Ok, so during my trip to San Francisco, I made a few little videos so I could remember the trip better. Below are the highlights of the trip. It's almost like going to San Fran, but staying right in front of your computer! Wait...that doesn't really sound like that much fun...hmm..well, here they are anyway:

The first day I was there, I drove up north of San Fran to the Laguanitas brewery to do a brewery tour. The tour itself wasn't the cool -- it was before the tour that was fun. The brewery has this little bar above the warehouse that all of the workers go to have a few free beers after work. Well on that particular day, they didn't get a shipment of bottles like they were supposed to, so all of the workers were kicking off early. Right around the time I was tasting the beer. So I got to sit around and BS with the Laguanitas folks. It was great.

The video is of me driving over the Golden Gate Bridge.

The next day, I walked all over downtown San Francisco and played the tourist. I went on a little walking tour that was kind of lame, but most of the day was me just doing my own thing. That night, though, I went to a Giants game with my brother and his wife. Let me tell you what, that stadium is a great place to watch baseball....but geez, they get you on the beer. $8.25 a glass. Yikes!

The next day was Saturday, so I continued doing the tourist thing and hit-up China Town, Fisherman's Warf, and the beach with my brother. We were having some unseasonably warm weather for San Francisco. It was literally like 80 degrees. Unbelievably gorgeous and hot. The ocean? Unbelievably cold. I waded my way up to my knees and that was all I could handle. It was a fun day, though.

And the last day was Sunday. Usually Sundays mean a traveling day, but I caught the red-eye back to Minneapolis, so we still had a full day to drive up to wine country. I'm not a huge wine guy, but I'll tell you what...it's completely different to taste the wine at the source. At the place where it was made. This video isn't at my favorite place, but it had the best view. My favorite place was the very last one, with the best wine, and we tasted it at a family-style table with the owner of the winery. Unbelievable.

It was a good trip. I recommend going sometime!

Ok, I was clearly delirious during my last post...mainly because I was frazzled from the car stress, packing for a trip, and a smidgen of a buzz from the beer I was guzzling to keep me going. Anyway, I apparently told most of the story already of my car faldalral, but here is the rest of it.

Monday I got word from the Twin Cities auto that they had test drove my car (remember I couldn't even get it to stay running on Friday, much less drive it) and didn't notice anything wrong. Then they hooked it up to the diagnostic machine and that didn't turn up any errors or past/current problems. The best they could "guess" was that it needed some $200 part, but they weren't really sure. So basically I paid them $100 to make a not-at-all educated guess about a possible problem they couldn't reproduce. And that, really, was more disconcerting than it being a $1,000 problem.

Still, for me the answer to purchase a car or not had become simple -- I had to do it. It ended up being nice that I could still drive the car away and the bill for it wasn't much, but I just didn't trust the car anymore and I knew it was time.

The rest of the day Monday then ended up being a big mess, with trying to get work done before I went on vacation, lining up rides to the dealership to get the car, discussing the situation with my brothers, trying to figure out insurance, and then also what to do with the old car (it's being donated to Wheels-for-Wishes, by the way)

I left work early with my dad, picked up the car, drove it down to Lakeville, drove back to Walser Honda, and purchased my first real car. It's a black 4-door 2003 Honda Civic. Oh but wait, the story is not over. That would've been much too easy.

I cut the check for the down payment. I test drove the car. I signed all of the papers. I got the warranty figure out. They had given me the keys and I was literally walking out the door to drive back to Minneapolis in my new car, when the finance guy was like "your old car DID have full coverage, right?"

No, no it did not. That was one of the glorious parts about that car -- no car payments and insanely cheap insurance payments.

Yeah. Not having full coverage, though, was a problem. A big problem. They wouldn't let me drive it off the lot without having full coverage. Well of course I was going to put full coverage on my car, but I had never done this process before and assumed that they knew what the hell they were doing. That they wouldn't wait until 6:30 pm, after my insurance office was closed, to bring up this tiny, insy-tinsy little DEAL BREAKING FACT! ARGH!

Well crap. I was in a tough spot. I obviously couldn't drive the white car anymore. And I couldn't drive my new car yet. I was down in Burnsville without a change of clothes and without any toilettrees, but how was I going to make it back up to Minneapolis, into work, and back down again to get my car? Wasn't going to work.

I ended up spending the night in Lakeville, getting up the next morning and putting on my same clothes, calling my insurance first thing (oh yeah, and my insurance agent was on vacation), getting it switched over, having my mom drop me off at the dealership on the way to her work, hanging out there at the dealership until the papers were done, driving to my apartment, changing clothes, and eventually getting into work about 2.5 hours late. After leaving Monday early. And leaving Friday early. Fan-freaking-tastic.

But now I have a car. A dang good car. A car I'm proud of. One that has an actual stereo system that works, that has a sunroof, that the windows roll down. It's glorious, ladies and gentlemen. I love it.

It's kind of dirty right now and I've been too busy to take a picture of it yet, since I flew out to Cali on Wednesday and I landed back in MN today at 6 AM and then worked all day....but I will take a pic so all of you can see the new ride.

San Fran pics to come. I have some good little videos as well.

peace!