The Driving Thread

I'm envious of your weather the last few days.

 

You keep making me pine for the marine layer.

 

Agrgeed. My LA adventure was more than 20 years ago, and the car in question was a Mercedes turbo diesel coupe that was dirt cheap and good for the time, as high-sulfur diesel fuel was ~25% cheaper than regular unleaded. Its great safety feature was its mass and fantastic build quality, which was tested when a kid in a rusty Ford Ranger clobbered me on the freeway. The insurance company totaled the car because its market value was so low.

Nowadays I see that stretch of freeway about three times a year vs. twice daily when I was working. But wife and I are both driving newer vehicles now that at least have a backup camera.

You can get lane deviation, blind spot, wakeup alarms, etc., but I do think the high-water mark for the balance between valuable safety gear and superfluous gadgetry was about 2007. ABS, parking sensors, backup camera are all great. The rest are for the distracted and unaware. Of course, we good drivers have to share the roads with those motorists.

As for engine design, I drive a Ford Ecoboost Ranger and love the power from the little 4-cylinder engine. I rented a 2.7L AWD Fusion a couple years ago and was really impressed -- it had all the punch of my '95 540i. That said, I never had to pull the intake off of my V8 to blast off valve deposits, which seems to be a common GDI service around 60K miles.

 

This is the first thing I saw after walking out of the gym just before noon.




More photos of the Checker Marathon straight outta Kalamazoo, and today's drive: https://photos.app.goo.gl/CdCqZittUxfYZgcb9

It all happened after making a right onto Sepulveda Boulevard and taking it as fer as she would go.

At the corner of Ohio Avenue I saw a sign and had to make a left turn.



Is it the original Bad News Bears field? No. But in some ways it is. From Wikimapia:

The original "Bad News Bears" (the movie) was filmed in Chatsworth at Mason Park, but the Bad News Bears Field in Westwood has just as legitimate a connection to those foulmouthed tykes. It was here in 1958 that Burt Lancaster signed up his son Billy for Little League (his team: the Giants) and Bill Lancaster would later draw from those experiences for the screenplay that inspired the original movie, two sequels, a TV series, and Hollywood remake. After Bill Lancaster died a decade ago, his friends persuaded Parks and Recreation to rename the baseball diamond after his creation.​

Got back onto Sepulveda to see how far I could take it.

Sepulveda starts to get a bit cheeky, switching from one side of the 405 to the other.

I thought I reached the end where you have to get onto the 405. That wasn't the case but I didn't know it then.

I thought my only option was to make a left up a curvy hill into a place called Mountaingate, in Brentwood ... but not O.J.'s Brentwood.

All you need to know about Mountaingate in Brentwood is on its homepage: https://mountaingate.la/

Drove up a bit but saw I'd have to go thru a security checkpoint and turned around.

On the way down I took this:



Only the way back down Sepulveda I turned left onto Moraga Drive, which is part of Bel Air.

I think they were making some kind of promotional video.



Wasn't overly impressed with the houses. Seems like this was the slummy part of Bel Air.

Turned around and made a left onto Sepulveda again. Noticed homeless activity under the 405.

Turned around and made a left into a lot of sorts to park then walked over to the underpass encampment.

To the right, just beyond the covid testing sign, is where homeless and mentally ill people make their home.



To the left, just across the street, is Bel Air.



Walked across the street to the corner of Sepulveda and Ovada.

Took a photo of another rolling avatar of our national refrigerator delivery system.



Walked back across the street to take more photos of the homeless encampment.

Was taking a photo of a shiny penny in a puddle of sticky urine when I heard a voice from near the top of the slope. Couldn't see anyone though. Wasn't nervous but ...

A guy appeared from behind the boxes and junk heaps and walked a few steps down the slope then took a seat to size me up.



Just 2 feet above his head is the 405 north, and high above that the billion dollar Getty Center.

Long story short, I pulled out a 10 dollar bill and he walked down to talk to me face to face.

His name is Kenneth and he had a lot to say but wouldn't stop saying it and never let me get a word in edgewise.

The biggest problem, Kenneth said, is that they let the crazies out onto the streets and they all seem to congregate here under the 405 at Sepulveda and Church.



Kenneth walked with me back to my car. I still didn't get a word in edgewise. I didn't get a word in at all.

I got back onto Sepulveda and drove south until Westwood Boulevard and made a right.

Saw an attention-getting yellow sign for Indonesian food and wanted to eat there to be like Obama.

Parked and walked over but a guy told me the Indonesian place closed. (insert Obama joke here).

The same lot has a Mediterranean restaurant ... or maybe a hookah bar, or both, I was confused ... but it too was closed. I was getting pissy.

The same lot has a place called Qin that specializes in Shaanxi/Guilin Chinese food. I was starving and went there.

Ordered twice-cooked pork. The guy at the register was surprised and asked if I'm sure.

Yeah, I said, why? Because, he said, it has pork and vegetables.

I tried dissecting that answer while waiting for the food. Definitely felt like an insult.

I'm not really the kind of guy who's going to order a dish dominated by cooked lettuce (cabbage?) no matter how many spices is used to gussy it up.

But this was fantastic all the way around from the pork to the lettuce (cabbage?) to the okra and red peppers and all the spices and oils. It had plenty of heat.

Obama wouldn't have eaten this dish because of the pork.




Edit: I just looked and Sepulveda keeps going after Mountaingate in Brentwood, into Encino.

 

Ah yes, the infamous Sepulveda Pass. Right around the corner there you can see part of the Mulholland Bridge. Past that the 405 drops down into Sherman Oaks.

 

I recently sold my first car, a '66 Mustang.
It only had lap belts, and the seats didn't latch in any way.
The thing was a death trap. If you were in a front end collision, if you weren't cut in half, you would have been slammed hard bodily into the steering wheel/dash.
A buddy asked me why I sold it. I got a thick stack of crisp $100s for it, and I no longer had an interest in driving it.

 

My first car (in the early 80s) was my dad's old '55 VW Beetle ragtop. I loved that car. We had it in show condition.

It didn't have seat belts, turn signals or a gas gauge. The brakes didn't really work -- I frequently had to use the handbrake to stop.

It was totaled when a guy ran a red light and hit me, spinning my car in a 360. I was driving and I believe my head dented the passenger side door.

To this day, I cannot believe my parents let me drive that stupid car.

(After the wreck I spent a few months driving my dad's old Porsche 912. Incredibly fun to drive when it was working. We could never get the carburetor adjusted properly; anytime I downshifted the car backfired and shot flames about a foot out of the tailpipe. At night it would light up the whole street. It was like the goddamn Batmobile.)

 

Songbird -- MountainGate was built on landfill. You could see the trash trucks driving up and down that hill every day. The golf course has methane gas tubes throughout to burn off the stench. The whole area smells like rotten eggs, but that didn't stop them from building million-dollar houses (that was a lot of money back then) around the rim overlooking the course. There was a Seniors Tour event there once, with Johnny Mathis as the host. I met John Brodie that week. The final round was on Easter Sunday, so it didn't draw much. Most of the players all were able to drive the par-4 No. 1. The whole course was too easy for them.

 

So you're saying Kenneth has a better home life than Mountaingaters?

 

Landfill? Geez. When the Big One hits, that whole subdivision will wiggle like Jello.

 

Do I have to pay extra after attending the school that rode the ... Waves ... to the national title that season?

And are the slices/pies up to Queens specs?