Final Destination Reached!!

1108 Devisadero Pacific Grove, CA 93950 --
I just dropped the 2 coreys off at the airport in San Jose (we woke up at 315AM) and now I'm all alone on the mean streets of Monterey, CA. So I left you all with a cliff hanger on the last post so I figure i'll let you guys know what happened. Monday morning after spending the night in Salinas, CA (saw some hookers doin work on the corner, it was pretty funny) we woke up and walked to the mechanic that I had my car towed to. The guy was really nice but they said that they would have to order a new part for the car, he looked up the price and the part was $3000. I laughed at him and told him that there was no way i was paying for that. He told me that the auto body across the street might be able to weld something on for me (they refused to weld because of liability issues I assume.) Anyway I drive the car across the street and this old guy comes out and greets me, turns out he has an old mercedes too (not as old as mine and not diesel but still...). So he puts t up on the jack and starts throwin ideas around. First he wanted to wedge a block of wood in there to keep it from bottoming out, we weren't too confident in that fix. I kept asking him if he would just weld the hole in the bottom and finally he gave in and decided to give it a try. After lunch (they close the shop from 12 to 1 every day for lunch) the old man came back with some bolts and metal straps. He got to work bending these straps to fit in this oddly shaped area, while he was working we were all just hanging around the shop, the mechanics granddaughter (6 or 7 yrs old i would guess) came out with her dogs (a pet chiwawa and a boxer) the chiwawa chilled with us for a while but the boxer was really scared of me for some reason so he had to go inside (maybe it was the beard). The little girl brought us out pens, magazines, business cards, and candy. After about 3 hours of work and some serious welding (the guy burned himself like 10 times) the car was ready to go. The old man kept telling me that this was only a temporary fix and that I would need to get a new part installed once I got to Pebble Beach. I think he was just trying to cover his back, but i check out his work and it looked good. He told me to drive slow and to take the weight out of the trunk. So the last 20 mins of our journey, from Salinas to Pebble Beach we threw all of the stuff that was in the trunk into the front seat and the coreys sat in the back seats. Anyway, we made it without any further complications and I have been driving around with the bandaged car for the past 3 days. It made it to and from San Jose today which is about an hour each way. I'm pretty confident in the old mans craftsmanship and will continue to drive around with the repair until his welds give and I start bottoming out again. Despite this slight setback the trip was awesome. One of us will put all the pictures on some sort of picture sharing website so you guys can check them out.

I want to give a special shout out to the two coreys, Thanks for coming with me, I had a blast.

Everyone else, keep in touch. I prob won't see many of you for a while unless you come out and visit. Your all welcome to stop by anytime. Otherwise keep in touch.

~Dave