From day 1 however, I decided to use the showers and bathrooms that are provided for resident and guests of the marina on the docks. This means every morning I take my bag of soap, shaving cream, toothpaste and everything else to the bathroom, shave, brush my teeth and shower, on the dock. Recently Anneke decided to follow the same approach, so that the whole pumpout experience will be a thing of the past soon. This is because the water from the kitchen, where we do the dishes, wash our hands etc, is considered 'grey' and that means clean enough to just go overboard into the marina water. For this reason we use biodegradable detergents and soaps.
One requirement for living aboard is that you have to obtain a permit from the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department. To get such a permit, which is free, you have to make an appointment with the Sheriff's office. Someone comes on board, inspects the boat to make sure it is fit to be lived on, including fire extinguishers, smoke alarms and so on, and if you pass you get a liveaboard sticker to place on the hull so that the Sheriff can easily see when they come from time to time whether everyone who is living on a boat has the required permit. We had not gotten around to arranging for this until a few weeks ago, and here is the result:
It must be renewed annually.
Another adventure concerns our vehicles. In my previous post I posted photos of the BMW scooter/motorycle and of the Volvo. One more of the Volvo:
The difference with the prior picture is that you can now see the ' NL' sticker. I added that primarily because some people expressed doubt that the general public, confronted with the personalized license plate I composed, of ' WDN SHZ' would somehow not be able to figure out that this obviously stands for ' WOODEN SHOES', which is the concept most Americans think of when they hear ' Holland'. I think that concern was a bit exaggerated, because even without the sticker two guinea pigs immediately guessed the deeper meaning. But there you have it.
Cheapskate that I am, I have long ago abandoned buying cars new, opting instead for 'good used'. In 2005 I bought our 2002 Volvo C70, then at 30,000 kilometers and still with us (well, in France) now at some 250,000 kms. Then, in 2010, I bought our 2003 Volvo S80 four door sedan, when it had 66,000 kms. We also still have that car and it now has over 200,000 kms. I do all the repairs and maintenance on these cars myself, after some poor experiences with the Volvo dealer in Geneva and the experience with those two Volvos has been so good that, this time, I dared go even older: a 2008 (so now 10 years old) Volvo C70 with 150,000 kms on the clock.
The main advantage of buying older cars of course is the cost: this Volvo was about 1/8th the price of a new one. I buy these used cars not at a professional dealer, I prefer to get them from the private owners instead. More risk, more fun. This one was being offered for sale in Craigslist (the US equivalent of Marktplaats.nl or Ricardo.ch) by its second owner, a very friendly engineer from India who works at Boeing. Some things were wrong with the car during the test drive: it vibrated slightly when you accellerated, it vibrated also when you brought the thing to a stop, and it was generally sluggish. No problem I thought, I am a DIY guy, nothing I can't fix. So I bid low, he took the bid, and after the cash and paperwork changed hands the next day, I drove it home.
Fast forward several weeks. Living in the marina, there is no obvious way to work on a car. You do this either in the parking lot on the street and in the hot sun, or you find a garage where you can rent space and tools by the hour. In all of Los Angeles, I was only able to find one such a garage to my surpise, in Burbank. It's about 45 minutes drive each way. So one Sunday I went there, armed with new brake discs, a set of spark plugs, oil, filters, windshield wipers and also a 'turbo control valve' that regulates the turbo pressure when accellerating. Many hours later I emerged from the garage and the car no longer vibrated when braking, drove altogether nicer, and had become much quicker. Result! Fast forward two more months, and today I fixed, this time in the marina parking lot, the vibration issue when accellerating by installing a new drive axle. Now the car drives and handles like new. We'll see how long this Volvo manages to carry us around in style and comfort. We're not adding that many miles to it, as I do all commuting by motorcycle and Anneke does almost all her business around town on her snazzy bicycle.
More on the motorcycles, and on so many other things we have experienced and done here in LA, in the coming days. Thanks for reading!
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