Car Talk

Well, it's been a little while, and I've got a lot of stuff to cover.  It's a losing battle to try to cover everything that's been going on, I've not written a new blog in a while, so I'll try to focus on broader themes, see if I can keep up with that.  It's been a month, a bit more than a full month really since I've touched down in San Jose all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.  Very quickly I realized I needed a car.  And since then I've had my share of car troubles.

Car Troubles

It's really stressful to own a car.  Not only are you inside something that can kill you if you make a wrong move, you're inside something that can kill or hurt others.  Thank God I haven't been so unfortunate yet.  But I have made a mistake.  When driving down to Mountain View I missed a turn, so I had to do a U-turn off a side road.  Well my car turns like a truck.  I feel like I've mentioned that before but it bears repeating.  The turn radius of my car is uncomfortably large, it's difficult to park, and it's not that easy to pull off a U-turn.  This time was not successful.  I turned as far as I could in one direction, and wound up pulling up on someones driveway in front of a wooden fence.  But there was no traffic on that street, it was easy enough to just reverse and adjust to be on my merry way.  Wouldn't you know at that moment I got a text message.  I was stopped, so I felt like I was fine to look at the message.  It wasn't really too important of a message, and I don't remember exactly what it was. I put the phone down, looked back out the rear window, and lightly tapped the gas to back out.  Uh-oh.  The car was moving forward, I had forgotten to change gears.  Crunch, went the fence in front of me, and my front-right fender isn't much better for it either.

Being the upright citizen that I am, I left a note to the owner of the house, and we arranged to fix the fence, I paid for the repairs in full.  Money is such a fleeting thing.  The gas prices in California are also not helping the pain in my wallet.  Around where I am they are close to $3.00 per gallon.  California tacks on a 30 cent per gallon tax on gas, on top of a 2.5% sales tax.  And what makes it worse is my family back on the East coast went on a road trip down through Virginia and North Carolina, and they told me they saw gas for $1.68 per gallon.

But the dent really isn't that bad.  The headlight still works fine, although my wheel squeaks a little when I go over bumps a little too quickly.  What is really troubling me is my battery.  Last Thursday I got dinner at a Burger King, I could probably do a post on all the fast food that's down here in California, and I was listening to NPR like the godless liberal that I am, and they were airing the Democratic Convention, Hillary Clinton was giving her speech accepting the nomination.  Well I thought the speech was fine, but wouldn't you know it, when I went to turn the engine back on the blasted thing wouldn't turn over.  I wound up calling a tow truck, who had to give me a ride over to a gas station to get some money out of an ATM.  The gas station was supposed to be closed, but there were still a few nice ladies inside, cleaning up, and they let me in.  A got a jump, but the whole experience cost me about $60.  It feels like the battery struggles to start the engine even when it hasn't been playing the radio for an hour.  But it's started every time since.

More recently though I did have to get more roadside assistance.  By this time I had AAA, which really saved my butt.  I locked my keys in my car's trunk after shopping, and I had to call AAA.  My phone was nearly out of battery so I had to go back inside the store and ask to use their phone.  Everything turned out all right.  The AAA guy was super nice, he opened the car door by using an inflatable bag slipped into the car door, it looked a bit like the sleeve you would use to measure blood pressure.

Since then really not much else.  The check engine light came on, and sometimes when I haven't driven the car in a while it shakes around a bit.  But I really don't need it to last forever.  Just for another five months.

Adapting to my Surroundings

Well, I doubt I'm the first to learn this lesson, and probably not the last, but money has a tendency to make big problems smaller.  I came down to San Jose with, oh, about $8,000 given to me by my employer as a relocation bonus.  And I'm sad to see that more than half of that small fortune has been exhausted.

I made a number of fairly substantial purchases in the few weeks that I came here.  I already mentioned the bike in my last post, and that has served me really well actually.  No more flats since.  I've also bought a car, and while that has added a lot to my ability to simply navigate the bay area, I've burnt through a fair chunk of money to do so.

There are, of course, several expenses with cars.  There is insurance, gas, and the unplanned expenses as well.  But owning a car has given me a range of experiences that have been, or possibly will be worth it all.

The Car

The car itself is nothing too special.  I bought it off of some guy on craigslist for $2,995.  He and his family came from India, and he was working as an Amazon Prime driver.  He was driving another car, which he planned to sell, but he also wanted to buy a new hybrid, with better gas milage.  I guess if you are driving all day, especially in California where gas is $3 per gallon, the cost of gas rapidly exceeds the price of the car itself.

The car was in great condition.  I knew from the ad in Craigslist that it was a 2002 Inifiniti I35 with 200,000 miles on it.  I really had pretty low expectations.  When I saw the car I  noticed it was a little dirty.  There's something in the air here that just clings to cars.  Possibly some combination of smog and dust, but that was really no matter.  The upholstry was in good condition, the breaks work fine, the stereo works perfectly, and the AC is functional.  Really the only problem I had with the car itself was the turning radius.  The thing turns like a truck, which isn't really a problem most of the time, but it's very noticable when it's needed.

But I'm thrilled.  With a car I'm able to get to work pretty quickly, and I'm able to cross all the roads, which I wouldn't dream to do without a car.  The way all of the suburbs of San Jose are built is for accomodating automobiles.  Which is really helpful to drivers.  I can imagine that it's much less of a headache to drive in the suburbs of San Jose than downtown Boston, for instance.  It's a little tragic.  There's a nasty self-reenforcement with having a car and living here.  Everyone without a car is pushed out.

What I did with the Car

A car is just a rusting piece of metal unless you drive it.  And I did more with it than just drive it to and from work.  Last week, there was a concert going on featuring Sting and Peter Gabriel.  Naturally I have only listened to the music my Dad listens to all my life, so I was thrilled and really wanted to see if I could get tickets.  No such luck.  But the fact that I had to autonomy to even try to do that thrilled me.

Selfie of me and two other Co-ops, Ellie and Emily

I also took my car down to Santa Cruz with some of the other Co-ops from Northeastern.  The trip was rather uneventful but I was shocked by the change in weather.  It was a full 25 degrees colder next to the ocean than it was on the other side of the hills in San Jose, where it was about 85 degrees F.  There's a boardwalk with a bunch of amusement park rides, but we didn't go on any of those, we had plans to go to Great America later on a company pass.  The beaches were nice, the water not so much.  It was frigid and turbulent, and though I really only got my toes wet, just to say I've been in the Pacific Ocean, other people fully submerged, and didn't deign to stay in for more than about 30 seconds.

Instead we walked along the wharf and watched the sea lions swimming around.  We ate at a taqeria and someone with us bought a skateboard at what I assume was a fairly famous skate shop.  I suppose if you are aiming on picking up learning to skate California is a good place to do it. 

I drove back to San Jose, through the winding mountain roads, and we went to Great America Amusement park.  My company bought us day passes, and maybe we should have gone all day.  I'd certainly have saved money on gas and would have been warmer, but we arrived around 5:30, and had a good time until the park closed around 10.  There were even fireworks.

On Sunday, the day after, a group of us decided to check out the beautiful city of San Francisco.  I didn't drive, instead I took the Caltrain up with my good friend Quan, and that's probably for the better since driving around SF, and in particular parking didn't sound too appealing. When we got there I noticed it was equally cold as Santa Cruz the day before.  I wound up buying a pretty great sweatshirt in Chinatown for $17, and I was comfortable the rest of the time.  I was a little sad I didn't see the other notable sights of SF.  But those adventures are scheduled for another week.  This post is getting on in length, so I'll post those adventures later.

Here we Go Again...

Settling In

Call me Mr. Silicon Valley.  I'm spent most of the last few months in Italy an on vacation in the Catskills, and that was a whole other blog.  But my time here has been so crazy that it really deserves to be immortalized in the annals of the Internet.  I am bound and determined to master this backwards and foreign land, one step at a time.  The first step I needed to take was getting a sense of scale.  And I think I've finally done it, but it wasn't easy.  Below is a fair encapsulation of everywhere I've been in the past few days, compared at scale to Boston and the surrounding area.  It's somewhat important to keep in mind that the Boston picture encapsulates the entire airport, and several parts of the city I never went.  And I spent probably 98% of my time in the middle ninth, which includes the Back Bay, a good chunk of the Charles, the Fens, Boston Gardens, Northeastern University, the Museum of Fine Arts, fields for playing sports, and even a couple movie theaters.  In the same area around where I live between San Jose and Milpitas, I've blurred it out, is suburban sprawl.

It is a fact of life around here, a car is needed, and that may just be what my next post will be about.  But today I think I'll explain what I've been doing without a car in the 72 or so hours that I've been in the area.

Friday Night

I arrived in San Jose Airport at around 6:00, took a Lyft to my apartment I got on AirBnb, more on that later.  The Lyft ride was kind of crazy given that the woman driving me dropped off the wrong people first, and was battling the will of the GPS, telling her to make several U-turns, trying to find my place.  Isn't it grand to live in such a day and age where technology makes life so seamless?  But there was no time to dwell on a small inconvenience like that.  I had to move in.  And of course, as moving for 6 months across a continent naturally entails, I brought what ammounted to a suitcase full of clothes and a backpack full of electronics.  More than enough to make it in Silicon Valley.  Moving in was easy enough since I brought so little.  And it wasn't like I was spoiled for choice on where to put my stuff.  My apartment ammounted to, well still ammounts to, half of a living room partitioned off from the rest of the main apartment by a frame of two by fours, plywood, and vinyl siding.  But hey, I also get a bed that's about as soft as the floor and a cabinet to throw my clothes, and a light fixture hanging from the ceiling conveniently placed in such a way that I always manage to hit my head on it.  And for the cheap price of $650 a month how could I refuse?  I can't even use the stove here, I get about half a shelf in the fridge, and I'm not even sure I can get stuff mailed here.

Home Sweet Home

I decided to Uber, instead of Lyft to Downtown San Jose, where I met my good buddy Quan, who happened to be not only on the Italy trip with me, but also a trip down to Silicon Valley I took over Spring Break.  He's working at Nvidia, and rooming with someone working at Tesla, and I'm a little envious of them.  Not that I don't think flex will be a fun place to work.  We ate at a great place called the Old Spaghetti Factory.  They served a drink called Italian Cream Soda, which came in a souvenir glass.  The food was delicious too.  I had a little tour of down town after that, and went home tired and jetlagged.

Saturday

It became very apparent that walking around, while very possible in Boston, would not cut the mustard in the Bay Area.  I needed a bike.  Not being one to waste the opportunity to get some excercise I walked to the nearest bike shop, about an hour away.  The man there was very nice, and I bought a mid-ranged bike plus gear, plus tax, for a little over $500.  Which really was a small price to pay for a practical way to move around the city.  It was 3 hours before the bike was ready, so I checked out the Innovation Museum in downtown San Jose, and they genuinely had some cool and technical machines there.  They demonstrated machine vision, robotic arms that could manipulate blocks and draw the outlines of someone's face, and a demonstration of computer animation.

Quan with a Robot Guard

Well, the time came to pick up my bike, and I did, and it rode like a dream.  Later, I took the Caltrain up to Palo Alto to meet up with Quan again.  We walked around Stanford University and went to an outdoor mall.  I, in my infinite wisdom, decided it was a beautiful day to ride my bike back to my apartment, it was afterall a beautiful day, but I had to make it quick, since my phone was running out of battery.  That's where the first photo in this blog comes in, since that's the path I wound up taking.  And the sun was just setting as I was riding on the Bay Trail, it would have been a beautiful sight, if I wasn't racing the clock, and willing my electronic navigator not to die on me.  Well, I don't know what gave out first, my phone's battery or my rear tire, but somewhere along the way I lost both.  I stopped for a bit of help at a place called "Crawdad's" where I was able to charge up my phone enough to find my way back home.  I walked back, since my bike's tire hadn't magically reinflated, stopping at a Jack in the Box for some dinner.  It took me about another hour to get back home, and I learned a valuable lesson.  Always, always, always, take the Caltrain when you can.

Sunday

The bike store wasn't open again until Monday, so I had to make due with my own two legs again.  Well I went to Walgreens to pick up some shower stuff, I was beginning to really smell, in the middle of the day to.  I got nice and tan from that walk.  But I didn't just go to Walgreen's to get soap and a nice cool drink.  I also secured myself a Clipper Card, which is basically the Bay Area equivalent to the Charlie Card, which, for those of you not in Boston, is a RFID card that you can preload with money and use to ride busses, light rail, and whatever other sort of public transportation exists in the Bay.  I rode the bus back to my apartment to celebrate, and to shower.

Later, I met up again with Quan.  This time in Mountain View, I rode the Light Rail down, hitching a ride from a nice older gentleman staying a week here.  I checked out Quan's apartment, which is really nice.  It has a pool, a gym, laundry, cable, Wifi, and awesomely furnished apartments.  I seriously want to move here, but I'd need a better set of wheels.  Public transportation takes 1 hour 45 minutes to connect, biking is even 30 minutes faster.  But with a car the transit would take 18 minutes.  Plus I'd be able pick up groceries, go to a state park on the weekend, or to the beach and learn how to surf.  Anywho, Quan, Quan's roommate, (the one who works at Tesla), and I walked down to a park where a group was hosting some kind of picnic, with hotdogs, grilled corn, and other refreshments.  I had a really nice time there, and met a Google engineer, I guess they're a dime a dozen around here.  I took the Caltrain back...

Monday (Today)

Bike was still out of commission, and it was my first day of work!  I wound up taking an Uber.  I arrived at Flex at 9, and didn't really do any real work that day.  It was mostly spent touring the facility, Acquiring swag, like the sweet HP touchscreen laptop, and plugging myself into the work-place's electronic infrastructure.  Soon I should be doing some real work but I get the impression that it will take a little bit to ramp up.

I carpooled back with some other Northeastern Co-ops, on the drive back we witnessed a really nasty crash.  Looked like someone t-boned the driver's side of an oncoming car.  Ouch! As soon as I got in the door of my apartment, I was out again, there was little time to lose in getting my bike to the repair shop.  As luck would have it, an entire street was shutdown for construction, including the sidewalks.  And since Bay Area suburban sprawl is allergic to any rational way to lay out streets I had to take a massive detour.

Pretty simple right?

I took the liberty to highlight all the areas where roads don't connect

And I soon estimated that I better start running if I wanted to get to the bike shop on time.  And I swear to god, I was wet as a mop, drenched with sweat when I got there, but I made it to the bike shop at 6:59, the store closed at 7:00, and I was glad that something had finally gone right.  I have a bike I can ride again.  I say things are looking up.