Be Sure to Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair....!
This whole past week I've been playing tourist guide to 2 men from Australia! What an experience! Richard, who now lives in Victoria Australia, is originally from England and was my then-fiance's brother-in-law. His daughter was going to be our flower girl at the wedding... A wedding that never happened. I never got the husband, but I ended up with in-laws!! After more than 30 years, I am still friends with most of my ex-fiance's family and Richard is one of them. I'm so blessed that they never forgot me and that we are still close. He is here in America with his friend Mark to see CARS!! They both own and are into classic T-Birds and just got back from Hot August Nights up in Reno and the big T-Bird 50th Anniversary convention in Portland Oregon. Now they are visiting me in San Francisco for a week, and we have been running around trying to cram everything in. The plan was to round out their car experience by tooling them around in my 1965 Corvair Monza red convertible!
The first night they were here, I actually had a date with THREE men (!) which made a pleasant change from my usual number of ZERO! So, I drove over to their hotel in my hot little convertible and picked up Richard, Mark, and a Chinese fellow who is also a T-Bird enthusiast and lives right here in SF, and whizzed them up and down a few hills with the top down while a cold agressive fog rolled in. Mark and Richard were FREEZING as they are used to really hot weather in Oz-land, but well, you know what Mark Twain said about summer in San Francisco.... "The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco!" ... Lately, the days have been pleasant in the mid 70's, but at night this dang fog rolls in and it's as cold as hell. We then got warmed up with drinks at Castagnola's at Fisherman's Wharf and then had a wonderful, cozy seafood dinner at Pompeii's Grotto.
However, as I drove back home that Sunday night, I noticed that my brake pedal was almost down to the floorboards... ACHHH! Certainly not a good thing in a City full of STEEP HILLS!! And here I was just a few hours before, telling them "Boy, it's a good thing my brakes are good!!", as we sailed down the steep hills, including the very curvy and steep Lombard Street, the 'Crookedest Street in the World'!!
So Monday morning I decided to do the wise thing and dropped my car off at the mechanic's shop to have them check the brake fluid...... Well, shoulda known my luck.... Turns out the reason my car was low on brake fluid was because it had all leaked out!!! Then the shop tells me that my car is going to need a new master cylinder, 2 front wheel cylinders, and also most likely, 2 rear wheel cylinders which will cost somewhere between $400 and $500!! Not only that, but they have to LOCATE all the parts! They even suggested I spend the time to find the parts myself!! OH NO!! Tell me this isn't happening!! I need and want my car to show the guys around, and now here I'm ending up with a non-running car again!! I was freaking out... plus I had no time to hunt down the parts myself! Luckily I talked them into doing that for me, as so they should. So right now I am without my car!!
Monday night, since we couldn't go far, I had them over to my place, and we just had fun yakking, looking at old photographs, drinking some beers and ordering in 2 huge pizzas. They couldn't get over the size of our pizzas!! Then last night Richard wanted to go to the Hard Rock Cafe to see what kind of car they had over the bar, but we were disappointed that the new Hard Rock here at Pier 39 doesn't do cars over the bar anymore! In any case, we ate there at the Hard Rock, fooled around Pier 39, saw the honking sea lions that gather there on the pier, and then ended the evening by going for traditional San Francisco Irish Coffees at the infamous Buena Vista Cafe. Afterwards, we took a cable car back up to Broadway, and ended up walking up 3 very steep hills until I thought we were all going to collapse!!! They also couldn't get over the angle that cars were parked on the steep 40 degree hill!
Toward the end of this week, I'm planning to take them out to Haight-Ashbury, where all the love-ins of the 60's took place and where hippie and flower children still to this day hang out, very much like back in the 60's. We'll take in some of the funky shops and bars and watch the hippies with orange hair walking around, see hard-core Grateful Dead devotees sitting on the sidewalks strumming guitars, and smell the unmistakable aroma of weed waft through the air, heavy enough to get you high without so much as one inhale!
Also on the agenda is an evening at the Fairmont Hotel's hokey-but-fun Tonga Room; a ride to Pt. Reyes to have bar-b-qued oysters and beer; a down-home American bar-b-que of chicken & ribs, corn on cob, mashed potatoes, and strawberry shortcake; a T-Bird car show in San Jose; Chinese food; Indian food; and who knows what else!
Today the mechanic called me and said the car would be ready for me to pick up after work.. But then right before I was going to head over there, they called again and told me that the supplier of the wheel cylinders sent over one wrong one!! So now it was NOT ready and they would have to try to get the right one tomorrow morning! Oy vey!!! Let's hope it will be done TOMORROW or I'll be screaming louder than a seagull on meth...!
The first night they were here, I actually had a date with THREE men (!) which made a pleasant change from my usual number of ZERO! So, I drove over to their hotel in my hot little convertible and picked up Richard, Mark, and a Chinese fellow who is also a T-Bird enthusiast and lives right here in SF, and whizzed them up and down a few hills with the top down while a cold agressive fog rolled in. Mark and Richard were FREEZING as they are used to really hot weather in Oz-land, but well, you know what Mark Twain said about summer in San Francisco.... "The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco!" ... Lately, the days have been pleasant in the mid 70's, but at night this dang fog rolls in and it's as cold as hell. We then got warmed up with drinks at Castagnola's at Fisherman's Wharf and then had a wonderful, cozy seafood dinner at Pompeii's Grotto.
However, as I drove back home that Sunday night, I noticed that my brake pedal was almost down to the floorboards... ACHHH! Certainly not a good thing in a City full of STEEP HILLS!! And here I was just a few hours before, telling them "Boy, it's a good thing my brakes are good!!", as we sailed down the steep hills, including the very curvy and steep Lombard Street, the 'Crookedest Street in the World'!!
So Monday morning I decided to do the wise thing and dropped my car off at the mechanic's shop to have them check the brake fluid...... Well, shoulda known my luck.... Turns out the reason my car was low on brake fluid was because it had all leaked out!!! Then the shop tells me that my car is going to need a new master cylinder, 2 front wheel cylinders, and also most likely, 2 rear wheel cylinders which will cost somewhere between $400 and $500!! Not only that, but they have to LOCATE all the parts! They even suggested I spend the time to find the parts myself!! OH NO!! Tell me this isn't happening!! I need and want my car to show the guys around, and now here I'm ending up with a non-running car again!! I was freaking out... plus I had no time to hunt down the parts myself! Luckily I talked them into doing that for me, as so they should. So right now I am without my car!!
Monday night, since we couldn't go far, I had them over to my place, and we just had fun yakking, looking at old photographs, drinking some beers and ordering in 2 huge pizzas. They couldn't get over the size of our pizzas!! Then last night Richard wanted to go to the Hard Rock Cafe to see what kind of car they had over the bar, but we were disappointed that the new Hard Rock here at Pier 39 doesn't do cars over the bar anymore! In any case, we ate there at the Hard Rock, fooled around Pier 39, saw the honking sea lions that gather there on the pier, and then ended the evening by going for traditional San Francisco Irish Coffees at the infamous Buena Vista Cafe. Afterwards, we took a cable car back up to Broadway, and ended up walking up 3 very steep hills until I thought we were all going to collapse!!! They also couldn't get over the angle that cars were parked on the steep 40 degree hill!
Toward the end of this week, I'm planning to take them out to Haight-Ashbury, where all the love-ins of the 60's took place and where hippie and flower children still to this day hang out, very much like back in the 60's. We'll take in some of the funky shops and bars and watch the hippies with orange hair walking around, see hard-core Grateful Dead devotees sitting on the sidewalks strumming guitars, and smell the unmistakable aroma of weed waft through the air, heavy enough to get you high without so much as one inhale!
Also on the agenda is an evening at the Fairmont Hotel's hokey-but-fun Tonga Room; a ride to Pt. Reyes to have bar-b-qued oysters and beer; a down-home American bar-b-que of chicken & ribs, corn on cob, mashed potatoes, and strawberry shortcake; a T-Bird car show in San Jose; Chinese food; Indian food; and who knows what else!
Today the mechanic called me and said the car would be ready for me to pick up after work.. But then right before I was going to head over there, they called again and told me that the supplier of the wheel cylinders sent over one wrong one!! So now it was NOT ready and they would have to try to get the right one tomorrow morning! Oy vey!!! Let's hope it will be done TOMORROW or I'll be screaming louder than a seagull on meth...!
posted by LADYGOLD at 8:08 PM
