Dispatches From the Fortress – Day 41

Yesterday, I took a baby step — well, maybe half a baby step — towards getting out of the house more. I got my car working again. It's been in the garage with a dead battery for about two and a half weeks and I decided it was time to rectify that. I called Triple-A and I guess their drivers aren't busy these days because a fellow was here in under eight minutes.

He checked the battery and said all it needed was a jump to get it started and then I needed to drive it around for about 45 minutes. So I drove it around for 45 minutes, unable to think of anyplace in all of Los Angeles, California that I wanted to go. The last time this happened to me — must have been twenty years ago — I drove to a store I'd been wanting to visit that was about a 45 minute drive away. This time, no such destination came to mind so I drove west for about 22.5 minutes and then turned around and came back.

Most interesting thing I saw: At the legendary corner of Pico and Sepulveda Boulevards — made famous on Dr. Demento's radio show and nowhere else — there's usually a guy on the southeast corner selling flowers. He was there but, so help me, he was selling masks.

There wasn't much traffic. Almost everyone I saw was wearing a mask. One lady who was walking her dog had a kerchief on and so did the dog.

I paused for a red light near a little park-like area. There, I saw three young folks lounging on a blanket enjoying a picnic lunch. They were all wearing masks and carefully tucking bites of food behind their masks for consumption.

And I saw an awful lot of restaurants that I would have thought would be open for take-out and delivery but were instead shut tight. I hope they all reopen after this is over but I bet some of them won't.

When I got home, I put the car in the garage and made sure that no door was open and no interior light was on. One of those, I suspect, caused my battery to drain when I went two weeks without driving the car.

I wonder why someone can't invent a component that stops all drawing off the battery when it reaches the minimum level necessary to get the engine started. Maybe someone has and the Lexus folks don't make it standard because they want to drum up business for the American Automobile Association. A car that costs that much shouldn't be rendered useless because you forgot to turn off your friggin' dome light.