So, after staying up until all hours to finish Emmett's report, I got 3.5 hours of sleep and drove from SF to LA on Friday.

Uneventful drive. I listened to LA Confidential on audiobook, as read by David Straitharn. (He was fantastic and did an excellent Lynn Bracken).

Got in, stayed at a nice place Friday night paid for by my hosts. Did the tour on Saturday. Full bus, good crowd, went to dinner with my hosts (also delicious, in fact, the best pizza I've had in LA. As good as any pizza I've ever had really: Bollini's in Monterey Park (I think that's it).

Nice sleep, breakfast, hit the road by 8am in hopes of making it back for family Easter stuff.

And then...and then....just North of Bakersfield my car makes bad bad noises. I pull off. White smoke coming out of tailpipe.

So, I'm broken down in Bakersfield and my car gets looked at by the garage tomorrow morning.

I'm staying at the rather swanky (yet affordable, cuz, you know, Bakersfield) The Padre Hotel.

So, I made $500 on my bus tour and even sold about $65 of my Tom Waits books which would've covered most of my gas expenses for the round trip.

But instead of being up $500, I'm hearing some of the most dreaded words a car owner can hear -- "It might be a blown head gasket" -- which would be somewhere like $1,300 to fix.

More than the car's worth.

Plus, you know, smashed window fix and car got booted this month too. So, it's really been a purely shitty adventure in car ownership lately.

However, tonight I expect to take full advantage of The Padre Hotel's amenities because I don't have to deal with Planet FUBAR until tomorrow.

It's all too much bad news to even waste expletives on it. I am going to go have a drink and ponder what I did to offend the automobile gods.

But I am definitely on one of those streaks where I can't catch a fucking break. Even my positives turn to negatives.

go drink, choose drink.

also look at pics of the work we did this week at my new place: [link]

also look at pics of the work we did this week at my new place: [link]

Monkeys keys and pretty tiles!

Whole new life.

I think you'd like this hotel, msbelle. I half expect Dwight Yoakum to drive up.

Man, David. Freaking cars.

I am conducting an experiment in rice pudding -- baked sweet lemon risotto (from the Donna Hay cookbook). I'm a little afraid there is overflowing going on in the oven right now but I'm scared to look. I did put a cookie sheet under the baking dish just in case.

Sorry for the car mess, Hec. I have a '73 Mercury you could have, but the cost of getting it out to SF might not make that practical. Plus, it's a '73 Mercury.

Thanks, all. I've had a very reasonably priced and tasty Irish coffee and roamed around "The Streets of Bakersfield."

There's lots of cool stuff like The Majestic Fox Theater which is about a block away. Nothing playing there on Easter Sunday, however. Lots of pawnshops, tattoo shops, guitar shops, bars which specifically preclude gangsta clothing (plain white t-shirts, low slung pants, bandannas, facial tats), and a Woolworth/antique store with a lunch counter.

I'd enjoy it more if I didn't have a mostly-dead car on my hands.

Sorry for the car mess, Hec. I have a '73 Mercury you could have, but the cost of getting it out to SF might not make that practical. Plus, it's a '73 Mercury.

Thanks, tommyrot. What else could make white smoke come out of the tailpipe besides a head gasket? The engine was running very rough too, and then conked out when I pulled off the freeway. I can start it up, but the engine's obviously fucked up somehow.

Hope you get a break soon, Hec. I'm pulling for you! right now I'm writing fanfic and watching a documentary about Don Cornelius. Not sexy, but good enough for not being "The hippest trip, "etc.

Thanks, tommyrot. What else could make white smoke come out of the tailpipe besides a head gasket?

I can't think of anything else that would do that. (But I'll ask my boss tomorrow.) When a head gasket fails, coolant can get into the engine cylinders, causing the white smoke. Other engine maladies generally produce other colors of smoke.

You might want to check the oil - if it's milky-white, it could mean coolant's getting into the engine oil, which is another symptom of a blown head gasket. Also check the radiator level if you need to drive it more in this condition. (You may also see oil floating on top of the radiator fluid.)

Also, I did a little googling - a cracked head can produce the white smoke (for the same reason - coolant getting into the cylinder(s)), and is even worse than a blown head gasket.

Hec, what kind of car is it? Perhaps you could price used engines to see if that would be worth it (as opposed to junking the car or having the gasket replaced).

Good lord, David. Maybe a new crappy car would be less trouble, at this point.

I had a lovely day. Church was great, nice dinner with some family (parents, grandmother, cousin and her 2 year old), and the weather could not be more gorgeous. But man, now I'm exhausted.