Home Again for a Few Days

[kevin_standlee]

I got way from the hotel Saturday morning and drove first to Hayward to have breakfast and collect Black Bear Diner #15. (I got the award for reaching Level 2 in their "passport" promotion where you get a passport stamp for each BBD you visit: a BBD travel mug.) Conveniently, they were next door to the AAA office, and right after breakfast I went in and collected maps for some of the places we're traveling this summer including San Diego.

Then it was off to Yuba City. When I made my first bathroom break, I discovered that the minivan continues to be somewhat reluctant to start when it has run for a while. It still starts, but it takes several tries. We'll have to keep monitoring the situation. It's difficult to reproduce because you have to drive for hours, then stop for a short time; if you stop for a long time, it cools back down and starts first try.

(Because everyone keeps asking: It's not the starter motor. The engine turns over just fine. It just won't light off sometimes until you try several times, which is not the usual behavior at all for this vehicle.)

I spent time in Yuba City with my mother and sister, then headed up into the mountains via Grass Valley and over Donner Summit, where to my surprise it started raining. (I'm not complaining!) What with side trips and time with my family in Yuba City, I was on the road for about 13 hours, getting home around 10 PM.

Because we're leaving for San Diego on Tuesday, we're now in full Westercon Prep mode. I need to finalize the sixteen sets of questions we'll need for Match Game, Lisa needs to confirm we have all of the kit, and we need to clean out the minivan of everything we don't need for the trip, because packing is going to be a challenge.

Comments

[jcfiala.livejournal.com]

Now that you describe it, I remember having a similar problem with one of my cars - it would start cold every time, but if it got too warmed up it wouldn't start, and this after we replaced the starter once or twice. I don't think we ever did figure out what the problem was - I think we lost the transmission or something and it wasn't really worth getting it fixed.

Mechanics weren't much help, because they would always test the car cold, and it would always work.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

We ate at two Black Bear Diners on our Ashland trip - Willows on the way up and Mount Shasta on the return - but we'd been to both before.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

I've been to the one in Mount Shasta City (that's BBD #1, in case you didn't know), but that was before they started the "Passport" promotion. I've not been to the Willows location.