#Clutch Repairs Gold Coast

[krakinautomotivesblog]

Driving Mistakes Call For Gearbox Repair Service

Anyone who drives a car knows why and when you need gearbox repair service to keep the vehicle going without any issues. Gears are characteristically reliable mechanisms. However, the gearbox is nothing but a collection of machines. So it is only regular that the parts will need some repair service sooner or later. Unfortunately, however, like all mechanical things, transmissions eventually wear out.

Then it will fail to act as efficiently as they are expected to. However, as a driver, people also make a few mistakes that end up damaging the gearbox even further and faster. If you don’t refrain from making these mistakes, you must call the gearbox repair service in Gold Coast to inspect and repair the parts timely.

Avoid a few mistakes while driving the car:

Driving a well-designed and good-conditioned car feels like a dream. However, people can be reckless without knowing. If you want to keep your vehicle running smoothly for a long time, taking care of the gearbox entirely is extremely important.

Here we have mentioned a few common driving mistakes that call for a transmission problem. You must keep them in mind to make sure that you are taking care of your car well.

THE RIGHT GEAR FOR THE RIGHT SPEED

Well, if you are a driver, you know how important selecting the right gear is. If you aim for a particular speed while driving, you must put your car in that suitable gear. The right gear for the selected speed is an efficient concept. It is valid when you decelerate during driving. It is also valid when accelerating. This is natural to change gears smoothly. Especially when you start to accelerate during driving, a smooth change in gear is extremely crucial. It is also the same when you lower the speed in reverse. It requires promptly changing the gear back down.

The sound of the engine always indicates if you are following the rule of the right gear for the right speed. When you are driving at the wrong speed in a set gear, the car’s engine will let you know through exhausting sounds. A lot of ignorant drivers have the vehicle in the wrong gear for lengthy periods. It can be seriously harmful to the car’s health.  

AVOID GEAR LAZINESS

Well, speed needs to be different on different roads. Depending on several factors, people drive at different speeds. On many routes, speeds fluctuate regularly between gears. For example, you are well-known for the road where you commute every day.

On that road, your speed will always be on the higher side, and you will constantly feel on edge between the third and fourth gears. To minimise gearbox issues, change gears as required. Otherwise, your gearbox will get damaged.

AVOID POTHOLES AND LUMPS

Road condition is one of the most influential factors that can damage a car’s transmission system. If you keep driving on the road with lots of bumps and potholes, your car will wear out sooner than a vehicle running on a smoother road. The problem of potholes only gets worse as the winter season comes.

With fog and rainwater, it becomes harder to notice them. While you are driving, ensure that you drive with care and attention. Also, if possible, you must avoid the edge of the road. In the age of the road, there can be more potholes and caters. You must always avoid any cater that can be hurtful to the car.

If you are also looking for quality gearbox repair service in Gold Coast, you must contact  Krakin Auto Motive. We are an experienced automobile service agency that offers all types of car maintenance services. To make our services more consumer-friendly, we have introduced after pay service. Through it, you can take our service first without paying the total amount. Later you can pay in small interest-free instalments. Talk to our team for more information.

[mjauto]

How to Detect and Repair the Most Common Clutch Problems?

The clutch is an essential part of the working machinery of a car. It allows manual transmission vehicles to change their speed levels while driving. It also helps to stop the vehicle without putting the engine off, which is the most important factor when it comes to racing. The clutch mechanism allows one racer to outpace others on the track. Whether you are a transport driver, car owner, or even a car mechanic in Southport, you must know the most common clutch issues that may arise while you are driving as well as the steps necessary to fix them to help avert road accidents. Read on carefully to know the most common clutch issues and how to fix them. 

Clutch chatter

This is a jerking condition or vibration that takes place when there is an engagement with the clutch. It is one of the most difficult problems when it comes to clutch issues. 

Causes of clutch chatter

Oil from the transmission or engine can contaminate the clutch disc

Worn bearing retainer

Bent clutch disk

Worn pilot bearing 

Loose clutch cover

Glazed or burned linings

Causes of eternal clutch chatter

Bent release fork

Worn-out U-joints, CV joints

Misalignment of the chassis

Misalignment of drive train components

Loose transmission cross member

Broken engine

Clutch slipping 

It is the most common problem with automobiles that needs clutch repairs in Gold Coast. Driving in heavy traffic greatly affect the clutch, since drivers are using the clutch pedal very frequently. It is expected the clutch to slip while it is being engaged to make sure the car doesn’t jerk at the time of starting.  Again, the clutch is expected to slip while changing gears to reduce the shock on the transmission and drivetrain. However, after releasing the clutch pedal fully, the clutch should hold firm, provide the transmission and engine with a solid coupling. If it doesn’t happen, the car must be inspected by a mechanic. 

Clutch not allowing to release 

After depressing the clutch pedal when a clutch can’t able to release fully, the disc will turn the input shaft continuously. This might prevent the driver to shift the transmission from neutral to gear, causing the engine to stall at the time of stopping. A clutch that is not allowed to release may have a leaky or faulty slave, stretched released cable, a worn pilot bearing, air in the hydraulic or cylinder line. 

Clutch noise 

Squealing or growling noise is caused mainly due to worn or seized bearings. Also, the chirping noise is caused by a vibration around the clutch actuator mechanism. 

Internal causes of clutch noise:

Ill-lubricated or bent release fork

Defective input shaft bearing

Improper installation of the disk

Worn stop pins

Misaligned or ill-lubricated pilot bearing

Misalignment 

Causes of eternal clutch problem

Broken cable self-adjuster

Worn engine or transmission mount

Half shaft component 

Hope, you have understood how to detect and repair the most common clutch problems. If you find the content of this article helpful, don’t forget to share it with your friends, and get back to us for more exciting content! 

[vavuska]

Pirates books

Pirate Latitudes (2009) by Michael Crichton

I enjoyed this book, a crew of people with special abilities that recals Ocean Eleven, but I didn't liked the main protagonist ( too perfect, too invincible) and the way in which Crichton portrayed female characters: very sexulized and objectified, I think that it could be appropriate for the age in which the book is setted, but doesn't make me comfortable.

Jamaica in 1665 is a rough outpost of the English crown, a minor colony holding out against the vast supremacy of the Spanish empire. Port Royal, Jamaica′s capital, a cut-throat town of taverns, grog shops, and bawdy houses, is devoid of London′s luxuries; life here can end swiftly with dysentery or a dagger in your back. But for Captain Charles Hunter it is a life that can also lead to riches, if he abides by the island′s code. In the name of His Majesty King Charles II of England, gold in Spanish hands is gold for the taking. And law in the New World is made by those who take it into their hands.

Word in port is that the Spanish treasure galleon El Trinidad, fresh from New Spain, is stalled in nearby Matanceros harbor awaiting repairs. Heavily fortified, the impregnable Spanish outpost is guarded by the blood-swiller Cazalla, a favorite commander of King Philip IV himself. With the governor′s backing, Hunter assembles a roughneck crew to infiltrate the enemy island and commandeer the galleon, along with its fortune in Spanish gold. The raid is as perilous as the bloody legends of Matanceros suggest, and Hunter will lose more than one man before he finds himself on the island′s shores, where dense jungle and the firepower of Spanish infantry are all that stand between him and the treasure.

With the help of his cunning crew, Hunter hijacks El Trinidad and escapes the deadly clutches of Cazalla, leaving plenty of carnage in his wake. But his troubles have just begun. . . .

Pirate Latitudes is a fantastically enjoyable and light-hearted adventure yarn about pirates and profiteers in 17th century Jamaica. It is deeply researched and full of lively historical detail. It shows Crichton going back to the territory he explored in novels such as The Great Train Robbery – old-fashioned entertainment, Pirate Latitudes is Michael Crichton at his best: a rollicking adventure tale pulsing with relentless action, crackling atmosphere, and heart-pounding suspense.

Pirate Cycle by Valerio Evangelisti

Valerio Evangelisti is one of the greatest Italian historical fiction alive. Evangelisti is great into re-creating historical settings and non-likable characters as protagonist. Evangelisti doesn't use the stereotypes of over-power anti-horoes typical of us writers, Evangelisti portrays the worst part of human nature that is, for me, more close to reality.

Evangelisti does not introduce to the reader the romanticized versione of pirats, but he makes clear to the reader that pirates in reality were bloody, cruel criminals.

Evangelisti also evidences how pirates consider women as sexual objects rather than persons, but he also subvertes this topic and in the end the male protagonist realizes that women are real persons with their feelings and thoughts in the worst way possible.

1. Tortuga (2008)

In 1685, the days of the pirates grouped in the brotherhood known as the Brothers of the Coast, obedient to the king of France, are numbered. Louis XIV made peace with Spain and the raids of the Caribbean freebooters, based on the island of Tortuga (La Tortue), have become uncomfortable. A new governor has taken possession of the island and intends to normalize it.

It is in this situation that a Portuguese boatswain, Rogério de Campos, a former Jesuit with a troubled past, is captured by the pirate commander Lorencillo and enlisted by force. He finds himself living among disconcerting people, with a free and undisciplined life and unpredictable outbursts of cruelty.

Slowly, Rogério is conquered by the sometimes fraternal, sometimes ferocious rules of that singular community. His is a progressive descent into hell - a hell, however, founded on the unleashing of instincts, and in its own way "democratic". Tortuga itself, the hideout of the Filibusta faithful in theory to France, has the appearance of a republic, yet it is based on the most rigid slavery.

Rogério, who has passed into the service of the grim knight De Grammont, takes part in the last great adventure of the Tortuga pirates: the bloody capture of the city of Campeche on the Mexican coast. The only light, in that infernal conquest, is the love of the Portuguese for an African slave to whom De Grammont himself is attracted. It will be the episode that will turn the return journey into tragedy.

Between boardings, episodes of ferocity, moments of camaraderie, on overloaded vessels where blood mixes with sweat, a perception torments Rogério. A new society is being founded in the Caribbean. Yes, but which one? What is the prelude to the end of Tortuga?

2. Veracruz (2009)

We are in 1683, two years before the events narrated in the novel "Tortuga". The knight Michel de Grammont, the last legendary leader of the Brothers of the Coast that infest the Caribbean Sea, proposes to his companions a crazy idea: to conquer and plunder Veracruz, the most important city of New Spain, considered impregnable. An enterprise also condemned by that crown of France of which the pirates are said to be agents, which signed an ephemeral peace treaty with the Spaniards. The largest fleet that has sailed Central American waters sets sail from the island of Roatàn. Reckless, cynical men, broken at all cruelty. If there is an ideal, it is to get rich quickly and squander everything in the few years of life that remain. A painting by the Fratelli della Costa at the same time crudely realistic and objectively picturesque, but seriously documented. Almost the antithesis of Salgarian romanticism, and of the abundant non-fiction that read the epic of the Tortuga pirates in the key of libertarian revolt. The environmental background are suggestive islets, crystalline seas, white sands, coastal cities protected by coral reefs. Who said hell has dark colors?

3. Cartagena (2012)

In 1697 Louis XIV sent an imposing fleet against Cartagena, in present-day Colombia: one of the richest cities of the Spanish overseas empire, considered impregnable. Admiral De Pointis, however, needs the help of the Filibusta to navigate the Caribbean. Except that the Tortuga was abandoned and the surviving Costa Brothers scattered over the mountains of the island of Hispaniola. Whoever manages to get them together is Governor Ducasse, a former slaver, a great scoundrel but in some ways elevated, fearless adventurer. The capture of Cartagena will see the tension grow between the noble De Pointis and the plebeian Ducasse, between the Brothers della Costa and the regular army; up to the open rebellion of the freebooters against the arrogance of an aristocracy that even in France is beginning to be questioned. It will be the last act of the brotherhood of outlaws that on the island of Tortuga had taken shape and terrorized the Caribbean for almost fifty years. However, the Fratelli della Costa will not disappear, but will be called to a different destiny...

Brethren of the Coast by James L. Nelson

Another US author that use the typical thrope of the annoying perfect male protagonist. Marlow main goal is being accepted by Virginia well-to-do society and this fails to make him an appreciable person, also he is not portrayed as racist as the other characters and for that age seems to be too unconventional to be belivable. Elizabeth, Marlowe's love interest, is a Penelope, lured by rich bachelors, but she doesn't have any of the Greek lady's intelligence. Elizabeth is the classical damsel in distress that needs to be protected by an obsessive lover. Their love affair is forced and born from obsession and selfish bourgeois interest. Elizabeth is a former prostitute but can read, is well-educated, has the proper behavior of a lady and is bothered by Marlowe's low-class manners, and that's make her unbelievable as character.

However, I enjoyed a lot the pirate Leroy, the main antagonist of the first book, completely crazy, cruel and out-of-control for his alcoholism and madness caused by siphilis, and the righteous admiral, that recalls a lot Lord Curter Beckett, of the third one.

1. The Guardship (2000)

Shortly after Thomas Marlowe's arrival in Williamsburg, Virginia, all in that newfound capital city are speaking his name. With the bounty from his years as a pirate--a life he intends to renounce and keep forever secret--he purchases a fine plantation from a striking young widow, and soon after kills the favorite son of one of Virginia's most powerful clans while defending her honor. But it is a daring feat of remarkable cunning that truly sets local tongues wagging: a stunning move that wins Marlowe command of Plymouth Prize, the colony's decrepit guardship.

But even as the enigmatic Marlowe bravely leads the King's sailors in bloody pitched battle against the cutthroats who infest the waters off Virginia's shores, a threat from his illicit past looms on the horizon that could doom Marlowe and his plans. Jean-Pierre LeRois, captain of the Vengeance--a brigand notorious even among other brigands for his violence and debauchery--plots to seize the colony's wealth, forcing Marlowe to choose between losing all or facing the one man he fears. Only an explosive confrontation on the open sea can determine whether the Chesapeake will be ruled by the crown or the Brethren of the Coast.

2. The Blackbirder (2001)

In a blind rage, King James, ex-slave and now Marlowe's comrade in arms, slaughters the crew of a slave ship and makes himself the most wanted man in Virginia. The governor gives Marlowe a choice: Hunt James down and bring him back to hang or lose everything Marlowe has built for himself and his wife, Elizabeth.

Marlowe sets out in pursuit of the ex-slave turned pirate, struggling to maintain control over his crew -- rough privateers who care only for plunder -- and following James's trail of destruction. But Marlowe is not James's only threat, as factions aboard James's own ship vie for control and betrayal stalks him to the shores of Africa.

3. The Pirate Round (2002)

In 1706, war still rages in Europe, and the tobacco planters of the Virginia colony's Tidewater struggle against shrinking markets and pirates lurking off the coast. But American seafarers have found a new source of wealth: the Indian Ocean and ships carrying fabulous treasure to the great mogul of India.

Faced with ruin, Thomas Marlowe is determined to find a way to the riches of the East. Carrying his crop of tobacco in his privateer, Elizabeth Galley, he secretly plans to continue on to the Indian Ocean to hunt the mogul's ships. But Marlowe does not know that he is sailing into a triangle of hatred and vengeance -- a rendezvous with two bitter enemies from his past. Ultimately, none will emerge unscathed from the blood and thunder, the treachery and danger of sailing.

“Martin Silver Eye Trilogy” by Matilde Asensi

I love Matilde Asensi. She is one of my favorite writers and it is important to mention that her character is the only female pirate of the list. Catalina Solís is a brave woman that find herself to become a pirate, even if she was educated to be a good wife and a respectable lady. A fierce and complex character, completely different from the wood-figures with no shades of personality created by Crichton and Nelson, Catalina is forced by disgraces to put in discussion all her own convictions and becames an hero on her own. Catalina Solís' serie has a special place in my heart.

1. Firm ground (2007)

Throughout her bibliography, Matilde Asensi had addressed the historical mysteries of the Amazon jungle, China or medieval Europe, but she still had a pending framework: travel to America during the seventeenth century. Known as the Martín Ojo de Plata trilogy, or the great Spanish Golden Age Saga, Tierra Firme became the first volume of a new challenge for the author. There is the story of a woman, Catalina Solís, who must adopt the personality of her brother Martín, killed by some English pirates during an expedition to the New World. After spending two years on a desert island, Catalina becomes Martín Ojo de Plata, one of the most vengeful smugglers in the Caribbean.

2. Vengeance in Seville (2010)

After the adventures of Firm Ground, Catalina Solís returned to Spain in 1607, more specifically to the city of Seville, where she proposed to assassinate the Curvo, an important family of merchants from the New World. A book that serves as a great testimony of a time as miserable and splendid as was the Spanish Golden Age.

3. The conspiracy of Cortés (2012)

Annihilating the Curvo becomes Catalina Solís' motive to unmask the merchant family, this time from the New World. The key piece of the story falls on the treasure map of Hernán Cortés, through which the Curvos seek to overthrow the king of Spain. An epic finishing touch for the intense journey that Asensi proposes to us with his only trilogy so far.

Check my GoodReads for more: [X]

[piermanwalter]

I had a dream that my boyfriend took me on vacation to an island on the Marseille coast as an inheritance scheme. His aunts were extremely rich and lived on their own private island, and although he wasn’t very close with them, he felt like if he made amends early, he had a real chance to inherit the island after they died, since they didn’t have kids of their own. I thought this was a scummy thing to do, but I went along anyway for the free vacation.

Although the island was pretty far from shore, they didn’t own a motorboat because they were good friends with the coast guard and could ask them for a lift whenever they needed. That was how we got to the island. As soon as my boyfriend and I stepped off the bus to Marseille, we were surrounded by coast guards and I thought we were getting arrested.

The island was about half a mile long, shaped like a teardrop with a beach circling the fattest end and the pointy end tapering into a cliff. The mansion was built near the pointy end on the tallest spot on the island, looming hundreds of feet over the beach, which had a little pier on it with a couple of row and sail boats. There was technically an herb garden, but the Mediterranean sun caused the plants to grow out of control into a dense wild wall of rosemary, orange trees, myrtle, nasturtiums, lavender, and lots of other smelly things that perfumed the air around the island. 

It was awkward being there because I couldn’t speak French, and early on my boyfriend had to translate everything, but later we realised we could all sort of speak Spanish and things were a lot easier.

I found out the reason she was so reticent about leaving money and property to the rest of the family was because they collectively disowned her in the 70s after she refused to break up with her now wife, but she was starting to warm up to my boyfriend and I because we weren’t born then.

My boyfriend’s aunt belonged to a rich family, but after they cut her off, she got even richer off real estate on her own. She had red hair fading to grey and was pretty strong due to her insistence of doing all home repairs and boat maintenance on the island herself. Her wife was bedridden from an autoimmune disease that gave her severe arthritis. She mostly spent her time sorting the herbs my boyfriend’s aunt picked from the garden while watching Antonio Banderas movies, especially The Mambo Kings and Shrek. Every day her wife would wheel her down to the beach until the water came up to her ankles and they would watch the sunset together. Another thing she did was ask me to dress up in her old clothes and I would catwalk back and forth across the room while she commentated. My boyfriend’s aunt said she was jealous because her old clothes didn’t fit me and when she asked my boyfriend to model, he wouldn’t do it. Although her wife was in constant pain from arthritis, she never complained and would sometimes clap when I put together a particularly great outfit even though it hurt her hands. She said she felt great, but relied on painkillers to sleep.

The mansion had a generator, but electricity could only be used to power lights, the single wall phone, TV, fridge, some medical devices, and DVD player. The only way to charge our phones and laptops was to unplug the medical devices, which we agreed was morally unconscionable so we didn’t do it. Nothing important was out of reach of someone in a wheelchair. There was a bed in every room and peppers would be drying on top of the TV and bras would be hanging on the entrance doorway. It was obvious that the mansion was suited to the needs of two specific people, and we had to figure out how to live around this structure without disrupting it. 

Only five or six rooms, all on the ground floor, were regularly used, and the rest were a maze of racks of beautiful vintage clothes and stacks of cabinets of the outrageously tacky and opulent knickknacks old ladies like. One time I was digging around in a pile of faded beaded clutch purses because the aunts asked me to get a pair of kitchen scissors left there by accident and I opened one of them. Inside were many long flat rectangular lace-covered objects covered with little mirrors. I first thought they were folding fans, but I squeezed one and a digital display appeared in the mirrors. They were thermometers. I found a ridiculously flashy black alligator belt with a gold buckle that had ambers and onyxes set in it, and my boyfriend’s aunt’s wife said I could keep it because it went so well with my bikini. 

We spent most of the time taking the boats out, swimming on the beach, and helping around the house by doing dishes and laundry by hand and attempting to stop the herb garden from consuming the entire mansion. The food was always amazing because of the aforementioned herb garden and also because we could get mussels off the rocks whenever we felt like and if we ever got bored of that, my boyfriend’s aunt would put out a few lobster pots and octopus pots and mullet lines. Since we were always going in and out of the water, it was a hassle to change all the time, and I eventually got used to wearing a black and yellow bikini around the house, which was fine because everyone else was doing the same thing.

We were only supposed to stay for one week, but dangerously high waves and stormy weather stopped all civilian boat activity for longer than expected. This trip started out as an inheritance scheme, but my boyfriend and his aunts started genuinely liking each other.

Although the island was a fantastic place to live, some days thunderstorms confined us all inside and we were running out of food. We weren’t going to starve, but we were running out of regular processed things like wine, chocolate, and ham. More worryingly, my boyfriend’s aunt’s wife was running out of painkillers, but she said taking them during the day made her too tired to tell the difference between Seville and sweet oranges so she started cutting pills in half. She said she would be fine because she had plenty of immune and arthritis medicines.

One time when the weather was slightly better we went swimming far into the ocean and the coast guard came to check on us, yelled at my boyfriend for wearing a rival soccer team’s jersey, and then left to tell his aunts we were ok. I was upset because they just left us there. I could swim back fine on my own, but it’s the thought that counts.

Even the days spend inside weren’t too bad, since there were Antonio Banderas movies, with the added benefit of increasing our Spanish skills, and troves of vintage clothes and accessories to look through. 

His aunts said if we got married, we could live in a different luxury house in Europe every year for the rest of our lives and I threw a sock at him and said I’d only marry him if we played a different Mario game every year for the rest of our lives. This is an inside joke because he is extremely into Super Mario 3D World speedrunning and keeps trying to drag me into it. 

The weather got worse. Two weeks later, I was walking to the bathroom in the middle of the night when I heard my boyfriend’s aunt’s wife sputtering through the door. The painkillers must have worn off. I went inside to check on her and she grabbed my hand with crushing force, and when I asked if she was ok, she kept trying to apologise, and wouldn’t let go or calm down until she told me about something that happened 50 years ago. 

When she and her wife were the same age as my boyfriend and I, they were walking in the water along a beach on the Marseille coast when she saw a black and yellow sea snake and screamed. After they ran out of the water, her then-girlfriend kept running until she reached a beach house, took an oar, ran back into the water, flung the sea snake out of the water with the oar, and beat it to death. Her girlfriend’s family saw it all and it was the breaking point that made them demand her to break up.

She said I frightened her, but she didn’t know that her wife would kill me because of it. She said if I came to kill her in return, she would forgive me. It was obvious she was panicking and delusional, but I went along with it and said I didn’t mind getting killed if it meant being reborn as a human, and I didn’t want to kill her because she was so nice to me. She still felt she had to atone, so she asked me to bite her like I must have wanted. I refused, but she started panicking again, so I bit the back of her hand, not hard enough to leave indentations, and then she calmed down. 

After that, I left the room and woke everyone else up. I decided not to tell anyone about the snake story. After her wife got her to take another half pill, we all went to sleep. The next day, she didn’t seem to remember what happened.

Ten days later, she died when the sun went down as her wife wheeled her down into the water. Her family washed her body in the sea and wrapped her in sheets while I waited in the house. She called the coast guard and they said it would take them two days to prepare a boat big enough to safely transport all of us and a dead body off the island in bad weather. We coped by trying to do our daily routines as if she was still here, collecting plants from the garden for her to sort and not charging our phones because that would mean unplugging medical devices and changing out DVDs when the credits started. Antonio Banderas movies playing to a pile of herbs and flowers on a corpse. 

My boyfriend’s aunt was mired in grief and started treating me worse and worse. It started with petty things like opening a box of chocolates and saying her wife would have loved the chocolates I had eaten, and talking about the time so many unexpected guests showed up at a house party that her wife got sick after cooking for all of them. This was understandable, but then she found the alligator belt in my clothes. She was initially furious because she thought I was stealing, but when I got up from the bed where I was crying, she whipped me in the face with it and said a snake would always show its true colors. She said she bashed my brains into the sand once before and her regret was not being able to save her wife from me a second time. 

My boyfriend was able to shut the situation down and the dinner that night was nerve shredding. My boyfriend’s aunt only spoke French and glared at him whenever he tried to translate. Throughout the meal, she would say something and his face would flash a look of pure terror before he fake laughed to cover it up. He was sweating like mad. 

After dinner, he told me his aunt said how nice it was for her wife to see her clothes on someone who looked like her when she was young, and the closest thing she had to that was him. Then she told him about the snake and said she would protect him no matter what. Then out of nowhere he confessed he was trans and I was like, “I’m so glad you trust me enough to say this, and this doesn’t change how I feel about you at all, but your aunt wants to kill me because she thinks I’m a sea snake who killed her wife. This is not important right now.” Then he said it is important because when he came out and started transitioning, the whole family supported him, and she resented him for being accepted while she got disowned. He might be in as much danger as I am. 

We came up with a plot to recharge a phone on one of the medical device outlets, call the coast guard to say his aunt was unstable and we felt like we were in danger while leaving out everything about the sea snake, sneak out tomorrow when the coast guard were supposed to arrive, steal a sailboat, let all the other boats loose, and hang around off the island where we might drown before the coast guard rescues us, but we won’t get murdered.

My boyfriend’s aunt checked on him in the morning, so he stayed inside and called the coast guard while I changed into my bikini and went to the beach before making my way to the pier. I left all my clothes and phone and passport, to be less suspicious, but took the alligator belt because fuck her and also in memory of her wife. I waited for my boyfriend to finish calling and leave the house, but he didn’t. 

I got worried and went back to the house, but halfway there, his aunt calmly walked out of the front door holding a kitchen knife in one hand and an oar in the other, and said if I ran for the boats, my boyfriend would die in my place to atone for leading me to the island so I could kill her wife, so I ran towards the other side of the island.

If I tried to fight I might kill her but then I’d be a murderer. If I tried to stall until the coast guard arrived I’d definitely get killed. If I tried to swim away, I might look dead from a distance and survive. I took a running jump off the cliff on the tapered end of the island into the ocean and died. 

When the coast guard arrived, they found my boyfriend’s aunt on the beach, dead facedown in the shallows, and my boyfriend locked and barricaded on the second floor facing the cliff. 

Later autopsy reports showed my boyfriend’s aunt and her wife both died of sea snake venom, likely from snakes who were forced towards the land from bad weather. My body was never recovered. 

After an atrocious court case where half the family thought he killed everyone and the other half were elbowing their way in for a piece of the inheritance, it was eventually ruled that my boyfriend was innocent and got everything including the island, which was our initial goal but kind of a hollow victory considering his aunt died, and then he had to watch helplessly as his other aunt also died after forcing his girlfriend to commit suicide, who may or may not have been a vengeful reincarnated sea snake. 

I’m not sure what prompted this dream, since this guy isn’t my boyfriend in real life, nor is he trans or has rich French aunts, as far as I know. Also there’s no sea snakes in the Mediterranean.

[kaimactrash]

Hey its my bae, Shihosu!

on the sexuality & gender, Shihosu is a member of the keiphin species, and their physical sex is much more of a spectrum in their species, and few fall to either extreme, many being in between, so i felt as she identifies with she her pronouns, she doesn’t specifically identify as a woman. Aliens? how do they work?

In bright lights she, and all coastal Keiphins, flesh becomes semi-transparent enough to see her organs and bones, so Shihosu began wearing clothes when around non-keiphins to reduce discomfort.

her prestory is below!

On the planet of Frenran, on the coast to the west, Shihosu was born. She was a coastal Keiphins, a off shoot of the oceanic Keiphins spieces, where instead of living deep within their ocean, lived on the land, in the swampiest areas along the seaside.

In her youth Shihosu was stuck and impaled through her chest by a barb, by the time her mother, Bonya, found her, whatever had caused this was long gone, but so was Shihosu.

Naturally, Bonya let out a deep wail of distress for some time, unknowingly attracting the attention of a demigoddess, Octovar. Bonya did not recognise her though, Octovar had spent most of her time in the deeper ocean, serving the creatures of this region, while those who had left the water were lucky if anyone in their living generations who had seen her, there were no confirmed sightings of the goddess since the Keiphin mother was born.

Bonya instinctively clutched her child closer staring up at the creature, twice the height of even the tallest of the Keiphins, she had 4 arms and 3 sets of gills across her body, cheeks, neck. and ribcage had a set of two on either side. Some of her skin was a deep dark plum colour that reached down to her waist, where the skin became speckled gold, 5 tentacle-like limbs came out the bottom, but the rest of her legs were a long oval shape. Golden fins came out her head, that almost emulated the hair shape that some of the other land races had, but that same thick, fleshy, fin that Keiphins have. They would morally have 2 to 4 of these, which signaled the physical strength of them, Octovar had at least 10 of them creating a short hairstyle look.

“bring her to me.” Octovars voice echoed around them. Uncertainly Bonya carried her child to the god, only 10 or so years old, looking minuscule in comparison.

Octovar took a deep breath of oxygen, her bottom half submerging into the water, the set of gills on her face sending out a cloud of shimmering dust into the air, like sand with tiny flecks of black, these sank in the air and crossed the small distance between Octovar and Shihosu.

Bonya watched tentatively as she saw tiny twitches of life returning to her child, watching the wound close as her lung was repaired, stitching itself back together, but the fracture remained on the bone, left a scar on her skin, she was healed, but Octovar spoke as Shihosu’s breathing began again.

“It may be healed, but it must never be forgotten.”

Bonya felt the grief make its home in her heart.

As Shihosu felt herself drawn back from a deep dream, her eyes opened to see the demigoddess staring down at her. She felt no fear, though she did not remember what had happened before, something in her felt like it knew her savior, something new.

Many thanks were exchanged, as always a meek creature, Bonya did not ask much beyond what Octovar was, how she had brought her child back, and why.

These were answered in a single sentence. “I am the leader of the deep, a child of Ocean god, Spetimus, your child is his, as are you.”Outside of that, it seemed like pure dumb luck that she was even nearby the hear the cry.

Returning to their village, Shihosu was encouraged to stay in rest and not to contact any of her clan.

Her mother met with the leaders and for 3 days they discussed how to address this publicly, eventually, it was decided to let everyone know what had happened, but to treat Shihosu as a gift from this god, raising her reputation and altering the course of her life.

As she grew, speckles began to appear on her body that few of her fellow coastal Keiphins ever had, yet was extremely common in the oceanic Keiphins. She still has no idea why.

By the time she had lived for 20 years, these traits made her a bit of a small village celebrity, hard to blend in, and Shihosu could barely contain the excitement this gave her, more and more creating a performance personality to ensure everyone went away with a good impression.

Through her popularity on the ground, Shihosu became a recruiting target for a rebellion against both The Mage Council AND the seemingly absent elders, through this group Shihosu discovered the origin of her species, why they had left the ocean. This information created a determination in Shihosu to find the creature who saved her, and appeal to her for assistance in this issue. Sadly her new friends had pressing issues across Frenrar, so Shihosu set out to find a party to join her in her travels, luckily she had plenty of experience charming folks. Though leaving the swamps on the coast of Frenrar showed her cultures and civilizations shed never experienced before, showing how many are in need of help, just like Shihosu herself.

[mostloquacious-moved]

anyway here’s some modern verse headcanons no one asked for.

although he was technically emancipated at the age of 17, following his 6-month stint in juvenile detention, ro did spend a few months in a group home for boys in foster care. it was actually a fairly decent time in ro’s mind–it was during this time period where he was really introduced to therapy ( he had been medicated for his schizophrenia while in juvenile detention and though there were forensic psychologists and social workers there, they were really only there to stabilize him before he moved onto the next step ). he was able to start working, start studying for his drivers permit test, start studying to take his GED, re-obtain his cello and his keyboard and get back into music. his roommates were loud and unruly, but they never directed their anger at ro, and the front line staff were always kind to ro.

ro was almost 19 when he finally got his drivers license ( his parents had never bothered to teach him how to drive–he had to wait until he was on his own ) and the first car he ever had was a little 2003 ford F-150 with 70,000 miles on it and painted an awful off shade of gold, and ro loved that stupid little truck. a car meant he could come and go as he pleased, and a truck meant he could throw down an old mattress in the bed and camp out anywhere. he took it to NYC for college, took it on no shortage of road trips with college buddies, and then drove it all the way back to the west coast after graduation. ro finally said goodbye to that silly truck when he was settled in seattle in favor of a dumb ( but new and much more functional ) subaru outback, because he is ridiculous and lives in seattle.

ro 100% lived that broke ass college student / musician in NYC lifestyle and he honestly loved it. he loved living in marcus’ living room with his cats and his instruments, because the wall facing the street was one giant window and ro could sit up all night staring . he loved exploring NYC at 2:00 in the morning. he loved all the different jobs he had throughout college ( namely the different record stores and instrument shops ) and getting drinks with coworkers after work. he loved busking on the streets with his fellow juilliard classmates and riding the subway and stopping for a slice of pizza at his favorite place even though he’s running late for work again. having grown up in a small town in montana and being the single middle eastern person in the entire goddamn state, he loved being surrounded by different cultures in NYC. it wasn’t always easy, but he was free from the clutches of his family, so ro adored it.

he has five cats!! celeste is a tiny, fluffy, black and white thing that he got from some woman on craigslist when he first moved to NYC. ro hid celeste in his dorm room in juilliard and took her with him when he moved in with marcus. he acquired henry ( short for queen henrietta maria III ), an absolute monster of a russian blue, about a year after moving in with marcus. he coaxed henry out of a gutter outside of the instrument repair shop he worked at. he got bela and lugosi, two black cats from the same litter, together at the nyc humane society, right before he started his masters degree. delilah is the latest addition to the family, a sleek, lovely, and poised siamese cat with large blue eyes that ro got as a kitten for alex when alex was still a baby. the other girls also adore alex, but delilah is alex’s number one girl. she grew up with alex, sleeps at the foot of alex’s bed every night, and is with alex in any capacity when he’s at home. celeste is now roughly 9 years old, bela and lugosi are both around 6 years old, delilah is just over 3 years old, and it’s unknown how old henry is because she was, you know, coaxed out of a gutter. ro also fosters special needs and senior cats, but celeste, henry, bela, lugosi, and delilah are his number one girls.

if you ever hear ro refer to “his girls” he is talking about the cats. he is always talking about the cats.

did i mention that the girls adore alex?? because they do!! they were a little unsure of the tiny human when ro and annabelle first brought him home. celeste was quicker to warm up to alex than henry was, and celeste remains to be the cuddlier of the two, but it didn’t take henry much longer to come around to alex. bela and lugosi love him too–they were quicker to warm up than celeste. alex was just under a year old when ro got delilah and delilah has been by alex’s side ever since.

ro holds black belts in jujitsu, karate, and taekwondo because he found out that martial arts are a very effective way to ground himself and get all his energy out.

he’s a vegetarian because his family was always too poor to afford anything but rice and vegetables, and he simply never acquired a taste for meat. with that being said, he loves seafood.

[of-the-silver-lining]

Prompt #5: Vault

(WOW I cannot believe I wrote this in 3 days. This turned into a monster, and because of that I won’t be able to do First Steps, but that’s all right, I’ll do it later anyway. I have a really good idea for that one that needs time and dedication of its own. 

There is only One Thing I can write about with a prompt like this, but honestly this was really hard to think up because I’ve already written everything about Iris during that time. So I had to do something new.)

(Under cut for being long, spoilers, etc)

(Warnings: some blood, gore, general nightmarish disturbingness early on)

@sea-wolf-coast-to-coast

Iris ran through the halls of the Vault, her bow bouncing on her back, toward an opening, where she could see the fading red daylight outside.

I must make it, this time, she thought, though for what purpose she didn’t know.

She ran through the threshold and slowed to a stop. She was on the airship landing, high above the city, and also, above the clouds. A cloud ocean surrounded her, as if she could step off the sides of this island and drown in it. The sun was setting, a red disk plunging into it, and the light of the evening reflected in gold on the silver clouds.

Before her in the distance Haurchefant was standing with his back to her, dressed in his chainmail, his sword at his side, the red unicorn sigil bright on the shield at his back.

She tried to call out to him, but her voice stuck in her throat. She stepped closer instead, and that was when she saw the jagged hole just under the sigil in his shield.

“Haurchefant.” She forced herself to speak even though it almost hurt, but it only came out as a whisper.

“My friend...” he said, tilting his head toward the sky. Her heart leapt at hearing his voice. She wanted to sob with relief, thinking perhaps it wasn’t too late.

One foot at a time, she stepped closer, reaching out to him, though it was becoming difficult to move. But before she could close the distance, he turned around slowly.

The hole was not only through his shield, but his armor and his body as well, dark, jagged, stained. As she stared, blood began pouring out of it, running down the links of his chainmail. She tried to cry out and reach for him, but she was frozen. His face was his own, unmistakeably recognizable, staring at her calmly, but it was changing, his cheeks sinking, his skin tearing and graying before her eyes. Under the silver locks of his hair, his blue eyes burned into her, before they too began to rot away, leaving dark and soulless holes. The hole in his chest widened, and entrails began to spill out with the blood, as if his body was starting to turn itself inside out.

“Do not look at me so...” he said. It was almost a whisper, but she heard it echoing like thunder from all around her. She wanted to turn away and run but she couldn’t move.

“A smile better suits a hero...”

Hero.

Hero.

Iris opened her eyes to darkness. She blinked numbly once, twice, and then the dread and fear and horror descended on her. She felt it hit her like a wave and course through her body. She gasped as if she couldn’t breathe, and she felt for a moment that she would be sick. She pulled her covers up to her chin and lay there in a ball, panting, looking back and forth across the room to see what little she could. She was so tired, and it was hard to keep her eyes open, but each time she closed them, she saw his face, warped and terrible. 

After some minutes, she stood up from her bed and threw open the window of her room in the Pendants. The sudden night air raised goosebumps on her skin.  The stars were shining peacefully like tiny crystals over Lakeland.

“Ardbert,” she said softly, her voice shaking, but she knew he would no longer answer. Whether he was still with her or gone to join that eternal river of souls through time and space, she wasn’t sure. She wanted to believe she felt his presence, but even if she did, he was a part of her now, she had overtaken him, and because of that he could never comfort her as a friend again. Her eyes dampened and she swallowed heavily.

Ryne and Thancred were staying here tonight as well, in their own rooms, taking a rest from their journeys into the Empty, but she would not wake them just because of a nightmare.

She wished she could try to sleep again, but she knew it wasn’t possible. She looked out the window again at the glow of the stars. There was still one friend who was likely to be awake at this hour.

She dressed quickly in some casual clothes, picked up her bow, and hurried out of the room.

The Crystarium was still bustling even at this late hour. People were not yet used to having they cycle of night and day to tell them when to work and when to sleep, and many people, still in awe of the night sky, chose to be out under the stars. Seeing the people of the city, out and about in their daily lives, made Iris feel much less lonely and frightened, and she began to think herself foolish for coming this far. Still, she would feel better with someone to talk to, so made her way through the city toward the bright, glistening tower. The guard posted outside nodded amicably as he let her pass.

She had to wander around the tower for a while before she found G’raha Tia. The place was entirely too massive. She was exploring the mostly abandoned lower reaches, and just beginning to wonder if she could get his attention somehow from the portal in the Ocular when she and found him in a huge room with a strange yellow glow that reminded her somewhat of the aetherochemical research facility in Azys Lla. G’raha was kneeling near some kind of machine the size of a large table, He had several tools and other machines and differently colored crystals near him. His hood was back, and he was wearing thick gloves that went up to his elbows.

He heard her approach, and by reflex or old habit, he had quickly pulled his hood up over his ears before he even turned toward her. Iris smiled to herself in amusement.

“Oh, Iris.” He sounded surprised when he saw her. “I was certain you would be sleeping at this hour. Is aught amiss?”

Iris shook her head. “No,” she said, deciding not to tell him about the dream. “I couldn’t sleep.” She brushed the machine he was working on with her fingertips. “What is this?”

“Well... It’s a bit much to explain, but in short it’s a type of aetherochemical energy converter, part of a much larger machine that... may be able to assist me in sending the Scions home.” He pulled off his gloves, and put his crystal hand to his hip. “But, without the help of the Ironworks, repairing it has been a... learning experience.”

She peered at the machine, trying to tell if she recognized it from her other escapades in the lower reaches of the tower. “Did I break it?” she asked.

He chuckled. “No, no, it has been in disrepair for decades.”

“May I stay... G’raha?” she asked

At the sound of his name he stiffened, ever so slightly. She would not have even noticed had she not been looking for it.

“Certainly,” he said with a smile, and she was glad, “I would like a rest.” She sat down on the metal floor next to him, leaning up against the side of the machine.

“Does it... bother you when I call you that?” she asked, turning her gaze away. “No one else does.”

“No!” he said earnestly, “Of course not. I am simply unaccustomed to it. And, to be honest, after so long, it gives me a moment of panic that the plan has gone awry.” He smiled sheepishly. “As for the others... my Crystarium friends and even the Scions... I am the Crystal Exarch to them, and I would rather they continue to call me as such. I would not have them call me by the name of that young man they never knew. But you...” He shot a quick glance up at her from under the dark of his hood. “Truthfully it leaves me feeling... frighteningly vulnerable, but also...”

He paused for a moment, looking down, and he spoke softly. “To have someone who calls to me as everything I am and have been, even after all this time... and to have that person be you... is a precious gift. So, I would save my true name for you, and only you, for now. You, who knew me from before. You... who has been the guiding star of my life’s journey.”

She touched the edge of his hood and pushed it back, and it fell to his shoulders, exposing his face and his red hair and ears. He looked up at her with his wide Allagan eyes. She meant to pull back, but her hand lingered by his cheek in locks of his hair. She moved closer to him and cradled his cheek in her hand. His lips parted, his eyes searched her face, questioningly. She knew not what emotions were showing there, only that her heart was filled to bursting with love for him.

“G’raha,” she whispered, and he froze. Her heart was pounding. What was she doing? she thought in sudden panic, before her eyes fluttered closed and her lips met his.

He melted beneath her kiss, and then she felt his soft lips press back, ever so gently. His hands reached out and clutched her shoulders. His acceptance set her aflame. She pressed her other hand to his cheek and felt a warm tear on his crystal skin. He pulled back from her lips a little with a sharp intake of breath, his forehead pressed against hers.

“Forgive me,” he whispered, “I never thought I would live to see the day I could reach out and touch the star I’ve followed for so long. How many years... how many impossibilities came true, for us to meet this way?”

She felt her own eyes filling with tears.

“I love you,” he said, and between his words he kissed her softly again and again. “My Warrior of Darkness. My inspiration. My hero.”

“Hero.”

Haurchefant’s voice and Haurchefant’s face, the sunset shining gold on his silver hair and blood dripping crimson from his lips, flashed in her mind, and she recoiled as if the word had bitten her, breaking away from G’raha with a gasp.

She stared in horror. All she could see was Haurchefant, all at once with the light of life in his smile and his blue eyes, and the sunken, torn, eyeless demon from her dream, features claimed by death’s grasp.

There was a short time she could not bear to be called hero, for it only reminded her how dreadfully she had failed, but she had thought that time was long past--gone with Estinien’s rescue, gone with finding peace and finding her place again. And it was never like this. This was a nightmare come into her waking world, and she found she was trembling and couldn’t stop.

“Have I... said too much?” 

She blinked when she heard G’raha’s voice, and her heart twisted in pain when she saw the confusion and hurt on his face. Part of her longed to wrap her arms around him and tell him she loved him and banish that fearful expression from his face forever. But unbidden, her eyes were filled with tears and she desperately tried to stop them from falling. Another part of her felt the urge to just turn and run, out of the tower, out of the city, away from G’raha, and her friends, and Haurchefant, and if she ran fast and far enough maybe her memories could not catch up with her. Just like when she fled the Fortemps manor after his funeral--to find a place to forget, or at least where no one would see her cry. But where else could she go? There was no place that her nightmares wouldn’t follow. This was where she had come, because she didn’t want to be alone with them.

After what seemed like an eternity, she managed to shake her head. “A nightmare,” she choked, and the tears she was holding back came spilling over.

Tentatively and gently he pulled her close. “You’re not alone,” he said.

[mostloquacious-archive]

anyway here’s some modern verse headcanons no one asked for:

although he was technically emancipated at the age of 17, following his 6-month stint in juvenile detention, ro did spend a few months in a group home for boys in foster care. it was actually a fairly decent time in ro’s mind--it was during this time period where he was really introduced to therapy ( he had been medicated for his schizophrenia while in juvenile detention and though there were forensic psychologists and social workers there, they were really only there to stabilize him before he moved onto the next step ). he was able to start working, start studying for his drivers permit test, start studying to take his GED, re-obtain his cello and his keyboard and get back into music. his roommates were loud and unruly, but they never directed their anger at ro, and the front line staff were always kind to ro.

ro was almost 19 when he finally got his drivers license ( his parents had never bothered to teach him how to drive--he had to wait until he was on his own ) and the first car he ever had was a little 2003 ford F-150 with 100,000 miles on it and painted an awful off shade of gold, and ro loved that stupid little truck. a car meant he could come and go as he pleased, and a truck meant he could throw down an old mattress in the bed and camp out anywhere. he took it to NYC for college, took it on no shortage of road trips with college buddies, and then drove it all the way back to the west coast after graduation. ro finally said goodbye to that silly truck when he was settled in seattle in favor of a mercedes-benz SL-Class with a  convertible top, because he is ridiculous.

ro 100% lived that broke ass college student / musician in NYC lifestyle and he honestly loved it. he loved living in marcus’ living room with his cats and his instruments, because the wall facing the street was one giant window and ro could sit up all night staring . he loved exploring NYC at 2:00 in the morning. he loved all the different jobs he had throughout college ( namely the different record stores and instrument shops ) and getting drinks with coworkers after work. he loved busking on the streets with his fellow juilliard classmates and riding the subway and stopping for a slice of pizza at his favorite place even though he’s running late for work again. having grown up in a small town in montana and being the single middle eastern person in the entire goddamn state, he loved being surrounded by different cultures in NYC. it wasn’t always easy, but he was free from the clutches of his family, so ro adored it.

he has three cats!! celeste is a tiny, fluffy, black and white thing that he got from some woman on craigslist when he first moved to NYC. ro hid celeste in his dorm room in juilliard and took her with him when he moved in with marcus. he acquired henry ( short for queen henrietta maria III ), an absolute monster of a russian blue, about a year after moving in with marcus. he coaxed henry out of a gutter outside of the instrument repair shop he worked at. delilah is the latest addition to the family, a sleek, lovely, and poised siamese cat with large blue eyes that ro got as a kitten for alex when alex was still a baby. celeste and henry also adore alex, but delilah is alex’s number one girl. she grew up with alex, sleeps at the foot of alex’s bed every night, and is with alex in any capacity when he’s at home. celeste is now roughly 9 years old, delilah is just over 3 years old, and it’s unknown how old henry is because she was, you know, coaxed out of a gutter. ro also fosters special needs and senior cats, but celeste, henry, and delilah are his number one girls.

did i mention that celeste and henry adore alex?? because they do!! they were a little unsure of the tiny human when ro and annabelle first brought him home. celeste was quicker to warm up to alex than henry was, and celeste remains to be the cuddlier of the two, but it didn’t take henry much longer to come around to alex. alex was just under a year old when ro got delilah and delilah has been by alex’s side ever since.

ro holds black belts in jujitsu, karate, and taekwondo because he found out that martial arts are a very effective way to ground himself and get all his energy out.

he’s a vegetarian, because his family was always too poor to afford anything but rice and vegetables, and he simply never acquired a taste for meat. with that being said, he loves seafood. 

[gcgasandaircon]

Everything You Need To Know About Car Air Conditioning!

Summer arrives, and, boy, will it stay. Traveling without air conditioning will be miserable, whether you're making your daily commute to work or a weekend trip. Your main concern should be examining the condition of your car's air conditioning system because the temperature inside the automobile cabin can reach up to 60°C. Numerous problems may start to appear, including inadequate cooling, odor, broken compressors, and others. Getting a comprehensive car AC service once a year is typically advised to maintain the cooling system's optimal efficiency, even though routine AC maintenance should be a ritual. Here are some aspects you must know about the best car air conditioning Gold Coast services.

 Some Common AC Problems Of Your Vehicle With Troubleshooting: 

 Car AC Not Cooling Enough: 

 This may be caused by a failed compressor or low refrigerant levels, which can be quite expensive to repair. Another explanation for this is anything as simple as a clogged condenser. Less cooling occurs if the condenser is clogged since it reduces the coil's surface area.

 Bad Odor From The AC: 

 There have been numerous reports of this car AC issue. A slight or overtly offensive odor could indicate that the AC filter has mold, mildew, or moisture buildup. Usually, the issue can be resolved by cleaning or replacing the filter.

 However, there may be a dead animal in the system or a bug invasion if you smell "rotten eggs" when running the AC. We strongly advise hiring a pro to handle this for you.

 Loud Whirring Noise: 

 A damaged compressor bearing may provide a loud, high-pitched whirring sound when the air conditioner is running. On the other hand, the blower fan assembly must be repaired or replaced if the noise emanates from inside the cabin.

 Engine Overheating: 

 The compressor draws power from the engine, like the steering or the pump. The compressor's clutch has the potential to seize, placing an unnecessary load on it. The engine overheats as a result, ultimately.

 Water Seeping Into The Cabin: 

 The refrigerant condenses as it passes through the evaporator. The result is water. You can see water inside the automobile cabin if the drain tube that sends the water outside becomes blocked.

 AC Maintenance: 

 Maintaining your vehicle's AC is as easy as maintaining the ac in your home.

 Wiping the vents out.

Clean the condenser

Do not forget to clean the cabin filter.

Keep the different parts of the bonnet in check.

 Now, if you cannot find what seems to be the problem with the AC machine, you can hire our affordable Gold Coast Gas & Air Conditioning professionals at the best prices. Please visit us: https://www.gcgasandaircon.com/gold-coast-aircon-re-gas

[anon-e-miss]

Shaken 2

So... I forgot I had this written... My bad.

Snippets of vorns’ worth of horrors cycled through his processor. No hope, no peace, always waking, never rest. He was... tired. He was... confused. He was... free? The idea might have made him laugh, it was so ridiculous. But he felt, and was alone was absolutely bizarre. Slowly, the sensors in his frame were responding, slowly they were sending signals to his processor. It was small at first, air moving over his doorwings, arms wrapped around his midsection. Then there was sound. First there was someone speaking, and it was terrifying. Somewhere, he remembered someone speaking, explaining what was being done to him, terrible hideous things. But this was a different voice, and he felt relief, intense relief. Bit by bit the speech made sense, and he understood.

He was free. A strange, heavily accented voice crooned at him, promised he was safe. It was impossible to believe, but arms were wrapped around him, a spark was humming in the chassis beneath his helm. His own spark pulsed in time with that of his rescuer’s, and in an act of considerable will, he brought his optics online for the first time in vorns. The mech holding him was mostly black and white, and something about that comforted him. He turned up his helm as his optics were finally able to focus, and the first thing he saw was his rescuers face. A black helm, blue visor, and a strong silver jaw with a full mouth. That visor would allow the mech to hide a great deal. Mouths lied better than optics. At that thought, the image of an empurata, a single bright gold optic filled his processor, in a reflex of fear he curled his servo.

“I got ya,” the mech said, in a deep and warm croon. “Y’re safe.”

Safe. He was safe. Wonder. Absolute wonder. When he had last thought, when had last thought consciously for himself, it had been only horror, only grief. There had not been even the smallest flicker of hope in his spark. But he was safe, he was actually safe, and he was free. The world felt smaller, now that he was no longer wired into the planet’s network, and he was both claustrophobic, and agoraphobic as his he gained full clarity, and fully understood what had happened to him. Through that network he had seen so much ugliness, and he understood, caused so much of it, if against his will.

“What’s y’re designation?” His rescuer mech asked.

Designation? He reached into his processor, and found his servo empty. Confusion. When he thought of himself there was nothing, no images of a life. Fear. Who was he? What was he? There had been something before, and as he struggled to find some fragment from the past, there was only a vague memory of pain. A new grief, a new fear. They had already taken everything, had they taken him too? Increasingly frantic, he reached into the emptiness of his memories, clutching nothing but air. A wail swelled in his spark, but his vocalizer did not click on.

“That’s alright,” the mech comforted him. As he grasped at the shattered fragments of his memory, shying from those great empty chasms, a single piece of data stood out. This mech was a Polihexian. “I’ll just call ya Prowl for now.”

Prowl. And this mech was called Jazz. In the vorns that he had been hooked into the grid the empurata had used him to try and trap this mech. He had never been successful, and Prowl, because thinking of himself by that token designation was easier than thinking of himself as nothing, was very grateful for his failure, for their failure because holding himself responsible for what all that had been done was too much. Jazz had saved him, and Jazz was holding him, humming to him as you might to comfort a sparkling. The strain of digging for memories, the horror of finding nothing of true significance was draining, and Prowl drifted. With a soft vent, he rested.

He came awake again to voices. As it had before, he... Prowl could not immediately decipher what was being said, and he was afraid. They could have found him again. They could be taking him back to that lab. What had been the point of repairing his frame, replacing his crushed legs when they were only going to strap him to that slab, and to wire him to that living Pit? Servos lightly rubbed his side, and one of the voices became clear. Jazz. Relief so powerful surged through him and Prowl could not process it. Something inside him snapped, and his processor went blank.

When he woke yet again, Prowl’s thoughts seemed more orderly, and more clear.  He opened his optics, and looked up at the high ochre ceiling. That was an odd colour choice. Praxus favoured cooler tones, no. No, Praxus had favoured cooler colours, Praxus was gone. There were no memories of Praxus, beyond that he had lived there, beyond that it was gone. Prowl could not picture the buildings, but he remembered the colours. Before he could linger to long on the anger and the grief, he heard pedsteps, two pairs. Based on the sounds of their steps, one mech was larger than the other. Prowl turned his helm.

“Well y’re lookin’ better,” Jazz said, smiling wide.

“Yes,” Prowl replied. His voice sounded some foreign to his optics, rough and raspy, but it was the first glyph he had spoken in vorns. The last he had said had been in screams.

“Vocalizer will clear up as you use it,” the second medic, taller and broader as Prowl had thought, was painted red and white. “I’m Ratchet, Autobot CMO. I’ve been taking care of you. Mech with me is...”

“Jazz,” he said. “I know his face.”

“Don’t know if I should be scared or honoured,” the Polihexian said.

“They considered you the greatest single threat,” Prowl explained. The Autobots looked at each other.

“How much of do you remember?” Oddly it was the medic, not the operative that asked that question.

“Pieces,” the Praxian, because that’s what he was, replied. “I do not remember anything before, and only pieces of after. The mech who built the contraption I was bound do was an empurata.”

“Shockwave,” Jazz said. “That sick piece of scrap. Don’t remember y’re designation yet, eh?”

“No,” Prowl replied. “I do not believe I will. I have the impression that my memories were corrupted, or erased when it was installed. You called me Prowl.”

“I did... What is it?” The operative asked.

“Battle computer with relays to link up with that computer you sent to the Pit, Jazz,” Ratchet replied. “I’m sorry, it’s thoroughly integrated with your logic computer. I don’t know if I can remove it without catastrophic consequences. As it is, it’s causing you some complications. You may not remember, you crashed earlier.”

“I have crashed before,” he said. “As a youngling I had a glitch.”

“Looks like the set up exacerbated it,” the medic revealed. “It’s manageable. And I think’ll settle to a degree.”

“I understand,” Prowl replied.

“Anything else ya remember?” Jazz asked, gently. He and the medic looked guarded. Prowl understood why.

“I know Praxus was destroyed,” he said. “I know I was there. I know my frame was severely damaged, and the mech you called Shockwave repaired me before hooking me into the grid. They had tried drones before, but it needed a living spark.”

“The demands on your frame caused extensive wear and tear,” Ratchet replied. “And a real strain on your spark. You’re coming along nicely but you aren’t going to see anything outside medbay for a while.”

“I understand,” Prowl said, and he thought he sounded like a drone. But there was an odd rightness to that.  He was not a drone but... maybe he was not... expressive?

“We got a Praxian on the roster outta Psych that’d like to meet ya,” the Polihexian revealed. “When y’re feelin’ steady enough. Smokey’s a bit at loose ends.”

“I would be pleased to meet him,” the Praxian said. There had never been many of his framekin outside of their city. There would not be many left at all. What had Shockwave said? That the damage was complete. He had been... pleased. Prowl had been helpless.

Ratchet chased Jazz off after that. The medic remained. Vorns of immobility had left the components of Prowl’s frame tight and immobile in parts, and more than just replacing burnt out sensors or wires, much of the Praxian’s treatment plan focused on physiotherapy. There were other medics that could have taken it on, but the CMO helped Prowl through the exercise. He had taken personal responsibility over his care, his own admission, and though Prowl caught other medics and other mechanisms peering into his treatment room, none ever entered, none interrupted the chief medical officer. Prowl was glad for it. While he liked Jazz, felt safe with him, and Ratchet, he did not wish to be a sideshow attraction, or an outlet of sanctimonious pity. He was not a patient mech, Prowl thought of himself, not with other mechanisms. Had this always been the case?

A blue and red and white Praxian appeared on Prowl’s third mega-cycle on reliable awareness. He was a young mech, far younger than Prowl. By now the recently liberated Praxian was sitting up in his medberth, supported by the berth. When the newcomer dipped his doorwings, silently asking Prowl’s position to entered, it took some effort for Prowl to convince his doorwings to dip in turn. The mech gave him a broad smile, and started to enter. Before he could cross the room to Prowl however, a smaller mech raced up behind him, and caught his arm. No, not a smaller mech, more of a mechling. A youngling. A Praxian youngling.

“Blue, you’ve gotta stop sneaking out,” Smokescreen said. “They’re going to blame me!”

“He is welcome,” Prowl said, a bit selfishly. He wanted to see the mechling, desperately wanted to see him.

“Thanks,” the mech said. “I’m Smokescreen, Jazz said he mentioned me. I sort of coast between his department and psych. This is Bluestreak... We found him in Praxus.”

“Chrr,” the youngling said, just a quiet, meaningless sound. His doorwings danced wildly on his back.

Binary. Prowl locked his optics on the youngling doorwings. This was the right move, because Bluestreak bound up to him, doorwings never slowing. He was speaking, or signing so quickly it was almost incomprehensible. But Prowl was somehow able to understand. Where the knowledge came from, and why he had it, the Praxian had not the slightest idea but he understood, and this was all that mattered for the moment. As the youngling poured his spark out, Smokescreen dragged over two chairs and lightly nudged Bluestreak into one before taking the other. That he made not attempt to shush the mechling, or to browbeat him for communicating in binary rose him considerably higher in Prowl’s esteem. It was obvious that Bluestreak had been badly traumatized by his ordeal, and the trauma had not exactly come to an end. Eventually, the youngling tired himself out, and his doorwings dipped. He looked sheepish.

“No apologies, Bluestreak,” Prowl said. “Thank you for speaking with me.”

“You understood?” Smokescreen asked. “All of that. I catch a bit but I wouldn’t call myself fluent.”

“I am,” the elder of the Praxians said. “Why I cannot say, but I understand. You are his advocate.”

“I try but I’m not the best voice,” the tri-coloured Praxian explained. “I’ve got a minor in counselling but my major is in forensics. Plus, I’m fresh out of school.”

“I do not know how well I can assist,” Prowl replied. “But if I am permitted, I will translate for him.”

“Did you take him without signing him out?” Ratchet asked as he loomed in the doorway. Smokescreen, and Bluestreak winced almost in unison.

“I believe the youngling followed on his own,” Prowl said. “He has done no harm.”

“He’s supposed to be in therapy,” the medic replied, and to the flinching youngling. “Skipping out, Bluestreak?”

“He does not care for his physician,” the Praxian patient said. “In fact, he will not speak to him.”

“Did you tell him that, Blue?” Smokescreen asked. Bluestreak nodded his helm and his doorwings quickly.

“You speak binary chirolinguistic?” Ratchet asked.

“Apparently,” Prowl said. “He is afraid of the medic assigned to him.”

“Highbrow?” The larger mech asked.

“He is a Seekerkin,” the elder of the Praxian’s explained. “Bluestreak is terrified of Seekers. He hides from the medic because he is afraid. Rather, he is terrified, especially when he is left alone with the mech.”

“Well, Bluestreak I guess I can see about trying you with a different councillor,” Ratchet said, and he knelt at the youngling’s side. His joints creaked. Typical of medics, Ratchet was behind on his own frame maintenance. “Would you like that?”

Bluestreak nodded his helm very quickly. Tears bubbled out of his optics, and he leapt out of his chair. He did not go far, only far enough to crouched at the side of Prowl’s berth, his helm on the cushioned surface, next to Prowl’s arm. His whole frame shook. Smokescreen slid out of his chair, and comforted the mechling. Little rasps broke from his vents as he sobbed. The medic did not interfere, Prowl would have cautioned him against it, thought he did not know why he would have expected the medic to listen to him, he was Ratchet’s patient.

“He is afraid of you as well,” Prowl said. “He is afraid of most of the mechanisms here.”

“He’s skittish, to be fair I don’t blame him,” Ratchet said. “We don’t have any Praxian councillors with the expertise to help him.”

“They do not need to be Praxian, but they need to be smaller,” the Praxian said. “Prior to the event, he likely saw no other frametype but ours. Praxus was reclusive as best, but none were so well guarded as the young. Decepticons terrorized him, Ratchet. He did not survive the bombing out of some perverse good fortune. He was not there.”

“Where do you think he was?” The medic asked.

“Up,” Prowl replied. “Seekers held him, he did not describe more than that. But he watched them destroy the youngling centre he had been assigned to first.”

“Damn it,” Ratchet snarled. “How do we help him, if we don’t understand him. Highbrow had the best chance, and the mechling doesn’t even twitch a wing in his direction.”

“Allow Smokescreen to translate, he may have an imperfect grasp on the language but he understands enough,” the Praxian said. “He needs to feel safe. He will breakdown his walls if he feels safe. He feels secure with Smokescreen.”

“Bluestreak, will you look at me?” Ratchet asked gently, kneeling and then sitting so he towered less over the young mech. The youngling looked up at him, with tear stained faceplates. “You can have Smokescreen with you for every session. I know you don’t exactly trust us, right? But we want to help, okay? Just like we want to help Prowl. We’re going to figure out how to listen to you until you’re ready to speak. Okay?”

The youngling nodded. He leaned against Smokescreen, not exactly at ease, so far as Prowl could see his frame, but less tense. Bluestreak had become burdened with hopelessness. But youth were adaptive and resilient, and Prowl thought he could break free of the anxiety that had taken his voice. When he had steadied himself a little more, the youngling stood back up, and he reached across Prowl’s berth to give him a tight hug. The gesture surprised Prowl, enough to feel a little pinch in his processor, not a crashing but a warning. Despite the awkwardness he felt, he did not push Bluestreak away. By speaking up for him, Prowl had made himself the mechling’s ally and it seemed counter-intuitive to breech his trust this early on.

“I’ll take Bluestreak back to the centre,” Smokescreen said, when Bluestreak finally released Prowl. “We’ll stop for some oil cakes, okay?”

“I’ll take care of the paperwork,” Ratchet said. “You can come by when you like, okay Bluestreak? Whenever you want to talk to Prowl.”

“It was good to meet you, Bluestreak,” Prowl said. The young Praxian dipped his doorwings and fluttered them quickly, voicing his own good wishes. He was excited for the oil cakes, and the time with Smokescreen. Bluestreak waved one final time, and the door closed behind the Praxian pair.

“The only mechanisms I know usually fluent in binary chirolinguistics are sparkling councillors and Enforcers,” the red and white mech said once he was alone with Prowl. “I doubt you were a councillor. Protoform shows mounts for artillery.”

“I suppose that sounds... plausible,” the Praxian said. “It feels... right, but it may be wishful thinking.”

“The general feeling has been that Smokescreen has too many questionable hobbies to let him mind the youngling, whatever Bluestreak would like,” Ratchet said. “His best interests intended or not, he probably felt like he was being isolated from the only mech he felt secure with.”

“I do not know if Smokescreen is prepared for the role of caretaker,” Prowl replied. “But he can be a mentor, and a shield.”

“It’ll do them both good having you around,” the medic said, as he scanned Prowl’s frame. “It’ll do you good too, a bit of a distraction.”

“I was pleased to be useful,” the Praxian replied. “And to stop thinking.”

“You’ve been thinking too hard?” Ratchet asked.

“I have been questioning how much I feel is me, or remnants of Shockwave,” Prowl explained. “I do not have an answer. I do not know what me is. Realistically, I know I will not online and remember.”

“But it’s a difficult situation,” the medic said. “It’s normal to get upset, Prowl.”

“I would rather not crash,” he said. “And I would rather not dwell. But I cannot forget I have this foreign thing in my helm and it wants to operate.”

“Operate?” Ratchet asked.

“To run strategy simulations, to analyze data,” Prowl explained. “I cannot stop it, it is there in the background. I try to ignore it, but it is not really possible. So rather than dissect my helplessness, I need to put it to work. Bluestreak’s arrival, and his issue was... rather convenient.”

[pinnaklebmwmechanics]

Gold Coast BMW Mechanics Ashmore - BMW Repair

Gold Coast BMW Mechanics Ashmore - Pinnakle Mechanics. Services most European & Asian brands, specialising in German performance vehicles. we do service most European and Japanese brands. Pinnakle Mechanics workshop and BMW Repair in Gold Coast is well equipped to accomodate a range of repairs. When you bring your prized possession to us, you can expect the highest quality of service and a full guarantee backing all of our repairs. We take the time to explain the work required and look for the best possible solutions to get you back on the road safely. Every problem has a solution and we will give you our honest assessment before we proceed with any additional work.

Mechanical Repairs

We are transparent in everything we perform and take the time to explain you the essence of the repair. We pride ourselves with the attention to detail and care that goes into the repair of your car. Our most often performed repairs are:

Oil leak eliminations Cooling sytem repairs Engine fault detections and eliminations Engine rough running and misfires Suspension repairs Clutch replacement Timing & drive-belt replacements Major engine repairs

Logbook Service

BMW Logbook Service in Gold Coast by Pinnkale Mechanics. We provide Logbook services for all German automobiles. When you have your car maintained with Pinnakle Mechanics, you can rest assured that your vehicle will be provided with professional and top quality service. Every service includes a complete diagnostics and a report to ensure that you are completely aware of the condition of your vehicle. Our safety is our primary priority! We provide service to all German vehicles as well as our shop is equipped to handle the majority of Japanese and European automobiles.

Brake Service

BMW Brake Service in Gold Coast by Pinnakle Mechanics. BMW repair specialists located in Gold Coast offer the BMW Brake repair Services. Monitoring and reporting on the state of your brakes is regular part of your logbook maintenance but if your vehicle isn't stopping as it did in the past, or the steering wheel shakes when stopping or you notice odd sounds while breaking, take your vehicle at our shop located in Ashmore to undergo a health examination. Each brake service does not just with the replacement of the component, but also the entire brake system inspection. Additionally, every two years it is suggested to change the brake fluid, regardless of mileage, to avoid a decline in stopping power and the corrosion of the brakes.

Battery Services

You need to ensure your vehicle has a solid battery that won't leave you hanging. At Pinnakle Mechanics, we actually look at you battery wellbeing free of charge. We supplant and supply your new battery and reuse your old battery. We reset your frameworks after battery substitution and do indicative sweep while supplanting your battery.

Pinnakle Mechanics is your BMW and MINI Specialist in Gold Coast. While having some expertise in German execution vehicles, we truly do support most European and Japanese brands. While you carry your valued belonging to us, you can expect the greatest of administration and a full assurance backing our fixes as a whole. We carve out opportunity to make sense of the work expected and search for the most ideal answers for get you back out and about securely. Each issue has an answer and we will give you our legit evaluation before we continue with any extra work.

[mjauto]

What Automotive Tools Should Be in Every Mechanic’s Arsenal?

Do you like to work on vehicles? It is better that you should have a set of automotive tools that can help you with the repairing services. These tools will help you have a set of tools that can be used to repair various defects in vehicles. Some of the tools are quite helpful for clutch repairs on Gold Coast. This can be quite helpful to be in a mechanic's arsenal. 

Let's look at the tools that need to be in every mechanic's arsenal.

Wrench Set:

Every mechanic requires a crow-foot wrench set which helps them work with the engine compartment's cramped quarters. These wrenches have an extended bar allowing you to repair any screws, nuts, and bolts from afar. The flare-out design of the crow-foot wrench is best for removing brake and power steering lines. 

Underhood Light:

Another necessary item in the arsenal of a car mechanic on Gold Coast is the underhood light. You can not only use it for working under the hood but also for working underneath the vehicle. The strong holding magnet will keep it in place, and the tube is rotatable to 200 degrees. This allows you to check all the corners while working.

Scaler And Chisel:

These two items are needed to remove old paint and rust from the car. The tool may look scary, but the needles on the sides are not quite harmful to you. You need to make sure to wear protective glasses and gloves for protection. 

Socket Set:

Every mechanic should have a socket set that can be used for various purposes. With the tool kit and socket set, you can do a lot of repairing work. These are also needed for clutch repairs in Southport, among many other repairing jobs to be fulfilled.

Being a mechanic, you need to have some essential tools in your toolkit that can be quite helpful for you in repairing cars. 

[anaxustrikon]

Commodore Wreckers

The Price Street Mechanical and Commodore Wreckers is much more than a wrecking yard, it is a fully equipped mechanical workshop, with qualified mechanics on site. We have one of the Gold coast's best mechanics to see your vehicle needs.

We at, Price Street Mechanical and Commodore Wreckers, we have competent and dedicated mechanics with the fully equipped workshop to perform any type of mechanical repair on any make and model of vehicle, including brake and clutch repairs, auto air-conditioning services, auto electrical, battery(New & Replacement), Diagnostics, tyres, wheel balancing & alignment and road worthy certificate

[fictorium]

A Mostly Decent Proposal, Cat/Kara, Rating: PG

Kara tries everything. She drops Cat’s name. Lena’s name. Supergirl’s name. The snotty publicist turns her down each time with increasing relish. 

“The tastings are for engaged couples only, Miss Danvers.”

And it’s not like she doesn’t try Alex. It’s maybe a little insensitive to ask given that Maggie hasn’t exactly given an answer to the spur-of-the-moment proposal yet, but dammit Kara is feeling sorry for herself. Now the best cake on the entire West Coast is being kept from her by the sad fact of being single.

Not that she would have married Mon-El. Honestly it had been effort enough to teach him to chew with his mouth closed. But it had been less lonely, less Kara left behind, less table for one and going to bed early and alone. 

She posts to Facebook in desperation, hoping Winn or James will volunteer to play her fake fiancé and grab one of the exclusive tasting appointments. There’s only four left today, and Kara wants one with a need that’s bordering on obsession. 

Before anyone can reply and save the day, a text from Cat arrives. 

Assistant AWOL. Have my car out front in 5. Meet me there.

Great. Now she’s getting roped back into assistant duties, meaning she probably can’t make it to the boutique bakery before the last slot anyway. She’d been planning on last resort showing up in full Supergirl mode in the hope they’d bend the rules in person. 

Still. It’s really nice to have Cat back. It’s been the one bright spot in crappy few weeks. Kara summons the duty driver and packs up her purse. She takes the stairs with a little super speed, a quick way to vent some of her pent-up frustration. It’s distracting enough being around Cat, especially since her return from the Himalayas. 

There’s something looser in her posture, a softness in her eyes that Kara can’t quite identify. The snappishness is largely gone from her tone, and even her perfume is subtly different. Kara keeps meaning to ask what the change - something custom and expensive no doubt, but it lingers with her in a way the scent never did before. 

It’s the first thing Kara notices when Cat slips into the backseat beside her. Notepad and pen at the ready, Kara is waiting for a barrage of instructions. She doesn’t mind covering for Eve, not really. Only the orders never come. Cat pulls her sunglasses off and jabs at her phone a few times, but the car rolls out into the afternoon traffic without a word passing between them.

Eventually Kara can’t stand the suspense. They’re heading into WeNa, the neighborhood that houses the bakery she’s fixating on, and it reminds her that there’s a chance if she can get whatever Cat needs quickly.

“So how can I help Ms Grant?” Kara suppresses a groan as they turn onto 10th Street. So close. So painfully close. “Is it a meeting? Or something to collect?”

“I’m helping you, Kara.”

Well. At least the Keira thing has dried up again. No doubt there’s an incoming lecture about how Cat taking her on this errand will improve Kara’s career prospects. No frosting, no impossibly moist sponge. Maybe tonight she can console herself with some of that British baking show, or maybe that will just make the sulk worse. Rao, can’t Kara have one thing go her way lately?

“You don’t have to tell me,” Kara decides, but just as she gets comfortable the car pulls into a side street and a small private parking lot behind a brick building that’s naggingly familiar. 

“Come along,” Cat announces, getting out and actually waiting for Kara to follow. Before they reach the door that’s not even marked, Cat comes to a halt and stops Kara by sticking out her arm. “Wait.”

So Kara does. Cat fumbles in her Prada clutch with a frown gracing her features, picking out something and then discarding it, before finally settling on something else. 

“Here.” She thrusts a piece of jewelry at Kara. An earring? It sparkles in the afternoon sunshine. Maybe they’re getting something repaired. No, it’s definitely a ring. Kara accepts it in her palm, not sure quite what the hell is happening. A diamond ring. Not a small diamond either. “Well?”

“Well what?”

“Put it on,” Cat hisses. “It’s from my second - no, third - engagement, when I was pregnant with Carter. The puffiness might mean it’s big enough for your chunky knuckles.”

“I do not have chunky knuckles!” Kara protests. “Why are you giving me this.”

“You want the life-changing cake of amazingness,” Cat quotes her Facebook post back to her. When the hell did she accept Cat as a friend? “And when not even my name got you a slot, I told them that I was bringing my fiancée. So chop, chop.”

Kara doesn’t know what else to do. She slips the ring on to her wedding finger, and just in time too. The door opens and that publicist with her grating voice is fawning all over Cat. Oh if only she’d known, and is this an exclusive on announcing the engagement, and does Cat need anyone on her PR team? Kara glares, but then Cat is linking her arm through Kara’s as though they do it every day.

The next hour is a fever dream, like the lovechild of Black Mercy and Silver Kryptonite. There are varieties of cake that Kara has never dreamed of, chocolate richer than anything she’s ever put in her mouth before. Adventures through pistachio and delicate orange and rosehip, to the zing of lemon or goopy strawberry fillings. 

Then there’s the touching. Cat, ever the professional, is really selling the fiancée thing. At one point Kara almost faints dead away, because Cat is feeding cake to her with a silver fork. There’s a caress to the upper arm here and there, as much holding hands as they can manage around all the pieces of cake to juggle, and at one point Cat wipes a smear of frosting away with her thumb. Joining in, Kara presses a silly kiss to the pad of Cat’s thumb, making her jump just a little when the publicist fawns over what a cute couple they make.

If any substance on Earth can make Kara feel giddy, it’s an excess of sugar. By the time she staggers towards the exit, Cat is practically holding her up. It’s only when they’re back in the privacy of the car, privacy screen practically dragged into place, that Kara gets a grip of herself.

“That was... that was better than Disney. I feel like I just had my own Willy Wonka day. Why... Ms Grant, why did you do that? Oh gosh, I should give you back this ring.”

As Kara tries to pull it back off her finger, the damn thing refuses to budge. Okay, she didn’t eat that much cake. 

“Hmm?” Cat responds, or doesn’t really. She has her sunglasses back on, even though they’re in the car with its tinted windows. 

“Why did you fix that for me?” Kara demands. She has nothing to lose at this point. “You’ve been so busy since you came back.”

“Because,” Cat sighs, turning her head away from Kara. “Just because.”

“That’s not an answer.” The ring comes free, and she tries to hand it over. The gold band is only slightly dented by her super strength. 

“Because... you’ve been moping,” Cat explains. “Not directly in my line of sight like last week, but it’s all anyone talks about. I was made aware of your social media whining, and I decided to take action. I don’t know why your friends haven’t.”

“You’re my friend, too,” Kara insists. “Or should I say fiancée?”

“You might want to put that ring back on,” Cat turns back, pulling her glasses off and looking Kara dead in the eye. “The story has already broken thanks to our gossipy friend back there. We’ll ride it out for a little while, then quietly call it off.”

“Uh...”

“Oh you’ll survive the embarrassment. Honestly.”

“Embarrassment?” Kara doesn’t understand. “No, I just meant usually you take someone on a date before proposing. Or maybe you don’t. I mean, you’ve been married four times, maybe you have to rush the process.”

Cat’s actually stunned into silence for a moment by that. Kara feels oddly proud.

“Date?” She repeats. 

“Sure,” Kara sees puzzle pieces slotting together in her mind, two years of denial and a few months of misery finally clearing into one perfect solution. “Maybe no dessert though. That was a lot to live up to. Unless you think us dating is inappropriate?”

“Inappropriate is the noises you make when tasting sinfully good cake,” Cat corrects. “I’m going to be dreaming about you and frosting for a week.”

Kara leans in, emboldened by the lustful drag of Cat’s gaze. She kisses Cat tenderly, knowing she must taste like icing and joy. “Well, chop, chop,” Kara teases. “Get a move on with that date and you won’t just have to dream it.”

“You’re every bit as tempting as those ridiculous baked goods.” Cat initiates the kiss this time, pushing Kara back against the seat and straddling her lap. 

“And you gave in back there for vanilla frosting,” Kara reminds her. “So what does that make me?”

“Shut up or I won’t marry you,” Cat teases, tangling her fingers in Kara’s hair. 

“That’s a pretty small club.” Kara kisses her again, before she gets in too much trouble. They’re going to have to deal with this seriously, back at the office and outside of this car. But right now? There’s just Cat, a sugar high, and really incredible kissing. 

As cures for sadness go? It’s fast becoming her favorite. 

[dawnstruck]

dust and devils on my conscience

FMA RoyEd Pacific Rim 'verse. Non-linear story telling. [Read on AO3]

Mankind, like cockroaches, are tenacious little beasts.

i.

A kaiju is a fearsome thing. Vast and vicious and near-on invincible.

But mankind, like cockroaches, are tenacious little beasts.

They thrive, they survive. Even if many of them die. Even if Death, for some, is a promise.

xviii.

The first tentative step a Jaeger takes is always the most exhilarating. Like a roller-coaster ride, only that you are the loop, the sky, and gravity all at once.

Roy used to love this. He thinks he might be able to love it again.

The water crashes around them and then they move forward.

v.

Two truths. Roy wasn't in love with Maes and Maes wasn't in love with Roy.

That doesn't mean it hurts any less.

xiv.

“Revenge?!” Edward snaps. His metal fist beats against the metal wall to his right, just once, but it seems to set the entire room and everything in it ringing. “You honestly think this is about revenge for me?!”

The gleam in his eyes is furious. Roy does not flinch. He has faced down monsters. A mere boy does not intimidate him.

“Al and I have saved millions of lives,” Ed continues, “We've gone out there again and again, just like you and Hughes have, and you dare belittle me by simply calling it revenge?!”

It would be easy to make a quip about Edward's height then, but his rage is a curious thing. It makes him appear larger than he is and yet there is still so much of a child in him.

“If anything,” Ed adds and his voice is merely a whisper now, like the aftershocks of an earthquake, “You should get some revenge yourself.”

vi.

It's a strange feeling, to mesh your mind with someone so intricately and then have it ripped away within what is little more than an exhale. It's hurts and then it heals and then there is still that frayed edge, forever there at the seams of your conscience.

Roy resists the urge to pluck at the lose ends so he doesn't come undone.

xv.

“Sir,” Riza says, “Permission to speak openly?”

“Permission granted, Lieutenant,” Roy says, tiredly.

“Brigadier General Hughes enlisted to protect his family,” she says. She does not pull her punches, but she gives him a moment's notice to brace himself. “You owe it to him to continue doing so.”

Roy knocks back the whiskey and tries to drown the truth. But, like his nightmares, it swims.

viii.

The Elric brothers are the golden boys of the Jaeger program. They are young, handsome, congenial. Their sob story appeals to the public, both of them orphaned when a kaiju attack laid wreckage to the Australian coast line.

Their accents are as broad as their smiles and, all over the world, boys and girls alike collect posters and action figures of them.

Their Jaeger goes down somewhere close to Kyushu and, though official sources report them to be alive and stable, they do not appear in any morning shows for quite a while to come.

vii.

Riza outmatches him in the compatibility test. It's no surprise, really, but Roy cannot find it in himself to be disappointed. He's not sure he wants to let anyone into his head anyway.

It doesn't work with Jean or Heymans either. General Grumman pinches the tips of his mustache but does not concede defeat. He keeps sending other candidates at Roy, new recruits and seasoned pilots, but none of them are Maes, so it doesn't matter anyway.

iv.

Originally, they enlisted because it was the right thing to do and they took the test because they were curious. They hadn't known each other for long, barely enough to really call each other friends instead of comrades, so no one expected them to be drift compatible.

Their Jaeger is called Pyro Polaroid, a beautiful shiny thing, all gold and navy blue. Maes makes a fuzz after every battle, lamenting the scratches in the paint job as one would with a beloved old-timer.

Later, in his more macabre moments Roy thinks that maybe it was a good thing that Maes died because at least this way he didn't have to witness how Roy quite literally single-mindedly dragged Pyro Polaroid back to the shore and let her collapse against the cliffs. He didn't have to see her be decommissioned and ransacked for spare parts. He didn't have to watch Roy break just as efficiently.

ix.

The rumor reaches Roy when its subjects are already there. Then again, it's kind of hard to miss a giant Jaeger being flown into the base.

Roy doesn't have to guess who it is. The flaming red paint and black markings are enough of a giveaway.

Fullmetal Alchemist, despite the extensive damage she must have sustained, was a younger model and had thus been deemed worthy of repair. Similar things can be said for her pilots.

Alphonse Elric is being carted around the uneven floors of the base in a wheelchair, but his handshake is strong and his smile genuine.

“Looking forward to working with you,” he tells Roy as though it weren't unlikely that he'd ever walk again.

“Where on earth has Ed gone?” a young woman behind Al huffs. She has her hands on her hips and grease smears all over. She must be one of Fullmetal Alchemist's engineers.

“Probably making sure his baby is parked correctly,” Al replies, rolling his eyes. To Roy he says, “He's very particular about who gets to touch her.”

Who's going to co-pilot her then, Roy wants to ask but doesn't because the answer sure as hell is not Alphonse.

xi.

Edward fights as though he were participating in an illegal street fight, not looking for a drift partner. He's got his opponents on their backs in a matter of seconds and impatiently taps his bo staff against the floor mats as he waits for his next challenger.

“Come on,” he drawls. His skin glistens with sweat underneath his black tank top but morphs into scar tissue on his right shoulder. Somewhere in the crowd someone mutters how the automail gives him an unfair advantage. But drift compatibility is not about brute strength. It's about chess.

“Was that really it?” Ed asks now. His face is turned toward Grumman but his eyes are on Riza and her neat clipboard. She hesitates.

“There is one,” she says and when her gaze cuts over to Roy, Ed follows.

xxv.

The sunrise is made of seven colors, dyeing the sea and the sky. But the sun, the sun itself is bold and golden and almost bright enough to hurt Roy's eyes.

He does not look away.

xix.

They lose Arctic Briggs in the waves and Greed is rendered useless when Lan Fan is injured.

Ling gets her out, barely, and she survives, barely. Her remaining hand is red with her own blood as she clutches at Doctor Rockbell's bony wrist.

“Automail,” she grits out through the pain, “I can still fight. Give me automail.”

It took three years to get used to automail, one if you were as determined as Edward, but everyone knows that they only have days.

And yet, amid all the chaos and the destruction, it's easy to read Lan Fan's stubborn spite as hope.

“All right,” Doctor Rockbell says and gives a tight nod.

“Set the clock to zero,” Grumman orders and the bleak metal walls of the Shatterdome reflect his words like a mockingbird's song.

xxi.

Ed kisses like their staff fight might make one expect him to. Looking for openings, for weak spots, just this side of dirty. Roy matches him, kiss for kiss, and this is like their fight, too, this feeling of being alive, of being equal, of being in the right place at the right time.

xii.

Izumi Curtis coughs red blood into white handkerchiefs and observes Roy with narrow eyes.

Like him, she had once managed to pilot a Jaeger on her own. Unlike him, she had ended up with physical ruin instead of mental one.

“I found the boys in the rubble, hidden under the corpse of their mother,” she tells Roy what he has already heard on various radio shows, “I saw them grow old enough to enlist and I saw them nearly die at Kyushu. At some point you have to learn how to prioritize the world before your own fear.”

“I'm not afraid,” he says.

“Not of the kaiju,” she agrees.

xiii.

Roy tells himself he is merely embarrassed when he goes down the rabbit hole. He blames it on being unfamiliar with Fullmetal Alchemist and with how long it's been that he's been inside of a Jaeger at all.

He manages to jerk himself free, vaguely aware of the frantic voices breaking through his headset, only Riza's calm and reasonable. He does not look to his left to see Edward's face. He does not want his pity or his scorn. He does not want to think about how that boy has been inside of his head.

“I'm done here,” Roy croaks and runs away once more.

ii.

Roy flirts with show hosts, takes selfies with fans and ruffles little children's hair. He gives autographs and press conferences, wears tailored suits and debonair smiles. He's the bachelor, the playboy, the unattainable dream. Maes is the opposite, the family man, the goofball, the nerd, who makes dad jokes and shows off pictures of his family and his stamp collection.

They work well together, maintaining the perfect equilibrium of what the public wants to see. Dashing heroes, guys next door.

Maes does not talk about how Gracia silently cries whenever she has to watch him leave. Roy does not admit that maybe sometimes he drinks a little too much whiskey to forget the last trampled city and the corpses that came with it.

Instead, they are invited to dinner parties at the White House and appear on a sports car commercial. They are living the life, only that there is a lot of death involved, too.

xxii.

“We will pilot Greed,” Izumi announces. Sig is a mountain beside her, steady and silent.

“What?” Alphonse bursts out, “But you can't! Pinako said if you ever step foot into a Jaeger again, it's gonna kill you.”

Izumi smiles, fondly.

“Look around, kid,” she says, indicating the listless disarray of the Shatterdome, “If I don't do this, we are all going to die anyway.”

She looks over to Ed, catches his eye. His teeth are clenched and his arms crossed, but he holds her gaze. Then he gives a nod.

“Brother!” Alphonse protests. He looks very pale in the lights of his lab and it makes the red veins in his eyes even more glaring, “You can't-”

He breaks off, doesn't finish. It's the moment in which he realizes that he is not only going to lose his mentor but his brother, too.

“Oh,” he says, his voice tight with tears. But he must know that, one way or another, this was always going to happen.

x.

“Don't,” Doctor Rockbell says evenly, never even looking up from her newspaper. Smoking is not allowed in the base but no one seems to have told her that and so she is puffing away on her pipe.

Edward, who had been feeding Den scraps under the table, sends her a withering look.

“It's the end of the world,” he says, “The least we can do is die fat and happy.” It's says it easily, evasively. They all know it might be over soon. He says it as someone who knows better than others. Better than most.

“Why are you still fighting,” Roy asks, not sure if he even wants to know the answer, “If you think it's the end?”

Ed's eyes, even in the harsh fluorescent lights of the base, are as golden as few living things should be.

“Because if I don't,” Ed tells him, “It's gonna be game over either way.”

xvi.

Drift compatibility, generally speaking, makes sense.

Olivier Armstong and Artyom Buccaneer make sense because he has been serving under her for years. Ling and Lan Fan make sense because they grew up together. Sig and Izumi Curtis make sense because they are married and still madly in love.

Roy and Ed, on the other hand, should not make sense.

Ed's mind is a flurry of contradictions. Smiles tucked into the corners of his loved ones, Alphonse, their mother, Winry, Pinako. Izumi with a halo of the morning sun, a dead kaiju at her feet and a defunct Jaeger at her back, Izumi pale and with coughs shaking her asunder. Snippets of Al's mind interwoven with his own. Brandings of the precise moment in which Al lost feeling in his legs, of when Ed felt nothing but the absence of his own limbs. Metal grinding against kaiju scales, metal grinding into Ed's flesh and bone, fusing with his skin. Weeks and weeks of sitting by Al's bedside, waiting for him to wake up. Months and months of being useless, useless, useless. Day after day of dreadful news, broken walls, broken bodies.

And watching, always watching, as Winry and the rest of the team sew Fullmetal Alchemist back into her former glory, some uneven stitches here, some scars there, and Ed knows that you are never just piloting with your partner but with your Jaeger as well. He'll brave the oceans with her yet again and even the idea of doing it without Al doesn't hurt as much as it ought to.

Revenge, Roy had thought, when it had always been so much more than that.

xx.

“Oi,” Ed says, flicking an automail finger against Roy's wrist. The impact reverberates through Roy's bone marrow. “I'm not fucking piloting with you if you're hungover.”

“We share our minds, not our actual brains,” Roy tells him from experience. Maes had never complained about sympathy headaches the morning after Roy had drunk himself into a stupor again. But he had given Roy steady looks, not necessarily disappointed, but lingering a little too long for comfort. Ed is doing the same now, though his eyebrows are pinched, his eyes somber.

“What would you like me to do instead?” Roy says, offering a skeleton of a smile. He and Olivier had never gotten along but she had been Alex's sister and Roy blames himself for his failure. Without her and Buccaneer piloting Arctic Briggs, humanity is one, two, a dozen steps closer to extinction.

“Dunno,” Ed says. He scuffs the heel of his boot against the floor, shivering slightly. He's wearing an oversized sweater to fend of the perpetual cold of the Shatterdome. Does he miss the Australian heat? Does he miss his arm and leg underneath the phantom pain? Does he miss his mother like Roy misses Maes?

“Dunno,” Ed repeats, “But grief's gonna fuck you over if you don't fuck it back.”

“And how do you...,” Roy says, tilting his head to the side in mildly drunk curiosity, “Fuck grief back?”

Edward grins, boyish and brave and full of bad ideas.

“You fight,” he says as though it were a gospel.

A moment of enlightenment and then Roy sets his glass aside. He prays.

xvi.

Roy, to his chagrin, estimated the Elrics. Not just Edward, but Alphonse, too.

There is more to them than sun tanned skin and the lucky coincidence of being drift compatible.

“I had to do something,” Alphonse says with red bleeding into his hazel eyes. Roy wrinkles his nose against the invasive smell of the kaiju brain on the slab, but Edward doesn't even seem to notice, fuzzing over his younger brother like a nervous bird.

“What did you see?” Grumman wants to know.

“Their world,” Alphonse says and then he explains.

xxiii. Sex, in its many forms, is a form of survival. On the one hand, there is procreation. On the other, there is the instinct to affirm life, the urgency of one's last moments.

Cheap whiskey, Roy knows, does not compare to orgasm, but Edward's eyes have the same color.

The boy has not done this often, Roy thinks. Too earnest to bed one of his many groupies, too busy to bother with anyone else. On the surface, Edward seems to consist of little but Jaeger, kaiju, and his pickpocketed family. Underneath that, however, sits a deep-rooted fear of pain and loneliness and abandonment.

So he lets Roy fuck him in the face of death and destruction, and Roy fucks him in spite of it. He puts no promises into his kisses, no reassurances, because he doesn't have any. Instead, he weaves solace into Edward's hair, gentle reminders that for now – for now – they are here and alive and in each others' arms instead of each others' heads. It's little and lacking, but it's all they have and that makes it precious.

Roy does not dream that night.

iii.

“Ah,” Maes says, when they are playing cards without any gambles, “What will you do? When it's done, I mean.”

He never seems to doubt that it would be done, eventually. That humanity would win the fight and that life would return to how it was before the first kaiju appeared.

Roy thinks of how Maes himself would probably leave the military and take up a desk job somewhere else, something that allows him to be with Gracia and Elysia, something that doesn't count down his days like the war clock at the Shatterdome. Tick tick. Reset. Tick tick. Reset.

Roy, however, is not like that. Roy sees the horizon only when there is a new monster appearing on it. Roy never plans beyond that.

“I'd like to watch the sunrise,” he says and reveals his hand.

xxvi.

Mankind, like cockroaches, are tenacious little beasts.

xxiv.

“You mad cunt,” Edward yells against the wind. His hair is already wavy with sea salt, even though it can't have been more than a few minutes. Logically, Roy knows it can't have been more than a few minutes, even though it felt like eternity.

The memories of passing through the portal are both hazy and knife-sharp at the same time. He entered another world, another planet. And, what's more, he almost died. But he didn't.

“Are you all right?” he asks, somewhat numbly. There are voices coming from out of the escape pod, questions on whether everything worked out on their end, promises to come get them soon. He thinks he can hear helicopters in the distance.

“All right?” Edward repeats as though the definition of the word had just been fundamentally altered. The combination of his accent and adrenaline slur the words until he sounds almost drunk on elation. “All right?”

His fingers are on the collar of Roy's suit, a tether that is tender and terrible at the same time. His clammy forehead presses against Roy's.

“This is General Grumman,” Grumman's voice drones out of the pod. He sounds tinny and far away. The moment remains untouchable.

“The breach is sealed,” he announces, “Stop the clock!”

Roy kisses Ed.

[robertvasquez763]

Bruce Brown, Lady Bird, the City of Trees, and the 96-MPH Caponord: An Appreciation

–

Over the weekend, I saw Greta Gerwig’s much praised Lady Bird. The release of that film was probably the biggest thing to hit my sleepy, sprawling burg of Sacramento since the Kings arrived from Kansas City in 1985. The movie was filmed here and set during the the protagonist’s final year of high school in 2002–2003, nine years after I was a starry-eyed senior set to head off to the Bay Area for college, and more than half a decade before everybody had a smartphone. Sacto native Gerwig touches on the importance of magazines at what was perhaps the last possible moment before the World Wide Web ruled everything. For those raised prior to an era of always-on digital access, the feeling of cultural isolation could be acute. Glossies like Spin and Details and newsprint zines in the vein of Maximumrocknroll were a window into another world. I’d read up, wander across the street to the original Tower Records, and try something out. But before I fell into the world of music and lifestyle books, BMX magazines were my first key to another, seemingly richer world. Go—a short-lived successor to BMX Action and Freestylin’ put together by a talented crew that included Spike Jonze and Jackass director Jeff Tremaine—turned me on to the music of D.C. hard-core stalwart Ian MacKaye. Without punk rock, my career path wouldn’t have led me to Car and Driver. But Go might not have existed at all were it not for Bruce Brown, who died Sunday at the age of 80. In essence, I owe Mr. Brown the last 30 years of my life.

–

–

Bruce Brown, camera in hand, during the filming of The Endless Summer.

–

He’s best remembered for his seminal surf documentary The Endless Summer, which I first saw in seventh-grade science class, around the same time I was devouring BMX rags and spending hours convincing my parents to let me go out and race. In one retrospective on the sport’s early days in the 1970s—which may have appeared in BMX Action—racers including Stu Thomsen discussed having their minds blown by the opening credits in Brown’s 1971 motorcycle doc, On Any Sunday. In it, a pack of kids tear around a kid’s-bike-sized motocross course on Schwinn Stingrays, crashing, pulling wheelies, jumping, and making motorcycle sounds. Shortly thereafter, organized bicycle motocross races sprung up, because what kid hasn’t pretended his bicycle is a motorcycle at some point? When I finally got around to seeing On Any Sunday, I was immediately smitten. Mert Lawwill and Malcolm Smith are inspired protagonists, the cinematography—rudimentary by today’s standards but advanced for its day—still enthralls, and Brown’s good-natured California-cornpone narration lays out the action in a way that even the layman can enjoy. It’s not just a great motorcycle movie; it’s a great movie, period.

–

Brown, fundamentally, was a harbinger of good, a DIY magician who brought his cinematic works to the masses and, in doing so, made the seemingly impenetrable accessible. In the early days of his surf films, he’d barnstorm up and down the West Coast, showing his movies in high-school gymnasiums, narrating them in real time. Sensing that he had something bigger with The Endless Summer, he tried to secure wider distribution. When the majors said no, that it wouldn’t play beyond the niche of edge-of-the-continent surf rats, he rented a theater in white-bread Wichita, Kansas, and sold it out. And sold it out again. And again. Finally, the distributors took notice. The success of the landmark surf film paved an easier path for On Any Sunday, allowing Brown to secure funding from Steve McQueen, who figures prominently in the Elsinore Grand Prix section as well as the famous final sequence, during which he, Smith, and Lawwill bomb through the countryside and roost around on a Southern California beach.

–

A few years back, I asked Mark Wahlberg whether he preferred Easy Rider or On Any Sunday. He chose Easy Rider, and that sort of tells you all you need to know about Mark Wahlberg.

–

–

In one form or another, on bikes or in cars, I’ve sampled many of the motorized pursuits Brown runs through during the course of On Any Sunday, and although my heart lies with flinging a bike sideways through a corner while my steel-shod left boot skips along the ground, a couple of gnarly wrecks at a recent trip to Rich Oliver’s Mystery School have me reconsidering flat-track shenanigans, given my suddenly brittle 42-year-old frame. Long-distance touring, a discipline not covered in Brown’s film, is ultimately where I’ve found my niche, but in motorcycling, if you’re not at least something of an omnivore, you’re invariably missing out on something great.

–

For all of Sacramento’s foibles, it makes a case for itself as perhaps the best city in America to live in if you’re a motorcyclist. There’s year-round riding weather. It has less traffic than Los Angeles or San Francisco, but it’s clogged up enough to enjoy the feel-good benefits of lane splitting, which, of course, is legal only in California. What’s more, there are phenomenal, quiet roads within an hour’s ride in just about any direction. Sears Point and Thunderhill are 90 minutes away, there’s speedway racing up the hill in Auburn, Sacramento Raceway offers a drag strip, and it’s only three hours to Laguna Seca. The Hangtown Classic is a legendary motocross event (covered by Bruce’s son, Dana, in On Any Sunday: The Next Chapter), and, of course, there’s the storied Sacramento Mile, which serves as the coda to the flat-track portion of the original movie.

–

When I heard Brown had died, everything fell away. Lady crushes, clerical business, chores that desperately needed doing. All I wanted to do was get on my motorcycle, as going for a ride felt like the only fitting tribute and perhaps the only way to alleviate the empty thud in my chest. I only had a couple of hours, so I figured I’d run down into the California Delta. In Lady Bird, Gerwig’s camera lingers pretty hard on the rivers in Sacramento. The geographic picture she paints of the place roughly parallels the town’s footprint before the war. It has now been decades since this place wasn’t an agglomeration of cities and unincorporated areas stretching halfway across the Central Valley. Her decision makes a lot of sense, as much of the infill and expansion that led to our very own mini-megalopolis fundamentally paralleled the rise of the internet. I imagine one day, perhaps in my lifetime, you’ll be able to drive clear from Colfax in the Sierra Nevada to Gilroy, south of San Jose—a distance of nigh on 200 miles—without once truly leaving an urban area. Although the city has crept inexorably south, following the Sacramento River down toward its mouth at Suisun Bay is a quick way to escape the sprawl. Ironic, in that the river itself was the original transit corridor between San Francisco and Sac during the Gold Rush.

–

–

The Capo at the edge of Panamint Valley. Note obscene selective-yellow lights.

–

Awash in thought, I got on the Aprilia Caponord Rally I bought back in October. I’d picked it up at Moto International in Seattle, on my way home from an office visit to Ann Arbor. Just before I rode away, Dave Richardson, the face of the shop for 25 years and a man deeply beloved and respected in the Moto Guzzi community, told me that it was the last motorcycle he’d ever sell. I knew he was retiring, but the idea that this was the final bike he’d usher out of that little dealership on North Aurora meant that I needed to put it to good use. So far, I’ve put nearly 6000 miles on the clock, riding it through seven states in two months. The motorcycle itself turned out to be a dead-end design for the Noale-based Piaggio division. The smooth, rowdy 90-degree 1200-cc twin wouldn’t pass Euro 4 emissions regulations, and Aprilia had only built about 5000 Caponords in total since the bike was introduced in 2013. My bike is a leftover 2016 model, hardly the only such motorcycle in Aprilia dealer inventory. Do the math. Making the bike pass Eurosmog wasn’t worth the effort.

–

Down on power compared to Ducati’s Multistrada or KTM’s big ADV machines and lacking the dealer network, aftermarket support, and reputation of BMW’s category-defining R1200GS, the Capo’s adventure-touring variant is nonetheless the best mile-eating motorcycle I’ve been on. For my build, anyway, it fits better than the outgoing Gold Wing. It outplushes a Harley FL (buy my 2015 Ultra Limited, please) and will smoke it through a corner or in a straight line. The Capo offers the same sort of sporting comfort as a BMW RT, but without the bland efficiency of the latest Bavarian boxer twin. Say what you will about Italian quality, the salami set seems almost incapable of building naturally aspirated engines that don’t delight. Its default velocity is 96 miles per hour. Start the bike, twist the throttle, let out the clutch, look down at the speedo, and it will invariably read 96. Why do I need more power? Who are these KTM-riding maniacs? To bring this back around, I hold Brown somewhat responsible for the fact that I currently own five motorcycles, one of which always goes 96 miles per hour.

–

I pointed the Ape west, then south, chasing a Duc and a Hog down I-5, and popped off at Twin Cities Road. The “twin cities” in question are the humble hamlets of Walnut Grove and Locke, not much more than growths on the eastern levee of the Sacramento River. To be fair, Walnut Grove does feature a drawbridge and an auto-repair shop that often features interesting classic Benzes and Lamborghinis in the window. And Locke was the subject of the first novel by my perennial homecoming date, the American Book Award–winning Shawna Yang Ryan. The haze drifting up from the devastating Thomas fire—a whopping 300 miles to the southeast—hung brown as the sun dipped toward the Coast Range, but the valley air was still clear enough to make out the shape of Mount Diablo in the distance, off across the farms and marshland that separate the river from Fairfield.

–

–

Mert Lawwill, Malcolm Smith, and Steve McQueen during the filming of On Any Sunday.

–

Eighty-odd years ago, when Locke was still a town built and run by Chinese immigrants rather than standing as a monument to the Chinese immigrants who built it, my grandfather and his work buddies would drive down the levee to gamble here. One night, the infamous tule fog rolled in. It’s one of California’s meteorological curios, one perhaps even more deadly than the fire-pushing Santa Ana and Diablo winds, given the severity of the automobile accidents that its zero-visibility soup causes. Sometimes, it will inundate the valley from Redding in the north, all the way down past Pumpkin Center, 450 miles south. Anyway, the young AT&T engineers got stuck in the stuff after a night at the tables. One unlucky sod, presumably with a few drinks in him for fortitude, was tasked with standing on the car’s running board, making sure the driver didn’t dump them into the river on the 25-mile drive back up to Sacramento. Riding back from Las Vegas a month ago, I found myself caught in the stuff. Upping the power on the 13,000 lumens worth of selective-yellow lamps I’d installed on the Aprilia did nothing to improve the situation. I didn’t expect it to, but when things are uncertain and you’ve got a rheostat, you invariably wanna twiddle with it. With twiddling having proven itself fruitless, I fell back on my dad’s advice: Keep a truck’s taillights just barely in view.

–

It’s a primitive mode of travel at that point; no motorcycle technology developed in the past 46 years was going to help much, save perhaps ABS if things suddenly went pear-shaped. Fumbling forward in the fog, chasing a dim light. That was life in a pre-internet Sacramento. And, I suspect, plenty of other towns in America. There was no one grand font, no place you could go for the inside scoop. You had to piece it together out of rumor, innuendo, going out and seeing shows, meeting people, catching movies, and perhaps by getting lucky at Tower. Life was a series of hyperlinks that loaded at what, in retrospect, seems like an absolutely glacial pace. Now and then, however, there’d be a supernova moment that would allow so much else to fall into place. Nirvana on the radio. Bruce Brown bringing the possibility of a different sort of life to kids in landlocked towns.

–

–

Bad Buggies and Ballyhoo: Bashing through the Desert in VW-Powered Off-Roaders

–

Escape to Baja: Three Blissed-Out Days Touring Mexico on a Harley-Davidson

–

Niken a Go Go: Yamaha’s Radical New Three-Wheeled Sportbike

–

–

I rode home up the river as the sun set, toward the great silver water tower that used to read “City of Trees.” Gerwig’s languorous shots of the river flitted through my mind as the river itself turned gold, then faded to purple in the waning light. The visions of riparian quiet fought for mental space with Brown’s footage of Malcolm Smith ripping across a dry lake down in Baja, Cal Rayborn putting a streamliner on its side at Bonneville, and Mert Lawwill leaving home in that rad old Ford Econoline on Torq-Thrusts, XR750 in the back, off on a futile quest to defend his AMA Grand National title. Then it all jelled into one great historic, present mass. What was once disparate was suddenly all of a piece. Time slips forward and fragments reassemble themselves in your mind as needed. A nice drive in a good car helps the pieces mesh more harmoniously, but taking that same trip on a bike somehow amplifies the experience exponentially.

–

At the end of The Endless Summer, Brown, in voice-over, says simply, “This is Bruce Brown. Thank you for watching. I hope you enjoyed my film.”

–

No, Bruce. Thank you.

–

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