Activists El Centro style!

Looks like I’ll be stuck here until tomorrow at least – the good news is that I’ll be able to speak at the LGBT center, 15 minutes! The bad news is that some of the bolts broke off when they tried to remove the old turbocharger plus the manifold cracked. Which just doubled my bill…plus my time here.

At least I’m still in California, although barely. They will overnite the manifold, install both the turbocharger and manifold tomorrow, hopefully in time for me to drive to the center. Everything has to be finished by noon anyway, cause that’s when the shop closes on Saturday.

To save a few dollars, I walk to the O’Reillys auto place to buy oil and a filter. A young round-faced cheerful young man behind the counter searches for my filter and then looks at me with alarm in his eyes as he says “wow, that one’s expensive”. I agree – my mechanic has already informed me, $50 if they provide, $46 if I get at Reillys.

When I set my Kombucha water bottle on the counter to find my VIN, he comments on the Kombucha, which leads us into a long conversation about the environment and growing organic, Standing Rock and protesting the border wall. 

It is such a pleasure to have this conversation with a worker at Reilly’s – not the usual but this appears to be a brown-male-run shop, not usual either.

I ask him how he got to be so active and aware and he attributes this path to following his older brother, who lives on and is the caretaker for land in the country and grows organic food and animals.