Posts filed under 'Cars'
Saturday morning, Billy and Matt left on a road trip to L.A. They stayed overnight at a motel in Redding, and got back on the road about 5:30 or so Sunday morning. They called us at 7:30 AM, saying that his car broke down, and they were on the side of I-5, just outside of Williams. We called for a tow truck ($145 for three miles), and arranged for a mechanic to look at the car ($120 to say “Yup, it won’t start, and we can’t do any more until Monday.”) The tow driver took the boys to a motel and they checked in until we could figure out what to do.
At church a few hours later, we mentioned the situation to a few people, including one of the youth pastors (who sings in the band the boys play in), who mentioned that he grew up in Williams, and whose parents still lived there. Within ten minutes, they had arranged to pick up the boys, and got them a full refund for their unused motel room. He also happens to be a mechanic, and confirmed that the engine was, in fact, destroyed (a broken connecting rod punched through the engine block, which, as I understand it, is A Very Bad Thing.) They fed the boys and put them up over night.
The boys were still anxious to get to L.A. to see their grandpa who had a stroke back in February, so the family they were staying with helped them book airline tickets for a one-way flight on United from Sacramento to LAX, leaving at 9:30 AM on the 18th. When they got to the airport this morning, they discovered that they had accidentally booked the tickets for July 18th instead of June 18th, and were non-refundable, non-transferable and couldn’t be changed. It was at this point that Kathy officially freaked, and I arranged to leave work to straighten this all up from home today. By the time I got home, Billy had booked two new one-way tickets for tomorrow morning on United, and were on the stand by list for every other flight. Kathy was going to have none of this, so she called and raised hell, and had these new tickets refunded (which is going to take 30-60 days, even though they were able to charge Billy’s debit card within 30-60 seconds.) She then arranged for one-way tickets on JetBlue to Long Beach Airport. When the boys went to retrieve their luggage from United, they found that it was already on its way to LAX. They took a cab from Long Beach to their grandma’s house in Carson. When they went to LAX to get their bags about an hour ago, the United luggage office had no idea where their bags were, and didn’t know anything about their situation. The boys finally found their bags on one of the United carousels, still going around in circles like they had been for the last seven hours.
The little repair shop in Williams that had the car quoted $3500 for a rebuilt engine to be installed. The lowest figure I could find, calling in several favors from people here in town, would have been about $800 labor and about $400 for a replacement engine, but I would have to get the car here from Williams, about a nine hour drive each way. The car is worth about $1800. Because the car is pretty much in the middle of nowhere, there aren’t a lot of options for salvaging it, and it seemed like we were actually going to have to pay someone to take the remains of the car off our hands.
The family in Williams once again came through for us, and had the car towed from the repair shop to their house, and arranged for a company to come and pick up the car for free. Our friend from church is driving down there this Friday to visit, and is going to take the DMV title to them for us, and will bring back the rest of the boys stuff that was left at their house.
Now we have a full month to arrange to get the boys home.
So, how was your week-end?
June 18th, 2007
No, I didn’t switch to Geico. I changed the brake pads on my van instead of paying a shop to do it.
The front brakes have been squeaking like crazy for a few weeks now, and I’ve been too busy to do anything about it. Kathy called Les Schwab to see what they charge for a brake job, and they quoted her $200 something dollars. That’s just completely nuts. I called around to auto parts places, and found the brake pads for as cheap as $13. Kathy picked up the next best pads yesterday for $20. Now, since they were going to charge me ten times this much to do it, I thought I was going to have my work cut out for me. I went out to the van today expecting to be working on it for hours. I mean, why else would it cost $200, unless it was really difficult, right?
30 minutes later, I came back in the house, greasy and dusty, with the old brake pads in my hands and the new brake pads on the van. So if an all-thumbs complete amateur, with only the stock spare tire jack and a basic socket set, and without benefit of hydraulic lifts and pneumatic tools, can do this in 30 minutes, how can they get away with charging $200?
November 19th, 2005
As promised way back in early September, here are a few games that we’ve found make road trips a bit more enjoyable, especially with kids cooped up in the car.
1. License plate game, Hayes style.
I took the standard license plate game, and kicked it up a few notches. I created a page with a picture of every state’s license plate, as well as Washington DC’s plate. You can download it as an 840KB PDF format here (and yes, I’m aware that I have North Dakota twice, and that there is no South Dakota. Sue me. Or create your own.)
I printed five copies, one for each of us. When we would see a car from a certain state, we would put a line through that state’s plate. The first person to cross off all 51 plates, or the one who crosses off the most plates by the time we reach our destination, is the winner. We only count single-family passenger vehicles, like cars, pickups, SUVs, minivans, and even RVs. No busses or semi trucks. We only counted cars that we saw driving, not parked.
2. Alphabet game.
The standard alphabet game can be played on road trips of any length. The basic rules: Find words on signs that begin with each successive letter of the alphabet. It is a collaborative game, with everyone helping to find words in order; in other words, each person does not have his own alphabet to run through. You can’t use any word on any part of any car, including the make, model, or any ads or logos printed on the car. You can only use one word on any single sign, so if a sign has the words “Alpha” and “Beta”, you can use “Alpha” as the A-word, but you then must look for a B-word on a different sign.
On shorter trips, including trips that include driving through town, the game can be more fun when several rules are relaxed. It can take a loooong time to find an X-word for example. You can choose to either allow a word that has X anywhere in it to be the X-word, or you might purposely drive near a sign that has an X-word, like a copy place that has the word “Xerox” in the window, or by a hospital that has an “X-ray” sign. You can even choose to find the X-word out of order if you come across it before you’ve reached X in the alphabet.
Happy driving!
November 5th, 2005
We were driving over the mountains, after leaving Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks, heading to our motel in Idaho Falls, Idaho. It was near the end of our road trip, and we had already driven 4800 miles or so in 14 days. I had tried to plan all of our driving time each day to arrive at the motel at a decent hour. Unfortunately, I hadn’t considered the fact that on that night, we’d be driving very slowly in the dark over the passes and through the mountain roads. Needless to say, we got into Idaho Falls very late. In addition, we couldn’t see the motel when we got off the freeway exit that was given to me back when I reserved the room. We saw a cluster of other motels off to the left, so we turned left to see if our motel was tucked away in there somewhere. It wasn’t. Luckily, in a fury of planning foresight, I had printed copies of everything, including the motel’s phone number.
Using her cell phone, Kathy called the motel and talked to the woman at the front desk to find out just where the heck the place was. Kathy was given brief directions, and she hung up and directed me back across to the other side of the freeway and down a small gulley, where the motel was completely hidden from view of the freeway.
I went in to the office to check in, and I swear I am not lying when I repeat the woman’s comment: “So you were the ones that called for directions? I’m usually no good at giving directions over the phone, so I was a little worried that I would get you more lost. You did find the place, though?”
Uh, yeah, I’m pretty sure we found the place.
September 30th, 2005
Well, they are finally all done. There are a lot of pictures for you all to enjoy in the photo gallery. Now maybe I can finally catch up with all the posts required by law from when a bunch of people recently tagged me. Patience…
September 7th, 2005
I have almost all the vacation pictures ready in the photo gallery. For lack of a better system, I have them organized by day. As of now, it is complete through day 13. Actually uploading the photos is trivial, but I want to have a caption for each one, which is proving to be a bit more time consuming than I thought it would. Day 14, which I hope to have ready sometime tomorrow, will have all the pictures from our trip through Yellowstone National Park. I took over 180 pictures that day, and I’m going to upload 70 of them for your viewing pleasure, plus I have five photos from Day 15, the very last day of our vacation, including the aftermath of a very scary and potentially deadly highway incident (don’t worry, we’re all fine).
I’m also going to have a bunch of posts soon about more specific things on the trip, general observations, as well as things we learned about long car trips, kind of like a how-to guide for family vacations via automobile. What worked and what didn’t, ya know?
This was an epic journey for us (5450 miles in 15 days through nine states to visit several family members, three national parks, and a seemingly endless parade of tourist traps), and I don’t know when (or if) we’ll ever be able to do it again. It was a lot more expensive than I’d planned (we spent $687.50 just in gasoline), but I would gladly do it again if given the chance, and if I had it to do over, I would change very little.
September 6th, 2005
So I took the kids (my three, plus nephew Andrew, who is also visiting here from his home in L.A.) to Branson, Mo.
What. A. Trippy. Place.
Bart was spot on when he said “It’s like Vegas — if it were run by Ned Flanders.” A lot of theme buildings, shaped like strange stuff, and a lot of eye-candy, interestingly right next door to motels obviously more than 50 years old but still kept in pristine condition, right next door to similar immaculate motels that are out of business.
And the shows! Oh my goodness! Baldknobbers’ Jamboree, The Brett Family Singers With Bob Nichols, Buck Trent Show, Circle B Chuckwagon Music Show, Clay Cooper’s Country Express, Dixie Stampede Dinner and Show, Kirby Van Burch & Brett Daniels, Mike Radford’s Remember When Show, Rodney Dillard & the Boys From Mayberry, and many more that I also had never heard of and that are undoubtedly so white-bread as to be blinding to the naked eye.
The kids and I went on a really cool go-cart ride. The track is actually four stories tall, and loops around over itself until you are all the way at the top, then it curves around through several tight turns and bumps and back down to the start. I got some pretty good pictures while piloting the car Lexi and I were in. I’ll put them in the photo gallery as soon as I can.
We also went to the Ripley’s Believe it or Not museum and had a blast there.
August 26th, 2005
We leave Saturday on our big road trip. We’ll be driving about 2100 miles in three days. Beaverton, Oregon to Cabool, Missouri. We’ll be visiting Kathy’s aunt and uncle, and staying with her cousin (their son). Then, another 2100 mile drive back home. It’s gonna be nuts.
I’m actually really looking forward to it. We drive to southern California all the time, generally about once a year. Until recently, all of our immediate family (with the exception of brother Gabe) lived somewhere in the L.A. area. My dad sold his house in Orange County a few years ago (for a very healthy profit) and moved to the Phoenix area. Last summer, we took a long road trip to see his new place there, then continued on to L.A., and finally back home.
Besides that, this is going to be the first long road trip we’ve ever taken, and the first one where we haven’t already seen the same scenery dozens of times before. We’re going to be just like the Griswolds, except I’ll never be nearly as cool as Clark is, and, you know, I’m real. Come to think of it, there are a few other scary parallels there:
- Our minivan is green, like the family truckster (I don’t think the airbags are made from Hefty bags, though).
- I’ve plotted our course on the computer just like Sparky did, except I used Google Earth’s satellite imaging, not some blocky early ’80s Apple II graphics. Plus, Billy didn’t use Pacman to eat the family car.
- We’ll be staying at cheap motels each night, but I swear I won’t be ordering any drinks from the “pool waitress”.
We’ve got the portable DVD player and a bunch of movies, and I’ve got the DC to AC inverter ready to go, so the boys can power their Playstation 2. I never had this kind of entertainment for road trips when I was a kid.
I’m such a geek, I’ve even researched free wi-fi hot spots near each night’s motel, so I can hopefully upload photos and update this site every day.
August 18th, 2005
I saw the cleanup of a pretty bad wreck a week ago or so. I flipped open the handy cell phone camera and snapped a picture as I drove by:
It wasn’t until I emailed the picture to my computer and saw the picture full-size that I realized that the totalled car was a Farmers insurance company car:
Irony at its finest!
May 27th, 2005
OK, no offense to any of my Japanese readers, alright? I personally don’t know anyone from Japan, and the Americans of Japanese descent that I know are true Red White and Blue Americans. And by that, I mean they like their beer cold, their TV loud, and you know the rest.
But I just don’t understand the taste of the young people in Japan. And by taste, I mean bad taste. A case in point is soon approaching. But first, allow me to set it up for you.
I was surfing recently, and I don’t remember anymore where I was when I clicked on a link that took me to the following page. I just remember that it said something about “cool Japanese sporty cars” or something. This wasn’t a page badly translated from the Japanese language, where all intended sarcasm is lost. This link was actually promising cool Japanese sporty cars. So I clicked to have a look. The first few cars near the top of the page looked decent enough. Nothing really special one way or the other. The farther down I got, however, the more I thought this was a joke. But NO! It is real! People in Japan actually think this looks cool! Have a look here.
When you’re done laughing and shaking your head, check out what are apparently called “art trucks“.
May 11th, 2005
Last December, we donated one of our cars to charity. My ‘92 Chevy Cavalier (you can see a few photos of it in the snow and ice here) had more than 190,000 miles on it, and the engine was finally starting to go. On the highway, it still ran OK and had plenty of power, but it was really hard to start (I had to crank it for more than 30 seconds before it would finally fire). Also, it idled really rough (though it never did stall at any stoplights or anything), and it was starting to spew steam out of the exhaust pipe.
I’ve been told I’m pretty good with computers and electronics (no comments from you, Gabe), but I’ve never been known for my mechanical ability. Still, I’ve read enough to know that steam coming from the exhaust pipe is bad. Like, you might as well start shopping for a new engine kind of bad. With a car this old and used, we didn’t want to go through the trouble. For the tiny amount we might get for selling the car (it had a reconstructed title, and I was going to remove the stereo before we did anything else), we didn’t want the hassle. So, we donated it to Goodwill.
We did a bit of research to see which would be the most deserving recipient, but no one seemed to want it. Even when we explained that the car still ran under its own power, they were all turned off by the age and the high miles. Goodwill, however, said that as long as we could get the car to one of their stores, they’d take it. So, mid-December, off to Goodwill it was.
Fast forward to late January. The family and I were driving down SE 82nd, and something in the corner of my eye caused me to whip the van around at the next intersection and drive back a block. There, sitting in a crappy used car lot, was my old car, being offered for sale. I got out of the van to check it out, and saw that my old car was virtually untouched. The dash still had a big hole with wires sticking out where my stereo used to be. The fabric on the driver’s seat was still torn. The carpet hadn’t even been vacuumed. I popped the hood and saw the same engine, unrepaired and still dirty and grimy. And the sticker on the windshield said they were asking $1900 for it.
$1900 dollars!
May 9th, 2005
I saw an interesting Dodge Caravan today. It looked like one of the new models. On its rear window, it had a Bad Boys Club sticker and a cartoon Calvin peeing on Ford and Chevy emblems, flames on the hood and front fenders, huge rims with low profile tires, and blacked out windows all around. And a roof rack.
It struck me as hilarious that someone would take the 21st century version of the family truckster and pimp it out like he was a gangsta, yo. You’d think he would know that once you own a minivan, you have completely lost any semblance of coolness.
Except for brother Gabe and I, of course. Gabe’s owned three mini-vans in his life, and I’ve owned five, two of which I still own. Yes, that’s right, I currently own two mini-vans. What, you wanna make something of it? Don’t think I couldn’t kick your butt…
April 8th, 2005
I swear this is exactly as it happened:
THEM: ”Thank you for calling Generic Car Loan company, this is Brenda.”
ME: ”Hi Brenda, I hope you can help me with several things. First, I haven’t received my bill for this month, but I know the due date is approaching soon. I need to find out where the bill is so I can get a payment in the mail to you.”
THEM: ”Well, the bills aren’t sent from this local office, they are mailed out from our headquarters, so I have no idea why the bill hasn’t been mailed yet. You can still just mail the check in, you know, you don’t have to wait for the bill.”
ME: ”I understand that. That brings us to the second item I need your help with. I need to get my account number so I can write it on the check.”
THEM: ”Alright, what is your name?”
ME: ”Bill Hayes.”
THEM: ”And what is your due date?”
ME: ”I’m not sure exactly.”
THEM: ”Lovely. Hold please.”
<click>
<elevator music>
<click>
THEM: ”Bill, your account number is ####, and your due date is the 8th of every month.”
ME: ”Thank you. One last thing: Can you add my wife’s name to the paperwork, so in the future she can call and get this same information?”
THEM: ”That has to be requested in writing. You will need to indicate exactly what information she can have access to. You will also need to include some way that she can be identified.”
ME: ”Why is that needed?”
THEM: ”So that we can be sure that it is truly your wife calling, and not someone else just trying to gain access to your personal account information. It has to do with new privacy laws.”
ME: ”So, how did you know it was me just now when you gave me the account number? All I gave you was my name, I didn’t even know my own due date.”
THEM: ”You know, that’s a good point, what’s your social security number so I can verify it?”
ME: ”Never mind, I got the information I needed.”
<click>
January 31st, 2005
Wow, long time since I’ve updated this page.
We went camping over 4th of July week-end. Left the house about 11:00 AM to meet my brother Gabe and his family at the campsite at about 12:30. At about 12:15, literally 2 miles from the campground, we were hit by a little old lady driving a Ford Taurus. She was trying to pull onto the highway from a little general store, and apparently didn’t see the bright black minivan with roof-top carrier and bike rack barreling toward her at 40 MPH. She pulled out quickly and hit us square on the right rear side of our van, sending us sliding sideways in the road. Bringing forth the knowledge gleaned from many years of watching Dukes of Hazard every Friday night, I was able to bring the slide under control quickly, and after Kathy and I determined everyone was OK, we exchanged information and called our respective insurance companies (is there any one left in America that doesn’t carry a cell phone with them at all times?)
Camping was great fun, we all had a blast.
The following week, we took the van to her insurance company’s adjuster. He stopped counting damage when he reached $3300. They estimated our van’s value at around $2900. Since the van still drove just fine (I had removed the bent piece of body trim that was rubbing the tire, replaced both rear tires with new rubber, and installed new glass and vacuumed out the shattered cubes of safety glass), we decided to keep it. After deducting their salvage value, and adding the DMV paperwork fees, her insurance company gave us a check for $2602.
August 3rd, 2003
