I've found my home

36 hours - part one

We are never going to go to Las Vegas, let me make that clear. At some point in my life I want to visit a casino, I want to sit at a Blackjack table, I want to mutter the words: Hit me, I want to pump $40 dollars into a fruit machine, I want to throw a chip onto a roulette table, I want to stand beside a crap table and pretend I know what is happening. At some point in my life I want to go to a casino. However, it is at some point in my life, it is way, way down on my list of things to do before I die. The fact is, I'm not a gambler. I know that I will lose. Winning would be fun but I know, in my heart of hearts, that in the long run I would lose. Therefore a trip to a casino, and for it to be really worth while, would mean losing $150 and, to tell the truth, I'm not sure that the return (fun-to-money spent) would be totally worth it. At the moment I live a couple of hours from Las Vegas. Now, Las Vegas is a whole different story. It is not just gambling, it is the actual being in Las Vegas. It is the sights, the sounds, the casinos. However, Maria is convinced that if she ever goes to Las Vegas she will die. Therefore she is in no rush to go there and I am in no rush to take her there. We are never going to Las Vegas.

Slightly higher on my list of things to do before I die is visit Los Angeles. See Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Rodeo Drive, Venice Beach - all those places that I've seen on the tele/in philums. With L.A. (do you see how street I really am?) just three hours away you would have thought that I'd have visited before now but, because of one thing and another, I never have. Last month Comic-Con was held in San Diego, we didn't go, but in all the hype surrounding it (which we followed) we discovered that Dave McKean, the artist responsible for the covers of all The Sandman comics and the writer/producer/director of Mirror Mask, had an art exhibition in Los Angeles - a free exhibition. This was all the encouragement we needed to jump in the car and head up the road. We could do the whole thing in a day with the only expense being petrol! Neither of us had any bad vibes about L.A., neither of us had any premonitions, this was going to be a fast in-and-out, a road trip with no problems, no necessary planning. Eight, nine hours at the most.

Oh how wrong we were.

Not that we noticed, but it started to go wrong at the border crossing. Three days before I had a good crossing. Good in the fact that I encountered a border guard with a sense of humour - yeah, really! Who'd have thunked it. Unfortunately, this time I didn't meet just a humourless guard, I encountered a majorly-pissed-off guard. The special friendship that is supposed to exist between the UK and the USA means that I should pass through the border quite easily. However, this time I faced threats of having to go to secondary (which is a place that includes men who wear rubber gloves) or, worse in this case, refusal to even let me into the country. A long five minutes (which felt a lot longer) of arguing meant that by the time I got into the car on the other side, the good mood and feeling of excitement that I had started the journey with, had faded.

Three hours in a car with Maria is enjoyable. We chatted, we listened to NPR, we discussed/debated, we found radio stations that we would never listen to. We drove into L.A. and, quite easily (drove down Melrose - as in Melrose Place - and passed Paramount Studios) found La Brea, the street the gallery was on. We parked the car, got out, looked around and, from the street, could see the Hollywood sign on the hills behind us.

At this point it all went wrong again - it was my fault, I was reading the directions.

For some reason I decided that the number of the gallery was 710 - unfortunately there was no 710. There was a 708 and a 712 but 710 was an open lot. Back at the car (where we had left the directions) we discovered that the number we were looking for was 170. At this point the thermometer broke into the hundreds, it was hot, and we had to walk several blocks in another direction. I was hot, bothered, and feeling a little foolish - basically I was in a grumpy mood. Maria was happy, cheerful, glad to be out the car. We had an argument. It was my fault. I asked for a re-set, Maria agreed, and I did an emotional 180. Happiness prevailed until we arrived at 170 - which was an abandoned store. Determined not to let anything bring her down, Maria forced me into a shop, Fat Chance, to ask for directions/help/advice. Here, we were informed that my map reading skills were even worse than we knew. I was on La Brea North, the gallery was 170 La Brea South - and yes, there is a difference.

Another three blocks walk and we found the gallery. At which point, we turned around and walked back to the car. We had spent 56 minutes walking up and down La Brea and we were only allowed to park for an hour. We moved the car, re-parked it, entered the gallery, viewed the exhibition.

I don't know what I was expecting but I was slightly disappointed. Maria enjoyed it, finding many things that she wanted. Unfortunately I couldn't afford the $19,000 needed to acquire this.

Back outside the gallery, we decided to drive around town and play the tourists. An hour or so of driving later, we elected to, rather than go all the way out to Venice Beach, set off home - maybe stopping at San Clemente for oysters, shrimp and a take-away bucket of their hot wings (I would have to be home to eat them!).

The traffic, trying to get out of L.A. was hell. Eventually, as the road ahead of us cleared of cars, we decided that, with a clear shot at San Clemente, we'd pull off the freeway, grab a couple of drinks and use the facilities. With luck, we'd be home in a couple of hours, well fed, with a bucket of wings, sat in front of the television watching the final of SYTYCD. What could possibly go wrong?

a little bit of politics

Paris Hilton.

Paris Hilton is a goddess.

Yes, I realise that is a sentence that: (1) I never thought I would ever write and (b) You thought you'd never read on this blog. But there is a reason for this.

There is a presidential election happening in the US, you might have heard. We might also have heard about one of the candidates, Barack Obama. You might not have heard about the other candidate, John McCain. If you haven't heard about Mr. McCain this might be because he's not sexy, not interesting, not...well, to be honest, he's not anything to an outsider. Mr. McCain has taken exception to the media's love of Mr. Obama and spent the last two weeks complainig to the press contingent that covers his every move (both of them).

He has also released several adverts attacking his opponent. The main plank of his attack is that Mr. Obama is a vaccuous celebrity, a man of no substance - basically Barack Obama might as well be Paris Hilton. Oh, how the world laughed at his wit, his satire, his sense of finger on the pulse-ed-ness. Except, of course, Miss Hilton didn't. She retaliated. And, it behoves me to say, she retaliated with a certain amount of style.

Watch this reply and gain a new found respect for Miss Hilton. The woman is a genius, or at least, she has some very clever writers/advisors.

spreading the love

Laguna Niguel Auto Center

I realise that this is not going to be a useful post, nor useful information, to most of my readers (both of you). But I am not doing this post for you (either of you), I'm doing this post for me - for me, for Sergio Turcutto and for Laguna Niguel Auto Center.

The Laguna Niguel Auto Center is the single best garage that I have ever been to and the service manager at Laguna Niguel Auto Center, Sergio Turcutto, is one of the nicest men I have ever met. There is very little that I can do to thank either him (Sergio Turcutto) or the company he works for (Laguna Niguel Auto Center) enough for the kindness and generosity that they showed us. Probably, all I can do is to help bump up their Google ratings and hits. Welcome to a post that is totally about Sergio Turcutto and Laguna Niguel Auto Center in an attempt to boost their rating. I hope that this post will also inspire you to think about moving to Laguna Niguel - just so that you can meet Sergio Turcutto and get to use the Laguna Niguel Auto Center. Personally, at about 8pm last night, we made a decision that every time the car needs any work done on it, we will do our upmost to drive three hours north, just so that we can put it in the hands of Sergio Turcutto and his team of mechanics at Laguna Niguel Auto Center.

Sat, safely at home, 48 hours later, it is hard to understand how worried we were, how scared we were. 48 hours previously, we were stuck in, what we perceived to be the middle of nowhere, with a piece of metal (that used to be a car), in a foreign country, surrounded by (in our perception) muderers/rapists/conmen. We were at the mercy of strangers. Twelve hours later we met, for the first time, Sergio Turcutto who turned out to be probably definitely one of the nicest people on the planet.

After (what was for us) a horrowing journey to a find a motel - where we were also dealt with kindness and care, so big up to The Laguna Inn & Suites, a place we are now contemplating spending our honeymoon at - we spent a restless night, worrying that we would never get home. We returned to the car (a slightly less harrowing journey in the daylight hours) to find that it hadn't been stolen - obviously, the thing wouldn't move. However, the car started first time, so we drove it the 100m into Laguna Niguel Auto Center.

According to the sign on the door, Laguna Niguel Auto Center doesn't open until 8am, and it was only 7:43am. However, we were signaled into the reception area and that was where we first came into contact with Sergio Turcutto. He patiently listened to our mad ramblings (we were rambling by this point - we'd had nothing to eat for over 36 hours [too nervous to eat] and slept [if we were lucky] for two hours). At the end of our rant, noting that we were distressed, we were treated with great kindness and consideration - and also a great sense of humour.

Maria: I'm Mexican. If you don't get this car fixed properly, I should warn you, I come from Tijuana. I know people in Tijuana. Those people will learn your name.

Sergio: I promise, it will be fixed.

Will: Yeah. And I'm English. If you don't get this car fixed properly, I should warn you, I come from England. I know people in England. They will happily invade your country.

Sergio: Really? And how did that work out for you last time?

Will: And she knows people in Tijuana.

Sergio took the keys and sent us to the waiting room - internet access, directTV, free beverages - where we sat with two people. Eventually (although we weren't formally introduced) we fell into conversation. It appears that Laguna Niguel Auto Center is loved by all its customers. Forty minutes later we were told the bad news - it was the fuel pump (this is after they had fixed the thermostat that had been wrecked by Mustapha/Muphasa/Mufasa/Mustafa). There were also several other problems - it was misfiring, there was actual arcing in the engine, there was something wrong with the oxygen distribution, the rotor cap was destroyed, the list went on and on. But, and here's the moment that we fell in love with Sergio Turcutto, they didn't want to do the work. They didn't want to stick us with a huge bill for work that needed to be done but, in his opinion, didn't need to be done today. We had to have the thermostat done, we had to have the fuel pump changed, all of that was going to cost (and you could tell it hurt him to say it) the wrong side of $1000. All the rest was going to push the cost the other side of $2000. He wouldn't do the work. They wouldn't do that to us.

And this is where we broke Sergio Turcutto's heart. You see, I knew that if we just got home, Maria would never drive the car again, never leave home. She wouldn't trust the car. Actually, in my mind, there was a chance that she might not actually drive the car home - if it was a case of it'll get you home - and we would have to live in Laguna Niguel for the rest of our lives. So I argued with Sergio Turcutto. I demanded that he did the work, on the condition that it was done by 5pm that day. If he could guarantee that the work would be completed by 5pm, I would pay anything for peace of mind. This sent Sergio Turcutto into a frenzy. He crunched numbers, he deducted percentages, he sold his mum on eBay, and got his estimate down to $1700. We gave him the go-ahead. They offered us a lift to the mall, we elected to walk.

At 5:15pm we were given our car back - yes, I realise that this sounds like they were 15 minutes late on their promise but they weren't. The car was done by five but they took it for a test drive (or so they said). However, the test drive included a journey through a car wash - which was nice. Oh, and the bill? They lied about that as well. It wasn't $1700. It came in at under $1600 - there were a lot of zeroes under labo(u)r costs!

During the day we met many customers in the waiting room. All of them had something positive to say about Laguna Niguel Auto Center - there was not one negative statement. You know how someone always starts off with a their brilliant and then take on a but...? In this case their were no buts. Everyone was helpful, everything was explained (we even had a tour of the workshop so that we could be shown why the fuel pump on a Chevrolet Blazer is a bastard to replace. We spent a long time talking to Raul Hernandez (the service director) whose grandfather lived in Tijuana - he was a dealer in the casino and actually dealt to Al Capone! Everything was wonderful and we really cannot praise Laguna Niguel Auto Center and Sergio Turcutto enough. I hope that all this linkage does them some good.

24 hours after our E.T.A.

We are home, safe. Wiser, poorer.

Not funny now, funny later!

don't ask

I'm sat in the middle of nowhere, in a garage. The good news is that we are both safe. The bad news is last night the car exploded imploded and we were left, abandoned in Laguna Niguel, a place not big enough to have a motel/bed&breakfast/roomattheinn.

Yesterday (god, was it only yesterday? I'm sure it was a week ago) we set off from Tijuana to go to L.A. (that's Los Angeles for those who don't know the modern terms - like what I do, I know how to bring it) to see an art exhibition by Dave McKean. As always, in my life, there is a long story about that (border crossing wasn't good, confusion over the numbers the exhibit was at, and did you know there is a difference between North and South?) but I'll save that for another time - or maybe Maria made a video about it. After the viewing we drove around L.A. - well you would, wouldn't you?

We went to Hollywood, drove through. Went to Beverly Hills, drove through. Headed towards Venice Beach and decided that we would head to San Clemente instead, for shrimp, oysters, and clam chowder, sat on the pier, watching the sun set. The drive out of L.A. was horrendous. It was five lanes, locked solid. At about 6:30pm we decided to leave the freeway (405) and take a much needed toilet break.

The car wouldn't re-start.

The car wouldn't restart.

The car wouldn't restart.

We opened the bonnet (hood) and Maria noticed that the coolant reservoir is empty. We buy some coolant and fill it, but the car still wouldn't restart. The sun starts to set and out of the gloom steps Mustafa (or Mustapha - we didn't ask him to spell his name). He immediately took charge. It was the thermostat. He knew it was the thermostat. He could solve it! For $60, there and then, we could be sorted and on our way. We loved Mustafa/Mustapha. And he really did it. Bang, twist, snip, screw, thump (and other technical terms) and the thermostat was done, he said. We loved Mustafa/Mustapha. And we loved him so much that when he pointed out that the fan belt was about to go and needed replacing, we just let him do it. We gave him $45 to get a fan belt and sat around waiting for him to return. Yes, I know we sound like fools but we were stuck in a foreign country, with a fucked car, trying to get home, and then the phone rang. It was the kids. Their dad had decided to have a couple of days off/away and could we pick them up, NOW! 

Mustafa/Mustapha returned (HA! You didn't expect that, did you?), changed the fan belt, and charged us $120. We didn't care. We could get home. The car started. We were going home, we were going to get the kids, we were safe.

200m down the road, just before we turned back onto the freeway, there is a set of traffic lights. We stopped, the car stalled. The car wouldn't restart. Maria yelled at me to get Mustafa/Mustapha. I ran (yes ran) the 200m back to the garage, across six lanes of traffic (no, I didn't do the thing where you slide across the bonnet - but I wanted to). He was there! Hurray! We loved Mustafa/Mustapha - although that was starting to fade a bit. By the time I got back to Maria she had managed to get a mechanic under the car. Yes, a passing mechanic had stopped and was trying to help. Unfortunately, he worked for AAA and we weren't members (yet). And then he saw Mustafa/Mustapha. His shoulders dropped, he looked at the floor, he informed us that we were on our own, but left us with one bit of advice: Don't trust that man, he's a bad man.

I pushed the car off from the traffic lights and we rolled it down a hill. Maria started to freak. I'd just run 400m and pushed a truck and was on an adrenaline high. The car ended up on a side street, a dark side street with no houses - just a car wash and an industrial complex. And then Mustafa/Mustapha got out of his car. Suddenly everything went into slow-mo. We are two people, in the middle of nowhere, and there is this bad man.

The good news was, we had no money - no money left. The bad man had got it all. We pointed this out to him and asked him (fairly politely under the circumstances) to leave. He left. HE LEFT!

And there we were, stuck in a back street, lost, lonely, with a car that wouldn't start.

We locked the car. Walked back up the hill to the garage we'd stopped at for drinks/toilet. He informed us that the nearest motel was at the next turn-off on the freeway. Of course we couldn't walk down the freeway to the next turn-off. Instead, we had to walk down an embankment (a very steep embankment) in the dark and then travel along, beside the train tracks, for about 20 minutes. We should find a motel there.

We did. It took us thirty minutes to find the path down the embankment, another twenty minutes to find the motel, ten minutes to register, and bu 9:45pm we finally had a locked door behind us.

Last night was not a good night. We didn't sleep much. We worried about getting home, about the car, when would we get home, the car, if we would get home, the car.

Up and out the motel at 7am and headed back to the car. It was still there (there had been some discussion in the night about hoping it had been stolen so we could just run away to Mexico). Of course, it started first time. Of course. But we weren't heading home. We drove into the industrial complex, pulled up at the first workshop, and that is where we are now.

Sat in the workshop waiting room, with free internet access. They've promised to get the car fixed by the end of the day. We're (mentally) prepared for another night here, just in case. But I'm hoping that we are mentally prepared because we know how brilliant it will be when we get the car back later today.

Oh, and the exhibition? Was it worth it? Don't ask.

 

waiting for the tyres to change

for three legged cat

During the day we are constantly (aurally) assaulted by salesmen. Fortunately (ish) these salesmen don't use the phone, nor do they knock on the door. Knocking on the door would be impossible anyhoo and not just because we live on a first (second if you are American) floor flat. It is impossible to knock on anyone's door in Tijuana. Every house is a "gated-community". Every house is surrounded by fences/walls/razor wire. Nope, these salesmen trundle up and down the street, announcing their presence in several different ways.

The gasman uses his horn. Three/four times a day, a truck drives up the street, honking the horn, announcing its presence. This is because gas is not piped in to anyone's house. You have to buy a tank of gas, which last (for us) about three weeks, and then (for the princely sum of 400 pesos/$40/20 of your Great British pounds sterling) you exchange your empty tank for a full one. There is another gas company who drive up and down the street, once a week, but we don't use them. Mainly because they play a bloody irritating jingle!

The corn seller uses a horn, a steam powered horn. He wheels his barrow around the place. On his stall there is a gas cooker that he uses to cook his corn, which is kept in a large vat of water. The by product of his cooking is steam which he (environmentally) uses to signal his appearance in the street. This can be a bit scary. Think about it...a steam horn going off under your window! My brain immediately thinks that I a train is about to drive through the building.

The tamale seller drives around in his car. He has a speaker on the roof that informs you of his selection. Normally this is just a tape on a loop. However, there are the moments when, probably out of boredom, he decides to rap his wares.

The ice cream seller uses a bell, which he rings by hand. He pushes round an ice box on wheels. I call him an ice cream seller but he doesn't sell ice cream - just frozen lollipops, big bastards, the size of a one and a half litre bottle.

The gardener drives drives an open truck. The back of which is filled with soil and plants. He tends to shout - a lot - and isn't adverse to kicking his kids out of the truck and making them bang on gates to announce his presence.

However (to get to the point of this post), a couple of weeks ago, three legged cat wrote a post about her (and his) surprise at a rag and bone man's appearance in their street. On Sunday I was talking to my mum who was bemoaning the fact that the council wanted 32.50 GBPsterling to remove a freezer. In the end she paid Comet 7 GBPsterling to take it away. I told her about the time we put our old television in the street with a sign on it saying: Do Not Take. The television lasted seventeen minutes before it disappeared. In fact, as I've mentioned here before, you can't leave anything on the street that someone won't checkout/take. Even the rubbish bins are rifled through. Anyhoo (the point will, get to the point), we have a rag-and-bone man who comes down our street quite regularlry, and here is video proof:

metrosexualist

blocks of wood

crossing into mexico