Routine

Wake up at 10am. Leave the house at 11am. Begin work at 12pm. Off work at 9pm. Wait 2 hours for Yum to finish her shift. Leave work at 11pm. Home by Midnight. Relax for two hours. In bed at 2am. Try to sleep for 8 hours. Repeat.

Tuesday is Yum’s Saturday and my Friday. So I sleep in until 10:30am. When I leave a little after 11am, Yum is either scratching around the apartment or still in bed. When I get off work at 9pm I don’t have to wait for Yum, so I make a bee-line for home and I’m walking in the door by 9:45pm. It’s my Friday night so I stay up as late as I want.

Wednesday is our only day off together, so we try to do something special. Like clean the house and do laundry. Special!

Thursday is Yum’s Monday, and my Sunday. So on Thursday Yum goes to work and I sleep as long as I want, and the rest of the day is mine to do as I wish.

Life.

Da Civic Rides Again

The Ranger is dead. I’ve been meaning to update for the last six weeks, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do so. I loved that 1997 Ford Ranger pickup. It was good to me. And now it’s gone.

That truck got me to the beach and back more times than I can count, when I lived in SoCal. The floor had a 1-2 inch permanent layer of sand on the floor. The bed was covered in surf wax. My board was always sticking out the back.

When I moved back to NorCal the Ranger got me up to the mountains often. I’d take it off-road (it had great ground clearance), down fire trails and logging roads to the best fly fishing spots.

The Ranger has single-handedly moved my stuff several times over the last ten years.

But the time has come to say good bye. I brought it to the Ford dealer to fix all the nagging problems as of late. Just to get it smog ready and legal (so I could register it) was going to cost me 2,000 dollars.

“Stop. Stop. Just stop what you’re doing,” I told the service manager. “Don’t put it back together, don’t fix anything else. Just stop.”

The next day I signed over the pink slip for the cost of the repair’s running total (around a grand) and wiped my hands clean.

“Good bye, old friend,” I said as I ran my hand over the hood one last time. The end of an era.

**********

And a new one begins! As soon as the service manager called me and broke the bad news I knew exactly what I was going to do. I knew what I wanted right away.

I wanted a Yaris! A 2008 Toyota Yaris liftback in Bayou Blue with an automatic transmission and the power package.

Me and my new buddy

It’s a great little commuter car. I’m getting almost 400 miles on a full tank of gas (about 11 gallons). And for such a small car it’s very comfortable, even for a big guy like me. The ride is smooth and the inside is nice and quiet. I’m quite happy with it =) I’m looking forward to a summer full of road trips.

You can view more pictures here.

It’s not my dream car (2008 Jeep Wrangler Unlimited Rubicon 4 door) but it was cheap and practical. It was around $15,000 after all the tax and license and fees and stuff. So I can sleep at night and not have to eat top ramen every day.

So I need a name for my new car, any suggestions?

Mount Diablo

So I’ve lived in the Bayarrhea for most of my life and I’ve never been to Mount Diablo. Until today.

Mount Diablo is one of those landmarks that’s hard to miss–you can see it from just about anywhere in the Bay. The summit is about 3,850 feet, and is the highest in the East Bay Area. Every winter it gets a little snow, which usually melts the next day or so. I think it’s also a dormant volcano.

So I’ve never been to the top. Yum and I have been talking about going up there to take pictures for the last year and never got around to doing it. And now we’re leaving the Bayarrhea for Vacaville, so today was the day.

Smile!

The drive to the top is windy and slow, the speed limit is 15 mph most of the way, and the road is narrow. There are plenty of bicyclists on the road, so you have to drive extra carefully and slowly.

But the drive up is beautiful. It’s so cool to see the change in vegetation from low-land weeds and brush to manzanita and pine trees near the top. And the summit is awesome.

We got there just in time for the sunset. At the very summit there is a big parking lot and castle-fortress looking thing that acts as a visitors center. From here you get a 360 degree unobstructed view. They say that on a good day you can see clear on down the San Joaquin valley to Bakersfield.

We were treated to a nice sunset to go along with the sweeping views of the Bay, San Francisco, the Delta Valley, and San Joaquin valley. I wish we had more time, but it got dark rather fast after the sun set, and the rangers were quick to kick us out of the park.

Ansela Adams (AKA Yum) had her camera of course, and was not to be rushed. It’s one of her basic rules of life, you know. “When I have my camera, do not rush me,” she says. I had mine too and took some quick snaps, which you can view here.

I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to go up there. I need to go back one day soon for a road-side picnic or even some camping (yes, there are campgrounds way up there) and maybe some horseback riding (if I had a horse).

Awww!