Stay in San Francisco Bay Area

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Well, the thanksgiving weekend started out pretty tough with my car breaking down about half way between San Francisco and Portland. ... I am driving an older car (11 years old, 220,000 miles). It leaks a little oil, but rather than getting it fixed (an expensive proposition) I just check it every month, around the first of the month. However, in November I took the scenic route to San Francisco and was then headed back to Portland. On the way back, the oil light would occasionally flash on when going down hill. I had started early to stay ahead of the heavy weekend traffic (no major cities between San Francisco and Portland) so decided to wait until I arrived to get more oil (as the engine doesn't really need much oil going down hill).
Bad idea! Going up one steep hill the engine started clattering terribly (picture above shows where the clattering started). Oh shit!. The hill was about three/four miles long and the clattering started just as I was making it over the top. I coasted down to the next exit where there was a gas station with a little convenience store (shown here). Bought and added oil, but still got the clatter. Doh! Went back into the store and asked the clerk about local mechanics. A customer referred me to an ace mechanic, Peter, who will make house calls.
I called the number and got his wife, Tiffany. She called Peter where he was out working and he called me back. Cell phones sure are great. It turns out the bearings for the connector rods had overheated (not enough oil even without the oil light coming on) and the engine was blown. Drats! Peter suggested I try to drive it to his house to save a tow. I made it to withing one half mile of the top of the second hill when the motor finally gave up the ghost. My recommendations if you ever try this yourself, take extra oil and add it as you go as it was burning oil badly and I was out of oil (again) when it finally quit. Note to self .... Here is where my car died and where I left it (though the car shown is actually the rental car I got later when I took this picture on my way back to drop off the rental car).
I called Tiffany and told her where my car died and she packed her two kids up in their car and picked me up. She drove me to the town where Peter was working and I could rent a car. We met at the rental car agency. Here is Tiffany at the car rental place next to her car with the two kids in the back.
I rented a little Ford Focus wagon for a week, filled out the paperwork for Peter to do the repairs, and was off to Portland. With a three or four hour delay, I was in the midst of the heavy traffic and it got really bad just after dark which delayed me another hour or two. So, I started at 5:45AM, but didn't arrive until 8:30PM and was really well done (toast so to speak).
However, once I arrived everything was alright. One hug from Karyn and everything was alright. Here is a picture of Peter Gendron (541-955-4878 home, 541-218-3321 cell), The Wroving Wrench, filling out the paperwork. I was ever so glad that Peter and Tiffany were able to help me out. If you ever have car trouble in Southern Oregon, you know who to call.
On Thanksgiving we went to Karyn's parent's house and most of the family was there. It was a very nice Thanksgiving with lots of chances to get to know each other.
We got home pretty late from the dinner (about 10PM) and then Alex's dad, Rob, met us at Karyn's house and picked up Alex for the weekend. For the rest of the weekend it was just Karyn and I, though Karyn had to work on Friday. So, I stayed at Karyn's house on Friday and used her computer with broadband access (wow)! Then I went in and met her at work. The sun had mostly set at 4:45PM when I took this picture, so we had to adjust the brightness of this picture.
The old Custom House had some pretty large rooms which have been divided into cubicles. Here is a view of the cubicles headed over in the direction of Karyn's cubicle.
Here is Karyn sitting in front of her work computer. She is their resident computer geek, helping her co-workers as necessary. The color in this picture is not good cause of my flash, but Karyn has promised to fix that. Karyn also looks a little nervous (she doesn't like it when my camera is pointed in her direction) but it is a generally nice picture.
I lengthened Thanksgiving weekend by another two nights as my car wasn't due to be repaired until Wednesday when the car rental was due (one week). For Thursday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday night I would leave between 10PM and midnight (OK it was usually closer to midnight most evenings) and sleep in my car as Karyn and I had decided that it was inappropriate for me to stay overnight while Alex was there. That was hard as it got pretty cold, one evening as cold as 25 degrees. Brrrrr! Then in the morning I would call (as the door bell isn't loud enough to wake Karyn) and Karyn would let me in. She would go back to bed and I would get Alex up and we would have breakfast together. That was way cool! Alex really is a cute kid. Not nearly the night owl like his mom.
Anyway, Wednesday morning I left after Karen and Alex were off to work / school (you have to guess which went to which). Then I took I5 back South to Sunny Valley. They have a historic covered bridge (shown above), then you go a few miles and turn off on a private road, Greenback Mine Road, shown here. Yikes, this is some serious boonies we are talking about.
Right now Peter is working in a somewhat makeshift garage. He used PVC pipes and blue plastic tarps to make up this quite adequate work area. Next summer he may build a regular garage for him to work in. Here is my car as it was being worked on. Peter's tools are all in the back of a pickup truck allowing him to make 'house calls'. By 5PM when it got dark, most everything on my car was done except the transmission kit; they had given him the wrong transmission kit so he needed to make a trip back to Grant's Pass to get the right kit (a one hour drive, round trip). Drats!

This page was last updated on October 24, 2009