Baron’s Blog

Went over to Kanaka Kava with Mike to meet some friends for some kava and I saw a bunch of blue lights and cops in the parking lot so being the pj that I am I had to investigate.

Apparently what happened, according to a bystander, is the cops were arresting some gal in the parking lot who was driving this pickup. She got out and as the cops talked to her the pickup started to roll down the parking lot with nobody in it. A cop tried to jump in, or lean in and stop the vehicle but it was too late.

The driverless pickup smashed into this SUV, bashed it and pushed it up onto the curb.

The force drove the SUV into a lightpost causing damage to the front too.

Quite the bummer for the owner of the SUV.

On a happier note we got to have some kava later and some pupu at Kanaka Kava. I neglected to shoot photos of the other food which included (here: veggies, shrimp, ulu) kalua pork and Okinawan sweet potato pie with a layer of haupia. Pretty ono stuff. I only sampled the pie which was nice in that it wasn’t overly sweet. (I had a photo of the pie but accidentally deleted it).

You probably want to make sure you’re wearing your seatbelt while driving through Waimea, you never know who’s watching from behind a sign with a walkie-talkie for his buddies down the road.

An email from Tesoro regarding my blog post of Feb. 14th.

————————snip——————————-
Mr. Sekiya,

Regards,
Brandon Plank
Retail Tesoro Customer Care
phone: 1-877-783-7676
tsocustomercare@tsocorp.com
————————snip——————————-

I’m not sure how they are going to make good to folks who were overcharged but tossed their receipts. If you are one of these folks it wouldn’t hurt to go in there and ask.

For those of you who put in fuel and get your car washed at the former Queen Kaahumanu Hwy. Chevron, now a Tesoro, you might want to take a close look at your receipt.

This station has a drive through car wash which is nice since it’s quick and easy. They are supposed to knock-off $2 from your car wash price if you put in more than 7 gallons of fuel but ever since they switched from Chevron to Tesoro their computer system is messed-up and has been overcharging people by not giving the discount. The first time I saw this was about a week ago and decided to try again today when I came back to get another fill-up and wash. The error was still there so I went inside to let them know about the problem.

Right away they wanted to refund my $2 for each wash I was overchared (my two car washes) but I told them to just give me a free car wash ($6 value) since they overcharged me more than $2 per wash since they now add tax, unlike the previous owner Chevron.

So folks, if you’ve been buying car washes from them since the beginning of the month when Tesoro took over, you may have been getting ripped-off. Accidentally I’m sure but I’m really surprised nobody complained to them…or had they?

And don’t bother trying that wash code, I already used it. On the plus side now the place is open 24/7.

*UPDATE* 2/17/07 - They are still overcharging people at The Queen Kaahumanu Hwy Tesoro, I told them again today that they’re overcharging and got a refund. Again they were going to give me a $2 refund and I made them give me back more than that to cover the tax paid too.

*UPDATE #2* 2/22/07 - They are STILL ripping-off customers at The Queen Kaahumanu Highway Tesoro. Went by and bought a car wash as a test after filling up. Still overcharging by $2 (they got rid of the tax) by not giving customers a discount. Gals behind the counter said they know about the problem and said folks have to ask for the $2 refund. They looked blank when I told them they should put a notice out there warning folks on their sign claiming to offer a discount.

*UPDATE #3 2/26/07 An email from Tesoro:
————————snip——————————-
Mr. Sekiya,

Regards,
Brandon Plank
Retail Tesoro Customer Care
phone: 1-877-783-7676
tsocustomercare@tsocorp.com
————————snip——————————-

I’m not sure how they are going to make good to folks who were overcharged but tossed their receipts. If you are one of these folks it wouldn’t hurt to go in there and ask.

Took my dad’s car to the McKinnley Car Wash since the windows were getting kind of grungy, what is that foggy film that always develops on the inside of car windows?

The first thing I see before even entering the hall of the car wash office, where they sell candy, drinks and newspapers, is a rack of free Star-Bulletin papers. The two papers in Honolulu have been battling it out for readership. Hard to argue with a free paper when you’re waiting for your car to be washed.

Inside is the Tiser for 50 cents.

And at the William-Sonoma I saw what I thought was an MP3 music player at first, then I looked closely. Hope people got their glasses on when they rip open their presents on Christmas or they’ll be disappointed that instead of listening for tunes they’ll be in charge of cooking.

And finally, if you’re planning on robbing my family’s restaurant you might want to check the back parking lot first to see who’s eating there.

Aaaaaaaarrrrrrrhhhhh! I was driving on the Queen K. Hwy headed to Costco and I heard a sharp crack. I immediately swore, looked up to my windshield and saw that something had impacted and cracked my windshield to the right of my mirror. I immediately looked in my side mirror but saw normal traffic headed the other way and the car in front of my was pretty little. Something got tossed my way from another vehicle probably to hit it that hard. I never saw it coming as it wasn’t near my immediate field of view.

So now I’ve got this crack in my new car’s windshield. Maybe there’s one of the glass docs that can somehow put something on or in it so it won’t spread. In any case it looks like maybe I’ll be getting a new windshield sometime. This place delivers a quote of about $288 to replace the windshield.

So forget about combustion engine cars that have all those moving parts to go wrong (and parts suppliers to get rich when they wear out) and the pollution. An electric car with a capacitor instead of a battery seems the way to go. It recharges in 5 minutes and can drive 500 miles on about $9 worth of electricity. And of course electricity is the ultimate flex-fuel to power cars since you can generate it from oil, wind, sun, otec, hydrogen, etc. A company called EEStore is keeping things kind of hush-hush on the project.

Sounds great and hopefully we will see the fruition of this. But I’m wondering…if a significant number of people start driving electric cars, where will the funds come from to upkeep our highways? Right now we have gasoline taxes but if you don’t use gas what then? Plus you’d see recharge stations everywhere since you won’t need to dig a deep hole in the ground to put gasoline storage tanks. Maybe big parking garages with metered rechargers?

And most of all, when it’s recharging will it let out a deafening whine like some gigantic flash unit charging up to fire?