Greetings! Yes I am in California. I am very happy to be here. But things did not go off without a hitch. My car, (the one you see me working on right above this) broke down on my way home from buying my food for the trip. It would have cost me upwards of way too much too fix it. I actually did not think that there was any way that I could get here, so I called my manager, Jimmy Wojtkiewicz (whoa-ke-vich) at Hy-Vee to see if I could still get my job back. An hour later, Jeff Clausen, whom I had worked with for the past year, called me.
You see, he had this car that was an absolute mess that he was trying to get rid of. It was a `92 Metro, that alone explains why he was rying to get rid of it. But he, being a mechanic of sorts, had kept the engine in pretty good shape. So I bought it at 6:00 in the AM and had it insured, licensed and registered by 9:00.
The car really was like some kind of cosmic joke on me. The first time that I got it above 75 mph, the engine completely cut out on me, then backfired, then worked fine! Hours later, in Colorado, the hood (then held down with an elastic cord and a hanger) started to fly back at me. When I stopped to fix it, the water guard (metal plate in front of the engine) fell off!! 
And I thought that the trip was truly over when I first started driving through the mountains in Colorado. I was going 60, then I was going 50, then 45, and all with the gas pedal to the floor. I finally figured out that the engine just couldn't take the hills at 70+ mph. I ended up drinving through most of Colorado going 65 one minute, downhill, and the next, putting up at 35 while semi-trucks pass me by. Oh, me. But I made it, and that was the most important part. All in all, it took me 33 hours, 40 gallons of gas, and one roll of duct tape (for the hood).
