It turns out that the neighborhood that Jesse and I had been so enamored of with its wealth and beauty is the smash and grab capital of California. To add to that, Progressive informed me that there had been four times as many incidents of vandalism and theft that weekend than their normal run-rate would have predicted. Sweet. I lost my ipod, my tent, my shotgun, my bow, my tools (10 years of gathering and collecting) and my film camera, along with some other stuff. Interestingly, they left my gps unit, my cds, my stereo, and other stuff.
The rest of the week was spent alternately on the phone with insurance and being pissed off.
The highlights were getting my window replaced, which I did at Mudrak, run by Gary Kardum up in Sonoma. He's a land cruiser celebrity, and runs a fantastic shop where he does everything from tune-ups to crazy expedition builds for his clients. I also met his cage fabrication guy Andy, a very cool guy with a lot of talent. We talked trucks, life, karma (bad for the people that took my stuff) and he did a lot of work with me for very very little money. While he was doing my window (and my fan clutch, which had been squealing and scaring me (there are a few possibilities of things that squeal in the engine compartment and few of them are good) I took out my carb and replaced it with a rebuilt unit from Jim Chenoweth, another land cruiser celebrity.
I also met Andy the conservative pizza guy in San Mateo. He and I started talking and it turns out we were both strangers in a strange land out in SF. It also turned out that he'd lived in Alaska for 12 years, and offered me great advice about the state and the trip.
Aside from that, I had some good food and good drinks with Jesse during the week. He also dealt with numerous rants on my part about how worthless people are and how I was puzzled at the random nature of the theft. We both heard from numerous sources (obviously after the fact) about how Pacific heights is the worst place in the world to park a car with anything in it. Sweet.
I took the chance at the tint place to pay homage to two guys who have helped me enormously on the trip and with the truck in general.
No comments:
Post a Comment