada. “Do you know why I pulled you over?” the cop asks. I tell him, “Frankly, no, officer.” My speedometer said 100, and since the odometer has always read 30% high (I know this from watching mile markers), I’d always figured 100 was actually 70, the legal speed limit. I explain this. “I clocked you at 85,” he says. “Well, then, I’d say my speedometer is only 15% high, officer. My mistake.” He writes me up for 80 mph—a misdemeanor in Nevada, with no insurance repercussions—and dings me $40. A small price to pay, after 3½ years of unbeknownst speeding.

August 17, 2001 – We drive the PLP to Sacramento to Erin’s friend Melissa’s wedding rehearsal dinner. Erin, more than eight months pregnant, is suffering in the terrible heat because our A/C isn’t working (never did). We arrive drenched in sweat, Erin’s face bright red, her damp, limp hair plastered to her forehead, a stark contrast to her cool, perfumed friends in their crisp dresses. As these friends worry aloud about Erin’s health and safety, and we think about all their shiny, late-model cars in the lot outside, we feel like sheepish martyrs to a liberal Berkeley Volvo-belt ideology. We take to bringing a spray bottle in the car for summer trips to Sacramento, to spray the mist directly into the vents.

September 9, 2001 – Alexa Coral Albert, age two days, is taken home from the hospital in the Volvo. Unlike my brother Bryan’s first child, who started bawling upon seeing the ‘67 Dodge Coronet she’d be riding home in, Alexa has no response to this first indication of the kind of family she’s been born into. Erin and I are unable to believe that Alexa is actually coming to live with us, that we’re not just having her over for a visit before returning her to the experts at Alta Bates hospital.

January 27, 2002 – Two weeks after Erin has returned to work after maternity leave, we take a day trip to Sacramento to visit her family. That night on the way home, Alexa starts screaming, for no apparent reason, and then suddenly three terrible things happen at once: Erin says, “Oh [drat]!”; the oil light of the car comes on; and the PLP loses all power and—in a crazy parody of sports car marketing claims—goes from 60 to zero in 2.9 seconds, grinding to a halt on a narrow median between I-80 and an on-ramp. Erin tries in vain to restart the car. We wait for a break in traffic and I push the car over to the shoulder. As we wait for the CHP to notice us, we realize Alexa is running a fever—her first childhood illness. Eventually a towing guy happens upon us. Erin and Alexa ride in the tow truck cab while I ride illegally in the PLP, and he drops us off at Erin’s grandma’s house. The towing guy agrees to tow the car all the way to Richmond and drop it off at the shop. The next day, Erin’s mom drives us home, where Alexa’s fever hits 101. I call our mechanic and ask if my car got there, fearing the towing guy has dumped it off the side of the road somewhere, or sold it to a moneyed, insane person with a fetish for ancient Volvos. To my surprise, he replies, “It’s fixed!” So: AAA roadside assistance (including tip): $20. New timing belt, oil change, and smog: $303.96. Our mechanic: priceless.

Oct 31, 2003 – Lindsay Reese Albert, age two days, is taken home from the hospital in the PLP.

Summer 2004 – My boss and a colleague mount a campaign to get me to replace my car. “I know you can afford it,” my boss says. This campaign will continue for four more years.

Dec 26, 2004 – Our family gets caught in the snow driving back from Oregon. Lighted signs declare that drivers must use tire chains. I pull onto the shoulder and screw with our chains for awhile. The instructions are gone. The chains seem much, much too short. Given the needlessness of chains here—the snow is melting upon impact with the road—I become too angry to continue my effort. I get back in the car and drive on until I find a tire chain professional. He spends a good 20-30 minutes fighting with the chains, during which time he has me pull forward and then roll back dozens of times. He finally finishes, and I breath a sigh of relief that I didn’t gas him or run him over. Now the car drives like hell, tires thumping every revolution—WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! Five miles from Yreka, the starboard chain burns up in the atmosphere and leaves the car. A couple of miles later, the left chain breaks and wraps around axle—my worst fear realized. I stop in town and buy a pair of bolt cutters, and drive to a garage. Their jacks are broken, but the mechanic lets me pull under his overhang to get out of the snow. I’m terribly claustrophobic, but have no choice but to crawl under the car on my back to cut the chains off. The car continuously drools black water into my eyes and ears, and I fight off the panic of my claustrophobia, but from the first successful snap of a link I know motivation is not going to be a problem. God that feels good, hurting the tire chain. I have to have that feeling again! It’s a rare thing to commit vandalism and effect a repair at the same time. Again and again I open the jaws, hunt around for a good bite, and crush them shut. I come up for a break. My t-shirt is soaked, my arms and hands filthy, my numb fingers cut up from dragging on the undercarriage of the car. I spit filth from my mouth and wipe it from my eyes and then get back to work. Finally I finish the heinous job and we’re back on the road. Twenty miles later, chains are required again, but I ignore the sign. We drive the rest of the way home without chains, among the careening cars and occasional accidents. Total duration of the 330-mile drive: fourteen hours.

Summer 2005 – On my way out to the PLP with Alexa, I see a baby squirrel fall out of the tree overhead, and it lands with a terrible thud on the roof of the car and bounces to the ground. As its mother races down the tree trunk after its precious child, our cat Misha comes out of nowhere and sprints towards it. Erin catches the cat while I investigate the baby squirrel. It is obviously suffering terribly and won’t make it. “Alexa, look the other way!” I yell, before smashing the baby squirrel to death with a rock in front of its horrified mother. A bad omen for our car?


July, 2006 – I spend a couple of weeks in France without Erin or the kids, and Alexa, who’s five, decides I must not be coming back. Remembering how highly Erin had praised our Volvo mechanic, Alexa suggests that she marry him, to replace me.

April 11, 2008 – Our last big road trip in the PLP, to Colorado during spring break. Having barely made it over Vail Pass during a blizzard on the way out, we decide to take I-80 home, which is the northern route, through Wyoming. Here, we come upon a stretch of highway where howling winds blow snow across the road in places, and the traffic polishes it to ice. Caught off-guard by a semi, I fail to spot a patch of black ice and we go into a terrible fishtail at 60 mph. Back and forth the PLP slides, and though I feel I’m on the verge of regaining control, I can’t quite right the car. Most of my brain is focused on trying to stop the sliding, but small part is saying “I’m about to crash this car at high speed!” and another part is saying, “At least this is a big safe Volvo!” Finally I give up and ditch the car off the side into the median, where we sink so deep into the snow that it comes up to our doors.

We wait for an hour and a half for a tow truck, while a stream of big rigs whiz past us, seemingly mere inches from our car. So much snow and slush is flung at us, the car gets sheathed in two inches of ice and comes to resemble a giant grimy grey Popsicle, or an artifact encased in filthy grey amber. Finally we’re towed back onto the road, and we continue our trip through a series of micro-blizzards. Through it all, and for the rest of the trip home, the PLP performs like a champ and attains hero status with the kids.


June 11, 2008 – Midway through Alexa’s end-of-school party at a park near our house, I run home to grab something and discover that a teenager has just plowed into the PLP with her parents’ car. The Volvo’s rear passenger door is caved in, and the exhaust pipe and muffler are on the ground. For the next several weeks I fight with the driver’s insurance company’s Total Loss Department, going through three useless (but stubborn) reps before finally prevailing and rescuing the Volvo from the salvage yard. Our mechanic fixes the car for $680 (some $5,000 less than the insurance estimate), but the used replacement door doesn’t match that well, and the remaining body damage—guaranteed to rust—begins the official countdown to the end of the PLP’s life.

June 15, 2008 – Erin calls Kari (the friend who’d been trapped in the blizzard with us in ‘98) and tells her the bad news about the PLP. Erin neglects to mention that I was hit by a car on my bike the day before, ending up in the ER with a separated shoulder and broken elbow. Kari is very upset about the car.

November 12, 2008 – Erin volunteers to drive two of Alexa’s classmates on a school field trip. One of the kids complains, “Your car smells like gas”—and she’s right, the whole cabin is engulfed in fumes. Erin is mortified, imagining how she would explain this to the girls’ parents (“At least the car didn’t explode or anything.… ”). Our mechanic discovers that the gas tank aperture has been damaged by a fuel thief. (The PLP’s gas has been stolen at least three times; in one case we found, beside the car, a short piece of hose and a pile of vomit from a poorly executed siphoning operation.) Our mechanic fixes the problem as best he can without replacing a bunch of parts, as we’re determined not to put any more money into the car.

December 7, 2008 – On a Christmas-tree-cutting trip to Sebastopol, the PLP performs just fine until about four blocks from home, when the cabin again fills up with gas fumes. We must now officially doom the car, and we begin shopping for a replacement. When Alexa catches wind of this, she begins weeping, protesting that she doesn’t want any other car, ever. Lindsay joins in the wailing protest. We promise them a “Goodbye Volvo” party, which only partly assuages their grief.

December 17, 2008 – We procure a replacement car (another used Volvo wagon), and the PLP is officially retired. We decide to junk our old friend through a local air quality buyback program. Total mileage: 375,166. Adjusting for the inaccurate odometer, we’ve put about 120,000 miles on the car in the last 13 years, and have spent $11,336 on repairs, which works out to $0.095 per mile driven. Total operational costs—fuel, insurance, repairs, registration, parking tags, smog, everything but the car itself—total $20,112.10 ($0.168 per mile, less than a third of the $0.505 per mile IRS mileage-reimbursement rate).

February 9, 2009 – I drive the car to Deal Auto Wrecking to be destroyed. The car still drives just fine. It starts up on the first try (though I’ve been charging the battery all morning, an extension cord snaked across the sidewalk in front of the house). Sure, the engine is loud, drowning out the radio, which croaks from the last blown speaker whose wiring is still intact. The seat isn’t that comfortable, the adjustment knob having broken off some months ago, but the car’s acceleration is smooth, the ride solid. As I approach the wrecking yard, I consciously enjoy my last-ever double-clutch.