down there by the train

amanda started riding the train to work today. i dropped her off at the norwalk/santa fe springs station this morning, and i will pick her up when she arrives there again tonight at about 6pm.

i like trains a lot. i am really glad that she is able to use it to get to work. i am hoping that this will make a big difference in her stress level, and will help her not to be so tired when she gets home at the end of her work day. she is the type of girl that needs a lot of sleep, especially if she's tired or stressed out. if riding the train helps her to be more awake at the end of the day when she gets home, so we can spend more time together, that will be fantastic.

then there is the whole gas factor. i paid $2.51 a gallon for gas last night. this sucks, and i don't really see it getting better any time soon. living in california, with it's specific seasonal gas refining requirements doesn't help the cost either. when you have to use a gas that is refined differently from the rest of the country, you can see how that would effect the price that you pay. i was talking to sycz last night about gas, and the least ammount we have ever paid per gallon. he remembers paying $.99 a gallon in high school. im thinking that it was the same time that i was paying $.79 a gallon in oregon. oh those were the days.

i had a sweet '78 chevy suburban with a bored out 350, four barrel edlebrock carb, hooker headers, and a nice big k&n air filter. the block had been painted a bubble gum pink at some point, and the screen on the air filter was selected to match it. it was a nice counterpoint to the two-tone baby blue and white paint of the body. sitting nice and low, with gas shocks, and two wheel drive, my ride screamed through the s-curves on the way to carl's jr everyday at lunch. i routinely edged out sweet '60's firebirds, riced-out hondas and a couple of nice little mustangs and camaros. i was the king of the road. i was always glad for the cheap gas prices because this thing ripped through the remains of several hundred dinosuars during it's life with me. the gas tank held 40 gallons, and was still a bitch to fill, even at those prices.

i don't think i will ever forget the day it blew up though. after all the times of racing through the streets, the time on the freeway getting her up to 130mph, and the countless runs to the donut store i had made during school, i never thought it would come down to this. big motors, especially when bored out, running a sweet cam, and generally being kicked around by a teenager tend to burn some oil on a regular basis. i knew this full well. my mom was always on me to check my oil. top it off, have it changed. i did this, though not as often as i should have. all this wear and tear took it's toll on my motor. one sunny thursday afternoon, driving north on the freeway to a swim meet my lifter started to click a little. my oil was getting low. i was late and pushing the car a little too much. the ticking continued to get worse. i slowed down a bit, but it didn't matter. soon enough, clickclickclickCLICKKNOCKKNOCNKKNOCK... BANG! and it was the end. unbeknownest to me, my rear main seal had blown, and my oil was spread over the last three or four miles of freeway, drip by drip, until there wasn't any left in my pan. that last bang had been the intense heat finally winning over the last dying drips of lubrication in my motor, and cracking the block.

these were the days before i had a cell phone, years away at this point, so i had to hitch hike to a pay phone. my mom was pissed. i was really sad. somehow, in a feat never to be duplicated again, i got my dad to buy me another car a couple of weeks later. i drove it until my junior year in college. i blew that one up too, and i sold it. the left over hulk of my beautiful suburban sat in the parking lot of my uncle's shop until i traded it to my dad so that he would buy me a computer. i sold that computer the same week that i sold my mitsubishi. i used the money from the car and the computer and bought a ticket to alaska. most of you know how that worked out.