The never-ending cruise

8/23 – 8/24:

This morning I packed up camp pretty quickly and headed north along Hwy 1 to Pescadero State Beach, where I was supposed to meet the VMFers for the Mustang Cruise at 11AM. The weather was initially pretty foggy and meh, but it cleared up as soon as I got there which was awesome. 

Really nice beach!

And an even nicer car!

Spent a couple of minutes cleaning Jane up before the first car arrived! It was a gorgeous custom red '66 convertible, driven by Rich and his wife Amy (Aimee?). We chatted while waiting for the others to arrive (they had gotten stuck behind a bottomed-out crane that blocked traffic for a long time). Eventually the whole cruise crew was there – in addition to Rich and Amy, I was joined by Jeff (burgundy '67 fastback and organizer of the cruise), Armon (riding along as his car is in pieces), Brandon (white '68 coupe), Mike and Joanne (dark blue '67 fastback), Craig and his wife ('68 Bullitt replica), and Dan (black convertible). Quite a crowd for me to meet!

Unfortunately I don't have the full group shot for some reason, but I borrowed Rich's shot for the blog:

After the requisite chatting about cars and my trip so far, we headed off to lunch. It was seriously cool to have so many Mustangs cruising together. Last time I saw that many in one place was the Charlotte 50^th Anniversary celebration – ever since then it's just been the odd classic here or there. Couldn't believe that Jeff found so many people to come cruise (and that they actually wanted to meet me! How odd! Haha).

Lunch was extraordinarily filling (cream of avocado soup, green chili soup, french dip sandwich, and ollalaberry pie, whatever that is) so I was glad that we walked around town a bit afterwards to stave off post-lunchtime nap attacks (which I am very much prone to being victim to). Then various people led the cruise around the area, hitting some excellent twisty roads, a winery, and eventually Saratoga. I wish I could have taken more pictures of the cruise itself as I was bringing up the rear, but it's rather hard to drive and take pictures at the same time so I didn't risk it. Last thing I needed was to go plowing into someone or skating off the road while trying to make an event “Facebook official” or whatever.

A kind of meh shot of some really excellent cars!

The group (minus 2) at the winery!

By then it was late afternoon and the other cruisers had split off, leaving Jeff, Armon, and myself. But we decided we weren't done yet... so we jumped on another local Saturday night cruise! Let me just say that the car culture in California (at least this region) is amazing. Alive and thriving, definitely! Never have I gotten to hang out with so many car people in one day, aside from the 50^th Anniversary Celebration. It was a blast! No pictures from that as it was getting dark, but I'm sure you all know that I had far too much fun. We finished up the cruise with a California classic, In-N-Out.

At this point it was much later than I had thought we would end up finishing. Rich and his wife had offered me hospitality in Mountain View but after seeing how late it was I ended up staying down in San Jose with Armon and his folks to avoid inconveniencing them (thank you SO much for the offer though, if you're reading this!!!). And then, of course, because I no longer had a curfew... it turned into one of those nights that never ends. You know, the ones where the weather is perfect and the city is alive and the car is rumbling a sweet little tune and you are completely and totally incapable of tearing yourself away from it. Driving solo in the back country of America, those nights are few and far between – there's always a campsite to set up, or a risk of hitting deer, or a sense of imminent danger from a weird place you're near. Or you just don't want to cruise because you're alone. But it was a Saturday night in the city and I had a friend to show me around, so I fully took the opportunity as it presented itself and kept on cruising. 

And so it was that at 3:20AM there was a 6.0 earthquake (the biggest California's seen since the 80's), and I didn't even know. Why? Well, because apparently the shaking and rumbling of a vintage pony car far surpasses the mere shaking and quaking of the earth itself. I've yet to decide if that's a good thing or not, but it was certainly entertaining to arrive at Armon's place to be greeted with the news of an earthquake that we hadn't even noticed. I was actually pretty bummed out that I didn't get to “experience” it! One of the California classics and I missed it because I was out cruising in my sweet old car. You win some, you lose some I guess.

I headed to bed and woke up bright and early a few hours later to get Jane ready for the next leg of our trip. She needed a bit of a heater core investigation / repair after some high-RPM shenanigans the night before had caused her to pee on Armon's shoes. The amount of coolant that she lost indicated that there wasn't a leak in the heater core itself (that would have caused gallons of 200-degree water to go everywhere inside the car), so we took apart the whole heater box to see what the problem was. Apparently I had just built up enough pressure in the system that coolant pushed past a loose hose clamp attaching the heater hose to the heater core, and then that leaked down through the box. Easy fix though a bit of a pain to get to the whole thing. A little blood, sweat, and probably some tears and it was all patched up.

Armon also noticed that the rear of the passenger valve cover was leaking oil onto the headers... and thus was the source of my excessive oil consumption discovered. Funny the things that I am too blind to see. Very glad to have an extra pair of eyes around to point them out though!! So that was fixed as well just by cranking down the valve covers a little tighter. I later found out that sealing up the valve cover gasket now causes oil to come out of the dipstick tube at high RPMs, but hey, at least that's more entertaining. I imagine that when I'm driving on the highway there's a mini geyser – or perhaps a small lawn sprinkler-type spray – coming out of the tube and spraying about the immediate vicinity. Seems... marginally unsafe, but hey, it's not something I can fix so I might as well be amused instead.

Anyways, with the minor repairs completed I loaded Jane back up, had a delicious Persian lunch courtesy of Armon's folks (thank you!!!), and headed on my way. I am once again totally amazed at the hospitality that I've seen on this trip. I've met some truly great people and it is so great to get offers of places to stay when I'm on the road. I had a really, really awesome time in San Jose and it changed my views about what a Californian city is like (before I was definitely very dubious about the prospect of putting my vintage car anywhere near a city in California, having had many experiences with insane Californian drivers). It was so cool to be a part of the local car culture for a day and there was a ton of stuff to do. I'll definitely have to come back sometime! But it was time for me to head on - east this time, amazingly enough.

Evening saw me pulling into my campsite at Hodgdon Meadow at Yosemite National Park. Once again I was back to my solo nomad lifestyle, which was a little sad to be honest after all of the people I got to hang out with in the city. But a nice book and a comfortable sleeping bag fixed me right up and I was soon ready to tackle my next adventure – exploring Yosemite! Kelly signing out.