May you always hit the bushy part

Well, Hello all. It’s break time from school, which of course means that the rest of life gets really busy.

For those of you that have not yet heard, my brother had his car stolen the day before yesterday while he was at work. Being that my flks now life in Arizona, he has no way to get around unless he has a car… which is where I come in and where this story begins:

I had just finished driving Betty to San Francisco, and was setteling down to read myself some slashdot for the evening when I get a call from my brother saying that he could not find his car in the parking lot. In fact, he said that it was stolen and he was in the security office filling out a report for mall security. I popped off a quick call to Dad, then hit the road to give him a ride back to Santa Cruz. The only problem was this: It was really raining. Most of the time, rain on the freeway is an inconvienence, making things go slower. Here it was more of a problem because not only was it raining cats and dogs, it was foggy, and the road to San Jose is a little mountian pass freeway, where there are tight turns and if you miss one you fall a long way before hitting the bottom. I made my way to San Jose, where we found out that Greg had to be someplace inside the city limits in order to file a police report. As the mall had closed, and it was too late to get into the police station, we called the cops to have them meet us at a gas station. Then we waited. I arrived at San Jose at about midnight, and we got to the gas station after eating some food at about one. It took till a litle after four before the cops got there. Sitting in a gas station in the middle of thie night waiting for the cops to show up is a strange thing to do for sure. When they arrived, they told us that the car had been recovered, except without any wheels, a stereo and a window. It had been towed to some towing place. As it was four in the morning and there was no way to move his car without wheels we headed back to Santa Cruz to get some sleep.

We woke up at the crack of noon the next day, and started searching for some wheels to put on the car, considering that it would caost as much to ahve the car towed to Santa Cruz from north San Jose in the wreakers lot as it would cost to just go buy some tires… or so we though. We found out that it would cost $1200 to get new tires. (and rims as those were gone too). Somewhere in there somebody yelled “Road Trip!” and we were off to Grass Valley in order to pick up the stock rims and tires that the origional owner still had in his garage. It was still raining, and getting to Grass Valley from Santa Cruz going 40-50mph takes a while. We got there at about 8pm, having left Santa Cruz at 3. The origional owner is a RadioShack employee, so we hung out at his store until he got off work. We then drive to his Dad’s house and found some new tires sitting in the backyard. 3 of them were fine, but the forth one had a nasty run in with a nail, so it was flat. We grabbed the tires and rims, and also the hubcaps stuck them in my car, then headed back. On the way back we made a slight detour to San Francisco so that I could see Betty and we could grab some grub. We got there, I got my hugs from Betty ^_^ , and we found a nice little diner on mapquest that we could eat at.

Following mapquest directions normally is really good, except for when they tell you to take an exit that does not exist. We wound up lost in downtow San Francisco for an hour, then eventually we found a really good bacon burger at a kind of crappy diner. After the burger we headed for San Jose to pick up the release for Greg’s car from the Sherrifs Department so that he could get it from the impound lot. It was now 1am.

When we got to the onramp for the freeway, there was a good 2 feet of water in the right hand lane, and the car in front of us had spun out. I stopped for a mintue to see if help was needed but CHP was already there so we continued on, with a more wet underside of my car. We must have passed a good hundread dead cars that day of driving. I donno, maybe the power company in Santa Cruz has something to do with designeing cars, because it seemed that as soon as it starts raining, things stop working. About half of the deader cars we saw were stuck in the bushes in the side of the road. Only a few of the got pwned by the trunky part of the bushes. Most of them hit the bushy part, and would drive again once they got pulled out of the ditches.

We then decided to get lost again in downtown San Jose, as I forgot to get onto 880 from 101, and I took the wrong exit into downtown. Half an hour later at 3am we got to the sherrifs department. I kind of wish the Sherrif ran the US mail system, because the sherrif is always open. Getting a relase for your car at 3am is kind of odd, but whatever it worked. We then headed back to Santa Cruz again, ending that crazy day at around 4.

The next day, I had to be in a meeting at UCSC with a visiting professor at 11am, so I woke up and rode my new shiny bike to the campus (more on the bike later). Being that I got a good 5 hours of sleep, I was kind of out of it but the meeting was sucessful anyways. We then headed to San Jose to get the car.

Luckly, it was not raining that day. We got to the impound lot at about 1, and called AAA to see if they could tow the car to a wheel shop to get the wheels put on the car. We then got our first look at his car:

When AAA showed up they told us that we had to go get some lugnuts, because they couldn’t tow the car without having any wheels on the car. So off we went to make the 3 wheels and a flat work. Right about at this time, the rest of the family and friend decided that they all wanted to know what was going on, so we turned into grand central station of answering cell phone calls. I handled most of the calls sot aht greg could take care of getting 4 working tures and some lugnuts. We stopped at someplace called “Bruces Tires” and got a tire, and some air put into the tires. Armed with lugnuts and tures we called AAA again to see if they could tow the car to a place that would put tires on. … … and waited an hour for them to show up…. only to tell us that they wouldnt put them on. Gawr! This makes me think about if I really want to have AAA…

But anyways, we were in luck becuase at the towning company that had the car a 4 big tow truck guys standing around watching us. After AAA left, they told us that they could put the wheels on for $60. We watched as they put the tires on…

Now the time had reached 6pm, so there was no chance to take the car to a shop to see if it would run, so we eyeballed the engine ourselves and hoped, then Greg started his car. Lo and Behold it ran. In fact, with another stroke of luck, the window wasn’t broken only rolled down! We drove the car a short distance to an In-n-out to get some food and to see if anything terribly bad happened to the car. After dinner, Greg decided that we should go and randomly see a move. The In-N-Out had a movie theater in it’s parking lot (The Mercado) so we saw whatever was starting right then, King Kong. The movie was a good relaxer after the crazy day that we just had, so we came out all relaxed and ready to drive back.

We drive back to Santa Crua really slowly, in case anything was wring with the car. After the trip, bith of us agreed that probably nothing was wrong, but he decided that he would take it to an engine shop the next day to have it checked. Being that it was then 3am, we both fell asleap, ending our crazy adventure.