maybe i should go shopping here. i might find some stuff i used to own ;]

roxy said on 12:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

so everytime i tell you that i will be blogging consistently from now on something goes awry. but ahh what good stories do my adventure makes. this summer im up at intel research in hillsboro working with the people and practices research group. i began the trek up to hillsboro [oregon] from long beach accompanied by karma in my trusty gti. just north of LA i got rear-ended. not too badly, a bit of scratched paint, by a guy with CALIFORNIA tattooed across his chest. rock on. then we hung out in SF for a few days hosted by the sweet sir beckmann.

then the adventure really begins. a few hundred miles north [and still 400 miles south] of our destination the power to my car cuts and i quickly pull over. after it fails to turn over i called AAA seeking some aid. so there we are, in red bluff, california, in 115 degree heat, waiting for a tow truck. we were informed that we were high priority because we were in a "dangerous area". high priority turns out to be an hour and a half. so since it was saturday after 5 there was no mechanics open. we got towed to the nearest one and for the first time in my life i was really happy to see a starbucks. air conditioning is sometimes a good thing. looking a bit worse for wear the woman behind the counter inquired about our situation - i explained that i was in need of a mechanic post haste and she sympathetically told me "i had a really great mechanic, but he died." ahem.

in the meantime, meta was also roadtripping up to oregon so we got her on the horn and she turned around to pick our sorry selves up. loading up her car we trucked the remaining 400 miles up [crashing for a few brief hours in a hotel]. after tons of phone calls with the mechanic it turned out that my timing belt had snapped. although the guy seems nice, i'm a bit afraid he's not up to the task of dismantling my german engine [is there some pun there? heh]. it seems that my belt is supposed to be changed at 105k, my car currently just hit 80k and was about to go in for inspection, but out of the goodness of VW's heart the belt often randomly snaps prematurely causing all kinds of damage to valves, pistons, cylinders, and my psyche. brooke & devon [my lovely new housemates] and meta have offered to try and help me do a tag team operation to bring the car back up here so i can deal with it in a more reasonable fashion. what would i do without my support network :]

p.s. work at intel rocks so far and i'll be back to keeping you up to date.

roxy said on 11:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)