Day 48, Tuesday, August 2, 2005

Today Cliff and I headed up to Reno with a three item agenda: help one of Cliff’s friends move some furniture, get a hiking day pack for me from REI, and check out the Hot August Nights outdoor car show.
Cliff’s friend, Mike, wanted nothing more than to discuss religion and to try to back up how his view of Christianity is the “right” view which holds “The” bible as infallible. But he only holds his version of the bible as infallible, not the Catholic version “which isn’t the real bible”. Infallible despite being interpreted by men (no women were allowed to have input back then) passed on as oral stories prior to being bound under one cover. Infallible despite being written by men who are themselves imperfect. I just don’t get it. The Christian vs Agnostic, blind faith vs logical interpretation of evidence discussion lasted through most of the morning and well past lunch and, of course, accomplished nothing in the end. Neither he, nor I, nor Cliff came away with any enlightenment or changes in beliefs. I wouldn’t call it a wasted morning because we did get the furniture moved, but…
After lunch, we headed over to REI where I picked up a day pack. When I hiked Half Dome on Friday I determined that I absolutely had to get a day pack if I intended to do any more hiking during this trip. The undersized pack I used that day actually left abrasions on my hip bones where the waist strap was too small and left my shoulders aching because it wasn’t long enough for my torso. The bag I picked up, a REI Trail Series Lookout, takes into account literally all of the requirements I’d set out for what I was looking for and is a large size to fit my torso length. I’ll definitely get good use of this bag throughout my trip.
After REI, We dropped headed over to Reno’s Hot August Nights outdoor car show. I was expecting a much bigger and more entertaining event. In truth there weren’t nearly as many cars there as I’d hoped to see, many of the cars were replicas or collages of multiple years and manufacturers instead of the real things, and many of the owners were simply super rich guys who’d paid to have their cars (some of them had invested nearly a quarter million dollars in some of the cars) completely done by body shops without ever getting their fingers dirty and with no intention of ever even driving their cars. The problem I have with this stems from personal experience. At Motorola I worked with a friend, Don Horn, who likes and collects old muscle cars. He takes the cars apart himself, has parts scattered all over his house and garage, does as much of the work as possible himself, scouts car shows in the multi state area for needed parts, is super involved with the body shops with the work he can’t do at home, and generally CONSTANTLY has his hands dirty with his cars. What’s more, and here’s the clincher, Don takes his cars out and wears out the rear tires because he drives the muscle cars LIKE THEY’RE MUSCLE CARS rather than dainty little show pieces. Don, thank you for making it clear to me the way people OUGHT to restore and enjoy muscle cars!