03/22/2004: "Betty the Urban Assault Vehicle"

I was musing over the title for my Monday blog, and after a round-trip to LA in my camper this weekend, I had decided that I would make Betty the subject. Somewhere around the time I was coming up with that idea, Betty decided to let go a transmission line and started spraying transmission fluid everywhere! But to give her her due, we drove close to a thousand miles together this weekend, and she managed to keep it together long enough so I could limp to work.

I don't know exactly why I seem to have cars with such character. Any normal vehicle would have let me down somewhere in the middle of highway 5, or stuck in LA traffic, but Betty always manages to get me home. The only times I have had any trouble with her, she has always come through, and always managed to have her little problems with easy reach of home or work.

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I have a breakdown service that specifically covers RVs (good Sam's), as well as regular cars (and even my motorbike), but that all got confusing, they wanted me to take the camper off, sent out a tow-truck that couldn't actually move Betty, and so on. While the tow truck driver was talking to the Good Sam's, I crawled under Betty to take another look - sure enough, I found a transmission line that was split, and I believe was the cause of all the problem. I sent the tow truck away, walked down the road to buy some more fluid, made up a funnel (ironically enough, made from the cover of the Good Sam's atlas), topped her up, and she seems to work fine. When the line blew, transmission fluid sprayed onto the fan, so there is fluid all over the place, and hard to tell if there is still a leak somewhere, but I'm sure she's good enough to get me home now!

Anyway, enough of the trials and tribulations of Betty, onto some of the more positive points of the weekend. The reason for the trip to LA was to meet up with the playwrite (Tom Jacobson) for Renegade's upcoming show, Conserving Melissa, which I will be assistant-directing. I drove down with Megan Murphy, the director, and it was a pleasant journey, well supplied with Megan's home-baked cookies. We got down to LA to catch one of Tom's other shows, Sperm. No, its not what you think (or not quite, anyway), it is about Sperm whales. And French royalty. And ... well, I won't give you the whole story, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Camping out in my Urban Assault Vehicle for the first night in LA wasn't too hard - Megan was staying with a friend of hers, and so Betty was parked safe and sound in his driveway. On Saturday we took off to meet Tom at his "house". And what a house it is!!! A converted textile factory, its main feature is a huge warehouse-like space, with a roof made of full-length skylights - fantastic! I am so jealous, it is exactly the sort of place I want to find... Tom was extremely pleasant, and Megan, Sean (RTE Artistic Director) and I had a long talk with him about the play.

After that I dropped off Megan an Sean, and headed over to Panpipes, an occult store where my friend Allison is an apprentice. They were having an "Oestre Egg Hunt", in which I won a dram of oil. Allison mixed me up a special recipe, designed to aid in the success of Conserving Melissa. Susannah also arrived, and we spent a pleasant evening at Allison's lovely studio apartment in Silver Lake. That night Susannah and I slept in Betty, parked out in the streets of LA - exciting Urban adventuring!

Well replete after a cracking good breakfast (prepared by Allison) on Sunday, we took the leisurely drive back up the coast, stopping off for a walk on "Refugio Beach", and dinner at a Mexican restaurant. Betty performed flawlessly as our Urban Assault Vehicle, well, until the troubles with the transmission today of course, but hey - thats character for you!