Tales from the Christensen Cruiser

I got back to Santa Fe, and Robbie’s house and started in on the various lists of projects to do around the house and on the truck before the final push home. One of the first things that Robbie and I did was get some tickets to Robert Cray, who was playing Sunday night at the Lensic Theater, just down the street from the house. Robert was just great, with a very small band, just drums, keyboards and bass. All three guys were really solid players, and of course Robert was amazing. Cool to see a guy who grew up around Tacoma and made good, playing in Santa Fe. It was a fabulous show.

By this point, Toby’s wife Robin had returned from a major trip and I got to meet and know her a bit. She is a very cool gal and seems the perfect match for Toby. We went on a nice walk close to his mom’s house where we found pottery shards from centuries ago and had a fun little picnic. I can’t say that I found any all by myself, but Toby pointed me in the right direction and I saw them. Pretty cool.

I want to backtrack a smidge and talk a bit about Carl the dog. I said I’d get back to it, so here goes. On the first bounce in Santa Fe when I had first arrived, I had come in to the house with Robbie and as we went into the back yard there were feathers everywhere and a destroyed pillow. Robbie just said “Oh Carl.” I was like – Oh Carl? – I’d certainly discipline him on that one, so Robbie and I had the corporal punishment discussion, where I said it takes a village, and if I had his permission to spank his dog on the butt if I caught him in some sort of infraction.  Well, the very next day I was reading a book that Robbie had given me (a fabulous book called “The Eighty Dollar Champion” – I highly recommend it), and I went out to work on the truck. I was gone for twenty minutes at most, and came back in and the book was chewed up – still readable, but pretty destroyed. So I picked up the remains of the book and went after Carl. This dog is FAST, so I couldn’t catch him. He went under the bed to a point that I couldn’t reach him, and I have pretty long arms. This of course pissed me off even more, so I lifted the end of the bed up a couple of feet and dropped it a couple of times, whereupon Carl made his exit and went to his next hiding place. At this point I am frothing at the mouth with the book in my hand, screaming, “Where are you, you son of a bitch!!”, (one of the few times one could use that phrase properly). It is at this precise moment that my friend Eric showed up to witness this scene. He’s standing at the front door with a very amused expression and points out Carl behind an end table whereupon I pulled that away and Carl made his move for the door at high speed with me hot on his tail. He rounded the corner through the French doors so fast that his front paws were getting traction, but his rear legs were sideways and just getting air. It was like some cartoon – he was getting away from this maniac with the tasty book in his hand as fast as he could. It truly was one of the funniest dog moments I can remember. It was hilarious. This dude is major fast – I never touched him. I couldn’t! He eventually got that same book again, chewing both covers off, but still leaving it readable. I have all the pieces as a souvenir of Carl.  Keep in mind that he’s a young boy, still under a year old, and he really does need a job. He’s a fine dog and will only get better as he matures. And really, in the big picture, in the moment, I was more crazed than Carl. I need to take a look at that I guess, as I am in the market for a young puppy and will be having some of the same issues with whomever it is when I finally connect with a pup. To that point, it was about then that we went to the Santa Fe shelter a couple of times. Nicest shelter I have ever seen – very plush. One of my goals was to find this new puppy.

I got to hang out with Eric and his wife Corinna some, which was a delight. He lives in a house that his grandmother built many many years ago, when Santa Fe was really a small town. She was around when Georgia O’Keeffe lived in the area and had her over for libations – kind of a cool thing. His grandmother had a few design features that were very cool, my favorite being a door in the backsplash that went directly to the trashcan outside. I love good design. Also, it had a fireplace typical of the area – totally different than most places in the country – the firebox is such that it focuses the heat to a specific point. They look like they just wouldn’t work at all, but they do. No smoke shelf or corners anywhere, just a totally organic shape and they work magnificently. Eric and I got to kibitz on a project or two around his house, one of my favorite things to do, one of which was an electrical problem with a bunch of convoluted wiring. I love working on projects with pals, and Eric is a very competent guy, so that makes it even more fun. Throwing ideas around and finding innovative solutions to interesting problems is one of my favorite things to do.

I had been working off the list that Robbie and I had made of stuff that needed to be tweaked around his house. For example, he had a fairly new clothes drier that had no heat, so he was drying clothes by blowing cold air on them – for HOURS! Fixing that was my favorite thing, but I knocked out a lot of things on the list and then got to work on the truck. I decided that a tune up was in order and got to work on that. I put all the parts in in the most workmanlike manner and went to start it and – nothing. She wouldn’t fire up. This does not engender confidence in a mechanic; I’ve tuned cars since I was twelve, so I was not pleased. To make a very long story shorter, remember when the rig caught on fire in Florida? Well, it turns out that the insulation on the main wire to the distributer had melted, and just the moving around of stuff during the tune up was enough to break the compromised insulation off and short the wire out.  It was hidden of course, so it took me a while to figure that one out. I did a bunch of other stuff to the truck, like get all of the running lights on the camper going and so forth, making new springs for the lights out of repurposed springs from ball point pens. There were a bunch of other things that I got done which I won’t bore you with, but the rig seemed good to go. Robbie was heading out to Florida for a veterinary conference, and I planned to leave a few hours later, once I finished packing everything. So I fire up the rig, put it in gear and under power, well, there is none. I couldn’t make it to the end of the driveway. A very inauspicious beginning to the final push! So I got the trusty extra bicycle that Robbie had let me use after I cut the tree down that was growing through it, and rode the four miles to the auto parts store and bought a new coil and rode back and installed it. That finally finished the tune up and I got on the road the next morning towards Colorado.