I apologize for a break in this series but I was commuting to Seattle all week, which made my day much much longer than usual. Randy really took care of me that week even though he had his own early mornings.
Now where was I? Ah yes, packing up the truck with a few essentials that I'd need to live in SoCal without all the stuff that was in the moving van. I remember little about the drive, except that it was a beautiful day when I left McKinleyville. I can't imagine that I got far since I couldn't leave until at least late morning but I don't remember staying anywhere except for a motel in Ventura that allowed pets. Did I really make the cats suffer in their crates for that long? Possibly. I do remember them meowing at me.
If you've ever traveled with cats you know it's impossible to give them a bathroom break. Mine were not leash trained and I certainly could not just let them out at a rest area because undoubtedly they would've dashed into the nearest hidey-hole never to come out or at least not to get back into the Toyota, which they loathed. I tried putting them in the litter box in the back of the truck but using it for which it was intended was about the last thing on their minds. I could tell by the way they cowered in the corner and stared at me wide-eyed. Fine.
There's a place near Ventura where Highway 101 is very close to the ocean. It was evening so the light turned a little golden, a little pink. A group (pod?) of dolphins played in the surf just right there. It was perfect and I felt relaxed.
The motel was a Comfort Inn in a weird part of Ventura. The cats were happy to be out of their crates, even if in an unfamiliar room with new places to sniff. I was happy to be out of the truck even though I don't recall that the drive was terribly torturous. It was probably hot on the 101 through Santa Rosa and Petaluma but I was used to driving with the windows down.
The next day I moved to my temporary quarters in Calabasas. It was an airy house in the park (Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area) and the sun seemed to always shine. Wildlife was everywhere, including some enormous rattlesnakes. I looked out my bedroom window one morning to see a particularly large specimen sunning itself just behind the Toyota in the carport. Yeesh!
The house was very near a state park, Malibu Creek State Park, which has a lovely, snake-filled grassland, trails, streams, rock climbing walls, hardwood forests with trails for hiking and mountain biking. Dave and I would sometimes walk there in the evening or ride bikes on the trails, climb a little on the rock walls.
Living there was ideal for me but temporary since the park didn't provide housing for permanent employees who weren't law enforcement. So Dave and I bought a house in the San Fernando Valley with a pool that was sort of half way between our commutes. Our real estate agent did a fabulous job finding that house for us. That was June of 2000.
Shortly the park hired a woman who lived further away than I did so we arranged to carpool as much as possible. Traffic is awful in Los Angeles but having a carpool buddy really helped pass the time. Sometimes I was even sorry to drop her off.
The Toyota wasn't really suited for stop and go commuting in Los Angeles, mostly because it didn't have air conditioning and no matter if the windows are rolled down, hot is hot if you're not moving, which is frequent in LA traffic. And it's a stick shift so all that stopping and starting again is trying with a clutch. So we bought a used Mercedes for a pretty good deal. That became my primary commuting car. Air conditioning, power windows when it felt like it, and an automatic transmission. It was my first different car in quite a long time.
At some point, possibly prior to purchasing the Mercedes, Dave and I were driving on Valley Circle back toward home when we heard a strange whistling sound. It was a hot day with lots of traffic as usual so we didn't think much about it, except that the whistling seemed to track us. Then at a stop light we realized the whistling was the Toyota and the temperature guage had red-lined. Thankfully we were very close to home.
Dave and his friend Mike peered under the hood for quite a while and learned that the head gasket had blown. Remember the time back in McKinleyville when the thermostat had failed? Dave theorized that the overheating had done some damage and it had just taken this long for the damage to be fully realized. Turns out that the motor is made of two different metals so parts expand and contract at different temperatures and rates. As long as the temperature remains stable it's not a problem but when the thermostat fails, it's a problem.
The Toyota was in pieces in our garage for weeks but eventually it all went back together and ran just fine for many more years.
End of Part 4