Laurabelle’s Blog

I finished two long-waiting knitting projects today. These weren't particularly big projects; one of them was quite small. They had just been sitting for a while.

The smaller project was a steering wheel cover that had been sitting for a few months; I knit it in a week or so at the beginning of July but never quite got around to sewing it onto the steering wheel. (I usually knit at home or during lunchtime at work, and the steering wheel is sort of stuck to the car.)

Today I went down to the car with Jeff before he went out on errands, and he kept me company while I stitched it on. He says it was very nice to drive with, so yay! No good photos yet though; the garage where I stitched it up is dark and less than photogenic. I caught a nice photo in the car after work.

The other project I finished is about 21 months old: a baby blanket for my cousin's first baby. I knew she was having some trouble, so I started a blanket as a sort of prayer that everything would be fine. I would make the blanket, and the baby wouldn't come until it was done, and the blanket would be beautiful, and it would all be right in the end. My faith was unshakable.

Since I finished the lace shawl, I needed a new project. (Two works-in-progress aren’t enough, especially if they involve sewing-up. I dislike stitching my knitted pieces together.) Therefore, I started a steering wheel cover.

The good thing is, it’s small and will be finished pretty quickly. It’s also a cable (which I like) and an intarsia cable at that (which I had never tried before). It was fun at first, but unfortunately it became boring fairly quickly.

I made a mistake in the cable a few pattern repeats back (I twisted after 10 rows instead of 8). I spent a while thinking about whether to go back and fix it, then decided I couldn’t bear not to (now that I’d noticed it) and ripped it out. Still, I’m at least two-thirds done, and it won’t take me too much longer to finish.

Last weekend Jeff and I invested in a Yakima roof rack to carry skis to Tahoe, whence we are going next weekend for Christmas. Yesterday we attempted to install it on top of the car.

This was slightly more interesting than it should have been. Reading through the directions, I discovered that crucial information was missing from the directions. The rack is designed so that the same basic parts can be installed on many different cars, with only slightly different components (mostly what Yakima calls Q-clips, of which there are many different sizes and shapes). The Q-clip boxes include the required measurements for the cars they fit, but guess what? No Honda Civic mentioned anywhere. Oops.

The guy we talked to at REI couldn't find the measurements, but Jeff managed to locate them by searching Yakima's site with Google. (Yay Google indexing PDFs!)

We managed to get the cross-bars installed with minimal trouble, since Jeff and I both know how to read and follow instructions. However, when it came to installing the attachment for carrying skis, we ran into a more significant snag. The instructions told us to insert a screw through a certain piece of metal where there was no hole! We took the thing back to REI, and the Customer Service rep who helped us thought this was hilarious. She opened another box for us, and voilà, holes in the right places. Problem solved.

After that, putting the ski attachment on the racks was child's play.

We also bought a fairing during the REI trip yesterday; the difference in the wind noise was amazing. Jeff thought it was worth the $55 just because it looks cool, but I appreciate the functionality more.

So we're set to ski next weekend. Hopefully I'll have stories to tell, but I won't be telling them while there. We'll be in a hotel where there are no phones in the rooms, no televisions, and no net access. Bliss.

Jeff called my cell phone while I was on the bus coming home this evening. Guess where I’m not, he said. Where he wasn’t was at the station to catch his usual train. He was stuck at work and would be for a while. I offered to drive down to get him, and he said he’d let me know if he needed me to.

An hour later, I called him up again, and he agreed that I should start down to meet him. The next train was leaving in ten minutes; no chance to catch that one. I grabbed my knitting and headed toward the car.

In the garage, I pressed the unlock button on my key twice, to unlock all the doors. No flashy lights, no click of the locks. Crud. It was premature for the key battery to go out, I thought; we’ve only had this car for two months. I walked around to the driver’s side and stuck my key in the lock like a traditionalist. The door opened. Gear stowed, seatbelt fastened. I stuck the key in the lock and turned it; nothing. At this point I realized that all the normal blinkenlights, lighted panels, and other flashy doohickeys were completely dead. No stereo security system blinkenlight, no car alarm blinkenlight. No interior lights. No automagic locks. All electricity completely gone.

I went back outside (because there was no cell phone reception reception in the concrete garage) and called Jeff to tell him the bad news. Then I called the car dealership, whose parts-and-service department had just closed and whose voice mail was apparently already full, after about three minutes. Not helpful. I started looking through the manual and found information about checking the fuse boxes. I saw a light at the end of the tunnel. I ran upstairs for a flashlight and checked the fuses.

No luck, of course. I didn’t check all the fuses, just the main ones — but I seriously doubt the fuse on the rear defogger circuit is going to cause the whole car to become unresponsive. I checked all the fuses I could see, and they were all fine. There was nothing else I could do.

Luckily, one of Jeff’s co-workers can give him a ride to the nearest BART station (which is not very near at all, actually). It’ll take him a while to get home, but at least he can get here.

I also have no idea how this could have happened. When we drove the car on Sunday it was fine. It sat in the garage for five days, and then it was dead. I’m going to call the dealership first thing tomorrow morning and see if I can get them to tow the car in tomorrow. It’s not going anywhere otherwise.

I guess this is what I get for buying an all-new, redesigned car. *sigh*

Yesterday afternoon Jeff and I picked up our 2006 Honda Civic Hybrid from the dealership. This was very exciting; although we had technically bought it two weeks ago today, it didn’t actually arrive until this week.

You see, we knew we wanted a hybrid, and I’m not so keen on the newer Priuses. First of all it seems almost impossible to get one without a very long wait, and secondly I just don’t like the body shape. (I like a bit more of a tail on a car.) So we settled on a Civic, especially since they’ve been redesigned this year and are now full hybrids as well as very sexy-looking.

On the first Saturday after we arrived in California, we called up the nearest Honda dealership and said, We want a Civic Hybrid. They said, Can you come in? We could and did, and they sold us the car we wanted, in front of everyone on the waiting list. They had just gotten the VIN numbers (yes I know that’s redundant) for their cars and were starting to call people on the waiting list, but no one was picking up their phones. We called up at the right time, so we got our pick.

The car arrived at the dealership on Wednesday, but we didn’t pick it up immediately because we were having some extra features installed (most importantly a Lo-Jack device, which will greatly facilitate the recovery of the car should it ever be stolen). The dealership called on Friday to say it was ready, and could I pick it up that afternoon at 4:30? I got permission to leave work an hour early, and Jeff and I met at the dealership at the allotted time. We picked up the keys, signed on a few dotted lines, and drove away in our extremely shiny new car.

I say shiny in both a figurative and a literal sense. The color is called alabaster silver metallic; in plain terms it’s a sort of silvery almost-white. The interior is dark blue, and she drives like a dream. Driving is extremely fun, except that I’m terrified of all the California drivers. The number of crumpled quarter-panels around here is rather alarming.

Yesterday evening we drove home in the dusk and parked the car in the garage, then climbed up to our apartment to read the user manual and drool. We wanted to go somewhere but didn’t have anywhere to go. We contented ourselves with planning our Saturday trips.

So early this morning we bought groceries at a few hippie grocery establishments that were too far away for biking and the wrong direction for bussing. (Jeff and I have agreed that using the car for grocery trips once each week is acceptable, but mid-week trips must be on foot, bicycle, or bus.) Then we brought the groceries home, packed lunches, and drove off to Muir Woods National Monument for an afternoon of light hiking.

The driving turned out to be a little more exciting than we had expected; the exit sign for Highway 101 northbound was obscured by graffiti so that we took the wrong fork and had to wind our way through downtown San Francisco in order to find our way back to the Golden Gate Bridge. On the positive side, we got to see a little of San Francisco including the Embarcadero; unfortunately Jeff has decided that he hates downtown San Francisco. It’s too much city for him.

In contrast, our little hike in the Muir Woods was quite lovely. We plowed past the crowds on the Main Trail as fast as we could and turned off onto a side trail, where we spent a couple of hours hiking peacefully among hills, creeks, and coastal redwoods.

I’m glad that it worked out for us to pick up the car on a Friday, because we were able to enjoy the car immediately for the main purpose for which I want the car: getting out of the city and into the woods. We have also made plans to get together with one of Jeff’s longtime friends, who is studying at Stanford. One of the good things about living without a car is that it has given us an appreciation for the circumstances when a car is really useful and also for the times when it is unnecessary and wasteful.

I wish I could live like Dorothea and simply not own a car, but Flexcar hasn’t expanded to where I live yet, and I need to be able to get out of the city and hike. I do mean need; hiking is the only activity I have found that clears my mind completely of outside concerns. When I’m out on the trail, no matter how much stress I have at work or in life, the only thing on my mind is putting one foot in front of the other.