Off to see the wizard

A little rant to begin the entry, because sometimes people drive me nuts. As we transitioned from Avila Beach, more on that later, into the foothills near Sacramento we stopped for supplies in Fresno. If you are visiting California Fresno should be on your do not visit list. Passing through was unpleasant and I cannot imagine why anyone chooses to live there.

The last stop of the day was Whole Foods which was in a strip mall type environment and we had to park a couple hundred yards from the store. Since we were getting supplies for six full days it was more than we could comfortably carry that far. We carted it out and then, since it had no cart area except right at the store, I pushed the cart all the way back to the store. At that distance at the end of a long day it was tempting to leave it tucked in a corner, but I could not bring myself to do it.

As I am nearing the store I see a person finish loading their groceries into their car in the third closest parking spot to the store. You could literally spit from their trunk and have a decent shot of hitting the cart storage area. They shoved the cart in the exact direction it was already pointing far enough that they could back out. This blocked the first and second closest spots, both handicapped, completely. Were they having a bad day and were like “fuck everyone but me”? Were they a sociopath that doesn’t give a crap about anyone but themselves? Would still be a better president than Trump, but what a jerk.

Back to the coast, we had a delightful time in Pismo Beach. Long walking beach on which we watched nearly every sunset and had one sunrise walk on as well. We could hear the surf at night and slept very well.

On Thursday we hopped twenty minutes north to Avila beach. This was us parking about twenty feet from the ocean. Surf was loud enough my coworkers could hear it in meetings and the dog spent hours running in the waves with canine companions. Even though it was a little pricey, I would recommend staying there except it turns out it is on the route to the Diablo Nuclear Power plant. Apparently people work very odd hours there and a near constant flow of traffic even through the night. With the surf it wasn’t awful, but some people had very loud vehicles including one Harley that made my teeth rattle.

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We settled into a campsite about an hour south of my office and will move into Sacramento on Friday so I can work in the same building with coworkers for a day. We are in a federal campsite that is underfunded and a little dirty but overall very relaxing. Both the pets love it here.

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Also on Friday Torta goes into the shop again.

In Phoenix when I added diesel exhaust fluid (DEF) the sensor didn’t register that I added it. I had spilled some, so we purchased another box and filled it all the way up to the very tippy top. Still told us we were low. Research said this should eventually go away so we decided to ignore it until we got an oil change in Portland. As we pulled out of Fresno this godawful dinging sounded and the message came up that we have only sixteen starts remaining. Apparently if you ignore the DEF message Mercedes has decided that you come in or you cannot even start your very expensive engine.

If you have read my past posts you will know that if two wheel sensors fail Mercedes puts you in limp mode which means first gear only with a top speed of under forty miles an hour. If the DEF sensor fails you get to turn off your engine only sixteen times, possibly far less per the sprinter tech, and then no start for you. The engine won’t fucking start even though it is perfectly capable of it, they just arbitrarily decided that you cannot based on sensory information from a single data point. I have to imagine that someone at Mercedes home office had a diabolically evil laugh as they made these decisions. That person has now risen to number two on the list of people I feel I should be legally allowed to smack displacing Bill Gates.

May peace find me.