Confessions & Car Maintenance, Again

 Okay, okay. Am I the best at keeping up with a blog? No. I'll freely admit that. The only blog I've kept up with is my Tumblr, and that's because it's so easy to do. I reblog whatever I want, and there's an app.

    This, on the other hand... This is about me taking my car on drives to the beach, a process that is infinitely harder than I expected. Did I expect to go to the beach every weekend? No. Did I expect to have so little free time, so little energy, that I could not bring myself to do a turn and burn? No.

     Why do I keep asking rhetorical questions? I don't know. It's easier for me to answer things when they're questions. Ask me about my life and you'd better have a list, because I won't know where to start or what you mean. 

    Anyway.

    I know I haven't finished my Peru story. I have about... two more entries to go, but don't quote me on that. I'd finish it now, but I'm in Virginia, on a work trip, and can't really spare the time. These trips are only ten days each, but they're a demanding ten days, and it's more than I can muster just to shower and find a TV show. I brought my piano but don't practice because the mental strength is so much more than I have to give.

    Okay, I swear we're back to car talk now. I also swear I'll finish my Peru story. It's NaNoWriMo, after all, and I'm still writing my novel, so that's gotta be some time to type.

    In the time since I've written about Peru, I've had approximately two more issues with Dani, the world's best car-- more on that in a second. Her alternator gave out again, but fortunately it was still under warranty, just barely. The one they replaced it with turned out to be a bust, sending out more voltage than it was taking or taking more than it was giving, I forget which one. They replaced it and she's fine.

    Just before I left for Virginia, I got the dreaded Check Engine light. If you read this blog, you can probably guess that I do not let a Check Engine light go. I bring her to my mechanic as soon as I possibly can. So, the day of my flight, I brought her in at an ungodly hour of the morning, and her o2 sensor was tanked again, this time because of an exhaust leak.

    I swear, she has more problems with her exhaust/catalytic/whatever you call that system out of any other aspect. I'm told that's an older Mazda Protege issue. Fortunately, those aren't super expensive, at least not for her. 

    Of course, I'm basing this off of the fact that there was a transmission recall for 2002 Mazda Proteges back in the day. They were giving out at 40k miles. My transmission lasted 20 years. Who am I to complain about a measly exhaust problem, when there was a more expensive hell lurking so closely?

    Once I get back from Virginia, I have a five day weekend. These trips are ten days straight, and when you return, they give you the weekend days back. I have an iron infusion on Friday, so I can't take a longer trip, but I can go to the beach, try a turn and burn unless I choose one on my list. 

    Initially, my plan was to go to Cambria, California, home of Hearst Castle, Moonstone Beach, and Linn's Easy as Pie cafe. When I mentioned it to everyone's favorite uncle, he told me that he'd always wanted to go to Hearst Castle, but whenever he was near Cambria, he never had the time to stop. So I said I'd wait for him and we could go together, since no one else wanted to go with me.

    I'm sure you can also surmise that I frequently take these trips alone. It's not that I'm a horrible person to go to the beach with; I'm just a horrible tyrant about it. We leave at three am, no later, to maximize beach time. We do not do rest stops. We do not leave the beach, to maximize beach time. We do not-- okay, fuck it, I'll make a separate post about my road trip rules in a minute.

    My sister calls me a road trip Nazi, my uncle compared my rules to Mussolini, but I will not bend. If I'm doing a turn and burn, I refuse to start a trip at 10 am. For what?? To get there at 2pm and leave at 6pm?? No way. Not to mention, cars are less temperamental when they're not fighting with hot temps. You get there faster when you’re not competing with other cars.

    Regardless, because my uncle and I are going to Cambria, I have yet to decide what beach I want to go to. My sister doesn't want to go, and that kind of makes things harder and easier. She needs a lot of rest stops and complains about the time I leave and wants to leave the beach for lunch... She's the only one I'll tolerate it from, but it still rankles my bones.

    Still... road trips are more fun with other people. You can gossip, spill secrets, trade advice... road trips are the car version of the nighttime conversations you have with people, when the night beckons secrets and truths spill easily. There's so much I want to say that I'm too afraid to say when I'm not moving. When I can be trapped. Not to mention, someone can watch the stuff while the other plays in the sea. Someone else can make you feel safe.

    You might ask yourself, how is a car any different? Aren't you even more trapped? Yes. But there's constant motion and that soothes me. The good thing about going by myself, however lonely it is, is that I follow my rules and don’t complain because they’re my rules. I can talk aloud, work through things, see the sunrise and let the waves crash as background noise to my nap, to my loud thoughts, to the way they force themselves into the light and I can't pretend to be blind anymore.

    And so I know I'm awful at keeping up with this. I know people read this in random parts of the world, and I want to say that's super cool, because who would've thought someone in Iceland, Ireland, Germany, Sweden, and Russia would read a random American's car blog? I think that's cool as fuck. Also, Iceland has some sick beaches too, and they’re on my updated list. I’m sure you know I have an ever expanding Google doc with more beaches, and I need to update this blog's list already. So if you have a cool as fuck beach, please hit me up and tell me  I want to learn more about other countries.

    I promise everything's coming soon.