California day 3

August 3

This morning I took the van back where I got it. This was prearranged with the person who answered the phone in New Jersey. This van belongs to "Adventures on Wheels" of New Jersey, but it is "Road Bear" that serves as their liaison with AOW customers outside of New Jersey. When I drove up I expected resistance from Road Bear's staff, but they were cheerful about solving the problems with the steering and air-conditioning after they spoke with New Jersey themselves. A young man test drove it, with me in the passenger seat, and the problems I described were evident to him, too. He told me that ordinarily a vehicle would go through some diagnostics over 3 days before being passed on to the next customer, but this wasn't done for this vehicle because of the quick turnover time between customers. He took it to the garage section of this rental station and set to work. He determined that the steering cannot be tightened; this is how steering in such vans normally behaves. The air-conditioning blows cold so it not a problem with coolant. Because the engine has trouble running the air-conditioning while climbing, he said there is a pressure leak in some other system that someone chose not to fix previously. This young mechanic spoke English with almost no accent, but I could tell that it is not his first language because he had trouble finding the right words to describe the problem to me. A part was sent for and installed, after which all the fan speeds worked on the air-conditioning control panel. I was told that the vehicle was road-worthy and the problems I complained about would not keep me from enjoying my trip. I left with the peace of mind that someone had finally checked out the van and I could rely on their backing.

I drove back to Julia's where Razelle was waiting for me. We said our goodbyes and thanked Julia for her hospitality. Then we began our cross-continental journey on wheels. I drove a bit east on the broad multi-lane freeway and then exited onto a narrow, twisting road that took us to the Pacific coast via Topanga Canyon. Finally, a road that wasn't residential or multiple lanes; our trip was underway and I felt that this was progress, even though we were going west instead of east. Topanga Canyon is wild and beautiful. At its outlet the azure Pacific came into view. We followed its coastline into Malibu. Back in Beer Sheva we own a Chevrolet Malibu, so I had to stop here for a photo-op and a souvenir. We had no pre-arranged place to stay this coming night, so I stopped at a non-descript motel to ask about prices. Holy moly, that much? We drove to an RV village and at the gate learned that we couldn't sleep in our van in Los Angeles County because of a county ordinance designed to keep homeless people away from RV villages and off the streets of the county. We had slept in our van the past two nights, but Julia and Bryan live in Ventura County, so despite our ignorance we had actually not been law-breakers. We were told of three state parks along the beaches up the coast where camping would be possible, so we visited them. The road along here was lined with parked cars and recreational vehicles of every size. People were on these beaches in vast numbers and enjoying themselves. We assumed that they would not be allowed to remain throughout the night, and, after we visited the three state parks and found no camping-site vacancies at any of them, we realized that we wouldn't remain here either. The views were picture-postcard perfect. The rocks and the color of the water and the entire appearance of these beaches and their healthy happy patrons were all so inviting, but we didn't stop to become part of that scenery. Razelle wasn't inclined, and I wasn't comfortable about the difficulty of finding a place to stay over night. We admired the Pacific without getting wet and without getting sand in our shoes, then we turned inland near Oxnard and returned to the same motel Bev had booked for us our first night in California.

Climbing up the road from sea level to the height of Newbury Park we noticed that the air-conditioning cut out at times, but we were reassured that a responsible mechanic knew about this. He wasn't concerned so why should we be? It would be part of our adventure. The motel in Newbury Park was available for the next two nights. It suited us just fine. Virtually across the street was the same Target store we'd patronized our first day in the area. I went over there and purchased a broadband device for my laptop. This is the same type of device I'd used in Australia to stay connected to the Internet. I've already seen in the short time I've been here that I cannot rely on finding access to the Internet wherever I am when I need it without such a gadget. I also tried to purchase a gadget that will enable me charge up my laptop from the dashboard of the van, but this wasn't possible here. I'll have to try and find a Radio Shack for that.

Razelle liked the fact that our motel has a working TV. The remote didn't work, so she had to manually find her programs, but the fact that she could watch her favorite programs was good comfort for her. By the time we went looking for a place to eat it was quite late. There is a Denny's across our parking lot that remains open 24/7. We tried it out. I had grits for the first time in years. They were great. Razelle had bagels and cream cheese and she was happy too. We definitely will revisit Denny's franchises in the future. We went to bed content with our location.