The Tow

So my favorite daughter Alisha (and only daughter) bet me $5 that I would have at least ten people honk at me as I towed the DeLorean eight hundred or so miles South for our over-Winter in California, and I readily took the bet thinking that my poor hearing would immunize me from financial loss. Well, I was wrong and Alisha was up five bucks before she contributed it back into the petrol fund.

What transpired during the tow was the filming of at least ten feature length films of a DeLorean under tow, with the various “crews” even taking to the road shoulder to capture the proper angle. Of course this often led to the camera vehicle camping out in my blind spot for prolonged periods and extra diligence on my part to make sure I did not squash these trespassers and end up being the star of films titled roughly “The last moments in the life of John Smith as he captures irrelevant images of car on a trailer.” Several times I was almost scraped off onto the road shoulder as my lane ended and the film crew failed to recognize my need to merge, with the blinker and hand signals indicating my urgent intention. There are laws on the books making it illegal to talk or text on a cell phone while driving, but none that I am aware of specifically targeting picture taking. Legislators listen up – this is your chance to make an indelible mark on society.

As I crossed into California and stopped at the agricultural inspection station I was asked “Sir, do you have any vegetables or plants with you and, by the way, the fellow in front of you really likes your car.” This was from a vehicle that was trying to force me into the truck inspection lane until I pounced on the brakes and swung in abruptly behind him.

Mostly what I noticed as I checked my rear views every few seconds to keep from pan-caking mostly little foreign cars of dubious parentage (i.e., non-British) were a thousand phone photos being snapped, and many thumbs up as they accelerated past my tow limited speed of roughly, cough, cough, 55 MPH. There were so many smiles directed at my road numbed, drivers side silhouette that I began to think that the scenery alternatives must be extremely bleak. But I suppose that if a stainless steel vehicle can make people happier, without killing them, and that the internet postings of thousands of blurry pictures of my D-car are not a burden on the servers of the internet, then that is OK. Alternatively, next time, I can either throw a sheet over it like some military transporter of classified equipment, or set up my own movie camera on board the DeLorean to capture my own entries into the YouTube world of interesting stuff people do.

Blame Congress

I do some of my Banking with Bank of America, in part becuase I have been with them since the beginning of geologic time, and because they were conveniently located to where I lived and worked. That changed over ten years ago and it is now a twenty minute drive for me to get to the only B of A on my part of the Oregon coast, but I have continued to stay with them becasue my banking evolved along with the internet to include all of the bank services I could possibly need right at my laptop computer. The only reason I ever go to a real bricks and mortor location is to deposit a check.

At the end of last week B of A, along with many other big banks, announced that they intended to begin charging $5 per month for the use of our ever popular Debit Card. This move is the result of Congress being pressured to limit the fees banks can charge merchants on debit card transactions to something like 24 cents, whereas before legislative scrutiny they had been charging up to 40 cents. All is good - sock it to business to figure out how to cope. Thus the new fee on consumers. Thank you Congress, you messed this one up nicely.

Well, now that I am almost thoroughly enmeshed in the online banking system, this last friday, shortly after the fee announcement, the B of A online banking system virtually tanks, slows to a crawl, or is inaccesable. I am deeply suspicious that the two events are linked and that someone or some group is thinking that they are making B of A pay for their shoddy treatment of thier customers by fussing with the banks internet banking system. If this is true, then "they" have mostly negatively affected people like me who need to do things like pay bills and transfer money. Oops.

So I am now resorting to sending e-n-v-e-l-o-p-e-s in the mail to my utility companies. I am thinking that I will join the revolution that Congress has started and just sending in the payment stub to the utility, no check, and a copy of the message that appears when I attempt to access my money in the way that the bank prefers:

Bank of America
Home Page Temporarily Unavailable

We're sorry, but some of our pages are temporarily unavailable. Thanks for your patience.
If you like, you can:
Home Page Temporarily Unavailable
We're sorry, but some of our pages are temporarily unavailable. Thanks for your patience.
If you like, you can:

JJ

For those of you who know JJ in San Carlos, Sonora this photo is classic JJ. I found it on the "Viva! San Carlos" site and just had to share it. You have to read his apron.

How to Scare Tourists Near Mexico

So I flew into my native city of Tucson to visit family and shuttled over to the XYZ Car Rental facility to pick up a vehicle for the week and went through the normal formalities of renting, but was surprised at the sales pitch that was thrown at me for insurance coverage.


Basically the young man behind the counter reminded me that I was in “a border town” (not entirely accurate) and that many vehicles are stolen along the border (true enough), and he asked me where I would be traveling and staying, implying that things are more than a little dangerous in many parts of Arizona. I inquired of the salesman as to the cost of several insurance options, with the most likely pitched target being something like $14.99 per day, and I then informed him that I believed that my own insurance covered my interests under the circumstances I was likely to encounter. His reply deepened the suspect nature of the human terrain likely to be encountered during my visit as he casually mentioned that their contract called for me to compensate the company for their “loss of use” for up to 28 days when their vehicle was stolen under my care.

I suppose insurance sales techniques have always tapped into that balance between greed and fear, but I resented the implication that my city, my beloved southern Arizona had become a war zone of thieves and scoundrels, untamed by the authorities, and that my only solution was to send money to the headquarters of XYZ Car Rental to limit my exposure.

If I had purchased insurance from XYZ Car Rental, my cost of rental would have almost doubled from the contracted price, excluding taxes and fees. But that is not what really bothered me about these minutes at the rental counter. It was the attempt to play a “tourist” using the much reported border security issues and the inferred perpetuation of the belief in the overall lawlessness in Mexico that really galled me. I wonder if sales associate prospects are trained in these techniques by the company if they are to be posted near the Mexican border? I love Mexico and have traveled their often enough over my lifetime, both by car and other means, and I know not to leave my vehicle parked unattended in a dark alley in Nogales, Sonora or Mazatlan, Sinaloa, and for that matter in Los Angeles, California, and Miami, Florida or just about anywhere else likely to not have a population mostly concerned about their golf handicap. In other words don’t become easy prey for thieves – anywhere. And yes, dark alleys in Tucson should be on the dumb list too.

And I also was reminded by this encounter of a basic tenet of business: If you are a corporation trying to glean a few more dollars, or pesos, from me you should know your target better and not insult them.

As it turns out, between my own insurance and that provided through the credit card I used for my rental, we’re covered well enough, but it will take some time, or medication, to get my blood pressure back down to a reasonable operating level.

(This was published in the Arizona Daily Star as a guest submittal on on May 13, 2011)

Sarah Palin meets Thomas Jefferson

I just had to share this.

Teddy Bears

Two nights ago there was a rocket launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base, just south of us on Point Conception, carrying some do-hickey for the Air Force. I believe it carried a pod of stuffed bears in a capsule, or something.

The launch was to take place at 9:24 PM, and I was hoping to make it to that hour despite having played in a golf tournament for the past two days, and having played the day earlier as well. I was pooped, but lay in bed reading anyway, just trying to make it to the appointed time. Well, the book was boring, the hour too late and when the time for the launch came and went and nothing happened I just gave up. I did not wait long past 9:24.

( I did not get to see this)

During the first fits of sleep I was kicking myself for being such a wimp and nodding off because I had seen a daytime launch when we were here in January and I thought a night observation would be pretty cool – much better than daylight hours. The bedroom windows were wide open and I strained to hear the rumble of the launch, but I am getting older by the minute and am told that my hearing is not what it used to be, so I got out of bed and peered out the window for maybe 15 minutes. No launch. The sky was crystal clear and there was zero air traffic, as you would expect. Back to bed.

A short while later I heard a low, deep sound, enough to wake me from my semi-sleep, and I was certain that it had to be the teddy bear missile, so up again. So all that I see is an oldish arching contrail headed out over the Pacific and a jet at high altitude moving due west from us making its own new contrail. I had missed the launch and had been awakened by the jet plane that was flying into cleared air space.
No report on the teddy bears.

Sailing South - for Chris & Sandy

There is a reason that sailors leave Portland and points north before the Fall and Winter swells set in along the Oregon coast...