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Old Home Week
Jun. 19th, 2012 10:07 pmI have had some concerns with my minivan, and arranged to leave it with my regular mechanic in Fremont today. Before I moved away, that meant taking the van over there and walking home. Now it's more complicated. I had to get up extra-early and drive to Fremont, leave the van, then walk to the Centerville train station. From there, I took an Amtrak Capitol to Great America and then a shuttle bus to work, just as I did when I was commuting from the Fremont apartment.
At 5:30 AM, there wasn't much traffic to worry about, and I had nearly an hour to spare when I got to the Depot in Centerville. I went in to the Depot Cafe, bought a coffee, and got online for a while. The train trip was uneventful and routine. The shuttle trip was a little out of the way, literally, as the driver found a route around stuck traffic I wouldn't have thought of trying.
After work, I took the shuttle back to the Great America train station, but got off at the light rail station (next to the Santa Clara Convention Center). A light rail ticket is good for two hours, so I also took the opportunity to stop and deposit a check I needed to drop, and to go to the optician's shop across the street from the back and order a new pair of glasses off of a new prescription I got last week for near-vision lenses.
While getting off light rail, the mechanic called. I need a new radiator (which explains why I'd been slowly leaking coolant) and the lower front ball joints on the front end need replacing. (I think this is what the crooks in Wells replaced during the trip to Reno. Cory will end up charging me less to do the radiator, ball joints, hoses, and fuel filter than those I-80 desert crooks did for sub-standard work that now has to be redone less than four years later.) Cory doesn't overcharge, and I trust him to do right — he's the one who installed the engine in my van — but this is still going to cost me on the order of $1000. However, better that we get this work done now than I should break down while towing a trailer of Lisa's stuff from Oregon through the desolate northeastern corner of California.
At 5:30 AM, there wasn't much traffic to worry about, and I had nearly an hour to spare when I got to the Depot in Centerville. I went in to the Depot Cafe, bought a coffee, and got online for a while. The train trip was uneventful and routine. The shuttle trip was a little out of the way, literally, as the driver found a route around stuck traffic I wouldn't have thought of trying.
After work, I took the shuttle back to the Great America train station, but got off at the light rail station (next to the Santa Clara Convention Center). A light rail ticket is good for two hours, so I also took the opportunity to stop and deposit a check I needed to drop, and to go to the optician's shop across the street from the back and order a new pair of glasses off of a new prescription I got last week for near-vision lenses.
While getting off light rail, the mechanic called. I need a new radiator (which explains why I'd been slowly leaking coolant) and the lower front ball joints on the front end need replacing. (I think this is what the crooks in Wells replaced during the trip to Reno. Cory will end up charging me less to do the radiator, ball joints, hoses, and fuel filter than those I-80 desert crooks did for sub-standard work that now has to be redone less than four years later.) Cory doesn't overcharge, and I trust him to do right — he's the one who installed the engine in my van — but this is still going to cost me on the order of $1000. However, better that we get this work done now than I should break down while towing a trailer of Lisa's stuff from Oregon through the desolate northeastern corner of California.
