I used to know you when we were young. You were in all my dreams. We sat together in period one

More photos online, from FanimeCon 2007 part 3: Thursday. The Road to San Jose (24-May-2007) et seq. (Part 1 and 2 just cover my little Lancaster Detour.) Click on the picture of midnight_rocket and company in Kettleman City to see the pictures that have people in them.

I stopped by Lancaster on my way to San Jose. This put me a few hours behind the schedule I'd have had if I'd gone straight up, but I wanted to scope out the layout of the rooms at the Antelope Valley Inn. (Planning ahead for the next time I'm at a convention there.) The result was that I got a call when I was filling my tank at Kettleman City - midnight_rocket was letting me know she'd be late getting to San Jose as she was stuck in Kettleman City. Wait, which gas station? I'll be right over!

It turned out that aurorahermione's car wouldn't start. I got in, tried to start it, nothing. It was pointed out that it was a stickshift, so I tried it again with the clutch in. Nothing. Jumped up and down on the hood -- tried again, got it started.

Jennifer got in, everyone got in, and away we... stalled. Tried it again. No good. Caroline danced on the hood. No good. (Sometimes the solenoid or starter motor just needs to be jostled, that's why we were doing that.)

Then it hit me: This is a manual transmission. You're not stuck -- you hardly need a starter at all, for criminy's sake. We push it uphill, I get in and let it roll-start -- away we go.

We make it up out of Kettleman, through Pacheco Pass, and I convince them to go ahead and turn off the engine so we can get some dinner and wait for the sun to go down so it's not in our eyes anymore. We're parked in a big empty parking lot at D-Mart behind the El Pollo Loco (on the southwest side of 101/152 jct., if you're keeping score) and there's plenty of room to push-start the car later.

Dinner, then we head to San Jose. Easy. I try to convince Jennifer that we should just push-start her out of San Jose on Monday and out of her refueling stop at Kettleman to get her home, but she insists on going to a local dealer to have them look at her 10-year-old vehicle. I cringe at the possible needless expense....

And then I hear back a day or so later that the dealer discovered the problem. Apparently there's a kill-switch that detects for the clutch being pushed down all the way, and won't let you start the engine if it thinks the clutch isn't in all the way. For example, if the floor mat has slid up to cover it.

Dealer moves the floor mat out of the way, sends Jennifer back to the convention with a working car. No charge. Bless their hearts...