Random stuff

Del was allegedly spotted the other day sporting fresh clothes and a HAIRCUT! I'll be riding my bike to work next Wednesday and I'll be on the lookout.

No one ever actually COMMENTS on the blog. But they email or call with their own stories.

Here's one:
A local boy, we'll call him Mr. Kat, said the photo of the green Galaxie 500 brought back an interesting memory. Katman was in the Army long ago, stationed in Germany. (I think it was the '60s...wow...dude) Anyway, a Captain had to get from one base to another in a hurry as his son, an Air Force guy, had been injured. The Katty was told to drive Capn to the other base and he was given a green Galaxie 500 to accomplish the task.

He got on the autobahn and asked if Capn wanted to exceed the Army's set speed limit, which was considerably below autobahn standards. Yes, Capn said, floor it.

So the Katman hit it and recalled the exhilaration of topping 120 mph for the better part of an hour on those wide open roads in that monster Galaxie 500 next to all the pipsqueak Euro cars. He got the Capn to the base in record time. But alas, the man's son did not make it.

The memory is bittersweet for Mr. Kat. Lets hope his next run in a green Galaxie 500 has a happier ending.

It would fit me well

Someone parked this fab chocolate brown machine outside our office the other day. It should be mine, in fact, I think it WANTS to be mine. Curse my badcarma for keeping it from me!

Check out the stylin' interior. Even the hubcaps had chocolate brown detailing inside the Mercedes symbol. Sweet!

Cool car

I saw this car parked outside the office today. Ford Galaxie 500.
Which is funny becuase this is SUCH a cool car and yet when we were teenagers, we used to make fun of greasy guys in Galaxy 500s, especially green ones (the cars, not the guys).

And now, here I am taking photos of a GREEN Galaxie 500 that I actually think is cool. Apparently a Galaxie and Galaxy are a bit different, which I'm not sure I understand.

Check THIS OUT!

I saw a dude with a bumper sticker that said www.rosedalehwysucks.com on my way to work today. I looked it up and it's HILARIOUS! In fact, I sent them a couple of my own Rosedale Horror stories.

CHECK IT OUT

www.rosedalehwysucks.com

Enterprise badcarma

The Enterprise rent a car saga continues...sort of.

Last I spoke of this, I had returned their stupid pregnant marshmellow Nissan Moreno (I saw a really snooty woman at Subway driving on the other day and it still looked stupid!) and threw a fit about how they'd promised me one thing, gave me another I was very dissatisfied. So they knocked off the $150 deposit they normally charge and just charged my insurance company $60 or something. Fine, I figured, it's over.

Then I got a call from Enterprise's customer service asking how satisfied I was with the service I'd received. I don't know if they call EVERY customer, or it's just random. Either way, I let em have it. Said I was EXTREMELY disatisfied and would never use Enterprise again, if I could help it. There, I thought, NOW it's over. I've had my say!

THEN, I got a call from the cusomer serivce regional manager in Fresno. He left a voice mail on my cell phone wanting to talk to me about what the problem was with my service. He proceeded to go on and on about how, according to the paperwork he had, my service had been by the book, no problems at all. Way to start a conversation about whether they screwed up by telling me they certainly did NOT screw up.

I wasn't going to call back, but his message rankled me. So I called and left a message saying I thought it was pretty lame of him to start the conversation that way, explained what had happened and said I guess we didn't have anything more to talk about.
THERE! NOW it's done, I figured.

Nope, the dude called back and apologized for sounding like he figured it was a done deal and I was a dope. He asked me, again, what happened. I told him about how they TOOK the reservation, but didn't actually DO the reservation and apparently had NO intention of honoring the reservation and that's their policy.

He said that's now how it should have gone down and offered me a free car for any weekend I wanted.

He was a nice guy, called me back on the weekend, you could hear his kids in the background and here I was being pretty much of the severe hard ass I'm known to be now and again.

Sigh.

I relented and told him thanks for the call, I appreciated it, but I didn't want anything for free. I just wanted to be treated fairly and honestly, which I didn't think I was, and I just wouldn't be going back to Enterprise. He kept offering the free car. But I turned it down and actually APOLOGIZED for being such a hard ass on him.

I shoulda taken the car.

Thin woman found!

Did I mention that the extraordinarly thin woman who used to shuffle along in a kind of jog on the bike path wearing oversized headphones has been found?

She was on the bike path almost every day, then vanished. Some of us thought the worst might have happened as she seemed very old and frail.

But Robin spotted her, same tall thin woman, same headphones, same determined shuffle, on Stockdale Highway. Robin turned her bike to talk to the woman, but the thin woman sort of cowered and turned away.

Ok, Robin thought, and left her to her shuffle.

Anyway, good to know she's OK.

In Del news, I've got nuthin. I haven't ridden my bike to work in a while.

But someone else swears she spotted him with a hair cut and fresh clothes at Beach Park a couple days ago. He wasn't happy go lucky, as usual, however. Guess a hair cut can do that to a person.

Bike path mayhem

The bike path has had a hell of a summer so far. Fires, suicides, drownings, an alleged kidnapping! Crazy stuff.

While I was gone Del's spot burned up. Fire Dept. says it was cables from the nearby power line that somehow sparked the grass fire. Hmmmmm. I looked, the cables are pretty far off the ground...

Anyway, Del's spot is all burned up. I saw him a week ago one day when I rode in. I asked him about all the crazy stuff that had been happening right around and ON TOP OF his spot. He seemed very confused and kept asking "When did that happen?" When I got to the fire he said it was like that when he showed up one day. He had NOTHING to do with it. I thought his denials were interesting since I never even ASKED if he knew how it started....hmmmm.

Here's his burned up spot.

And here are a couple shots of the power line whose cables somehow sparked the fire from WAAAAAAY up in the air...hmmmm...

Trucks and other magnificent mechanical beasts

I got my truck back last week!!
It runs great, but I kinda miss the van. And I discovered I may have post traumatic stress syndrome! I was driving to the liquor store (no judging please) and a car a couple lanes away slammed on its brakes, its tires screeching. I panicked, froze! I quickly realized it was a ways off and wouldn't affect me, but I was still shaking, I felt nauseous and my heart was racing. And this was even BEFORE the tequila.

Here's my truck, oh and here's the lovely Corvair that came to my rescue the day of my accident and ferried me back to work in nostalgic style!
Oh, and below is Willie from Bakersfield Auto Glass replacing the windshield on the van. Willie's from Chechneya and doesn't like Russians. He says America is the greatest country on earth, but we can't let the government get too much control. Words to live by!

Bad of me not to update bad carma

Sorry for my lack of posts! You know how it is when you go out of town and then have to catch up...

My first badcarma story involves the FAB Albers van that I borrowed to take to the mountains. I was driving through Snelling (just northeast of Merced) on J59. There was a lot of construction traffic, including gravel trucks, which were going in and out of the gravel pit at Snelling.

I was on the phone with my husband and told him I was nervous and trying to stay far away from these gravel trucks because I didn't want to have a rock fly out and clip the....and then it happened! A rock from a truck headed the other direction flew out and clipped the windshield, cracked it. YUP! Just as I was thinking it, speaking of it, it happened!!!! I've driven that road possibly a thousand times and never, ever ever had that happen. Borrow a friend's van and BOOM! Badcarma man...it happens.

Here's the pic at took at the Town Frosty in Snelling.