Back to School for Adults...

Well, this was a busy and eventful weekend for the dwindling nuclear family as Kelsey launched off into several new stages of adulthood right before our eyes. Officially turning 21 and allowing her mother to buy her her first legal glass of wine last Tuesday, she returned to Sonoma State with her parents intent on buying her first car this weekend.

We had spent weeks surveying Craigslist, the on-line want-ad system that has revolutionized local shopping for the technically inclined, in an attempt to judge the market and her place in it. She was not going to buy a new car like her brother did on an engineer's budget. She was looking for gently used. Our surveillance indicated that there were options that had to be carefully assessed. She was looking at a price point that could still give her many years of use but some risk of unwelcome future vulnerability. The best options were newer Fords or older Hondas and Toyotas with lower miles.

We made a heroic trip from Santa Rosa to the southern end of the SF Bay on our first day. Our most disappointing moment came when we saw a beautiful Focus with an engine you could eat off on a Used car lot run by an earnest Pakistani who swore by his vehicles provenence and virtue but could not explain the grinding vibration and howl that clearly emanated from its transmission. In spite of vague promises of a "warranty" which suggested he might split some repairs with her in the future if it blew up in the next 90 days, we moved on. We eventually met with a pair of young Doctors in Downtown SF who were upgrading from a tenderly maintained corolla with low miles and new tires to their dream Lexus. I was thrilled with the car and had to be restrained from throwing money at their feet by the daughter who didn't want an old granny car no matter how nice it seemed to her Dad. This was the end of almost 200 miles of driving and 12+ hours of shopping, but her mind was firm.

That evening I logged on to craigslist once more at 11PM. There I saw a new listing for a one-owner focus that was very much in our budget and more importantly, just what Kelsey had described as her dream car. I e-mailed, they returned a call to our cell phone within minutes and we arranged a visit to Treasure Island to see it first thing this morning. It looked great, Kelsey was pleased, money and paperwork were exchanged on the spot, and Kelsey was a proud owner of her first car. This was followed immediately by baptism by fire on the California Freeways. On Saturday morning, traffic is thinner and moving fast. The on-ramp from Treasure Island to the I-80 bridge traffic is zero to 70mph as quickly as you can with virtually no merge lane. There is a dutiful little sign that says "Short Merge Lane" as you're bearing down on the brave citizens emerging from the side of the road. She did great but man, what an experience in your first moments of car ownership!!

We returned home for some apartment preparation. I delivered the new bed strapped to the top of our rental car, then spent a few moments getting the car insured with USAA on-line. Very smooth. Tommorrow is a bit more shopping and church, then she pretty much ignores us for Monday while she gets ready for School and we get to have an adult day of our own before leaving early Tuesday back to Juneau to vote in our Primary.

The measure of how absolutely lousy Juneau's summer has been is that both Connie and I burned faces and necks in the few minutes we would spend kicking tires in various car lots on Friday. It has of course been beautiful here but it takes some breaking in for the pale faced among us. It feels good to have her settled with friends and in a community on firm ground connected to the same continent we're on. That's not expecting too much is it??

So now we're back to cellphone relationships with our children and looking forward to the next big event in Florida. Missing you all each day. Gordie