First Tuesday in November…

First Tuesday in November…

Today’s music trivia is an excellent guitarist and musician who I discovered in the late 1980s with his album, “Ah Via Musicom” that had great songs such as, “Cliffs of Dover”, “Desert Rose”, “Steve’s Boogie”, and of course, “Trademark”.  Known for his excellent guitar playing, can you name this talented musical artist?

The Chicago Bears defeated the Green Bay Packers last night even though all of the football experts picked the Packers to win.  All except, Da Coach, Ditka!  He of course picked the Bears to win and he was actually right for once.  To all my peeps back home and follow Bear fans, congratulations!  I see the Bears are now 5-3, my Dolphins are 4-4 and my Chargers are 4-4.  Just a mediocre season so far, but I expect so little this year really.

This past weekend we had our autumn time change, which I always hate.  I was camping and I thought to myself, cool, I can sleep in an extra hour tonight!  Then all the little kids at the campground decided at 6:30AM to get up and start yelling back and forth to their friends as they bicycle through the entire campground.  Don’t these kids know it is early in the morning on the weekend and peeps are trying to sleep in?  Now I know why some animals eat their young!  J 

Did I say that I hate the autumn time change?  You work all day and then have very limited daylight hours remaining by the time you get home.  And working a 9 hour workday, my daylight time is even more limited.  Not much beach time before the sun sets about 4:56PM this afternoon.  And with Linus in the repair shop getting tuned up and some minor fixes accomplished, we end up having to drive the Porsche.  Taking Linus to the beach, we can pop the top and spread out and enjoy ourselves.  Not so much with the 911… no pop top, no spreading out and relaxing, no bench and table for my laptop, not much of anything.  Maybe we will just wait until we get Linus back in a few days.  Snoopy misses Linus already… L

Like I said, Linus is getting a tune up, oil change and some minor repairs done with Randy our bus mechanic.  Linus loves Randy so much that Randy has his own key.  Even when I am just driving by the shop, Linus wants to automatically turn into the shop. Linus has spent quite a long time there since we bought him in September 2005.  He has had his engine and automatic transmission completely replaced as well as the air box issue that took months to diagnose, isolate and finally repair.  The air box issue was a tough one to fix.  It took many weeks to diagnose. I even had Randy drive it to and from his house and work as his daily driver until he finally figured it out.  It then took weeks to find a good used one, since they do not make new ones.  That was quite a hassle for us all.  Randy said that issue would keep him up at night trying to figure out what was wrong with it.  Once he found a good used part, that problem was gone and Linus ran like a champ.  Randy was quite relieved also.  He is a good, honest mechanic that really knows his stuff about VWs.

My friend Roger liked Linus so much that he went and bought a Westy off of ebay about a month ago.  His top does not pop up but is permanently up and sits a little higher than Linus’ normal height, which I would not like. I guess it has a bunk up in there, which I haven’t seen yet.  He hasn’t brought it down to his place here and has been keeping it at this sister’s house out in Simi Valley, about an hour away.  I was hoping he would get it down here locally so we can do some work to it and I can show him some things about it that he probably does not know.  Owning a bus, especially a Westy, you learn as you go along.  I learn something new about Linus every week it seems.  Anyways, he has lot of questions and I can’t answer them until he gets it down here for me to take a look. 

Yesterday my buddy informed me that he is moving out of El Segundo and moving out to Simi Valley to live.  He said the rent there is half the price than it is here, but he will now be in Simi, which is a personal choice I wouldn’t make myself.  I myself would rather live in Moorpark, which is right next door to Simi and I think it is a lot nicer.  Good grief, that’s a bummer because I wanted a Westy buddy locally to go camping with and now he just got one and is now moving away.  Oh well… I hope he does not regret that decision next summer when the heat returns.  Living by the beach has lots of perks and he may miss here more than he knows.

We went camping this past Saturday at Leo Carrillo State Beach, just North of Malibu here in California up the coast on PCH.  Our camping buddy Kathy (she drives the Pink Bay Window Westy named, “Lucy”) and her 10 year old daughter Sabrina brought Lily, one of Sabrina’s friends and we all met and shared a camp spot for the evening.  We cooked hot dogs and sausages over the campfire along with some salad and later the girls roasted marshmallows. 

Kathy said her sister Mary’s coworkers at Torrance Memorial Hospital were there camping someplace at the campground and she was going to go looking for them.  Well it turned out they were really close to out camping spot so we were invited over for some beers and shots (which they refer to as a Family Meeting).  They were a great bunch of folks, some were actual family members and all were very welcoming.  Snoopy made many more new friends and was spoiled by all this weekend.  Sabrina brought their new puppy, Ajax, a pit bull mix, and her friend Lily kind of adopted Snoopy, so they each had a dog for themselves. They took the dogs for several walks all over the campground, which I know Snoopy loved. I was a very nice time with great weather and great company.  We are looking forward to our next camping outing hopefully soon!

As Snoopy says… Wag More, Bark Less…

Until next time… Be Good!

- cb