Glasspacks and Skunks

Entrance to the mission office and former stake center building

I have concluded that I am a Spoiled Vancouver-onian.  At home, we live between two cities, in an unincorporated area.  The city limits of Vancouver end on 172^nd Ave., and the city limits of Camas begin on 192^nd Ave.  That’s about a 1-mile swath of land.  I’m not complaining that no city wants to claim us.  When we moved into our home, we were living out in the country!  There was one grocery store about 2 miles away.  Now we have a Costco, Walmart, Home Depot, and many fast-food restaurants within 2 miles.

Living here in Riverside isn’t quite the same.  We see and hear things that I am not accustomed to.  Here are a few observations.

“Skunks.”  When we were driving to Riverside and would stop along the way, we smelled a faint odor that we concluded was skunk. We knew what that smelled like because we’ve driven through Idaho and Utah many times.  It is distinctive.  But this was different. It wasn’t as strong as a roadkill along the freeway.  After moving into our apartment, we would get up early and go walking and could smell “skunk” every morning. We thought there were certainly a lot of skunks in Riverside.  Then it dawned on us.  This odd “skunk” scent wasn’t really skunk after all.  It was marijuana!  In our current apartment complex, we think that nearly every resident uses marijuana each morning because nearly every building we walk past has that same “skunk” smell.  We are now wise in the ways of the world.  (And we know why, after our walks, we feel so happy! JK)

Years ago, our friends the Pittman’s were living in Germany. Their daughter, Tonya had a car in Vancouver, and we were asked if she could park the car in our driveway for a few months until she returned, which we agreed to do.  When we got word she was returning, I went out and started the car and took it out for a drive just to make certain everything was working correctly.  It ran fine, but the muffler was very loud, especially on the freeway!  I emailed them and said the car is in great shape but I thought there might be a hole in the muffler.  Tonya immediately wrote back and said there wasn’t a hole in the muffler, and that she “paid good money to have the car sound that way!”  Apparently, she had a “glasspack” muffler that makes the car sound more ferocious than it would normally.  It seems to me that Tonya has a lot of fellow “glasspackers” here in Riverside. The muffler noise of so many of the cars is incredible!  Our apartment complex is on a busy street.  Most of the time we can’t hear “regular-muffled” cars.  But when a “glasspacker” goes by, we can hear it….it sounds like a semi-truck…which we hear often as well.  There should be a law that limits how loud a vehicle can be.  I must be getting old or something.

In Vancouver, we would often feel the bass of a car’s stereo system before we could actually see the car.  Actually, we could hear it blocks away.  We get that frequently here as well, except it is generally the car sitting next to or behind us.  Often their windows are rolled down, I suspect so they can share their music with the rest of the world.  Perhaps if they would roll up the windows, they wouldn’t need the volume to be so loud to overcome the road noise when driving with the windows down.  I must be getting old or something.

We’ve been here 6 months already, so you would think we would be used to this.  When approaching an intersection with traffic lights, it is often difficult to know which traffic light is for your lane.  The lights do not align with the lane you are in, especially if you are in the left lane and there is a left turn lane at the intersection.  It sometimes appears that the left turn light is for the left lane.  Is this just a California thing?  It just needs to be scooted over to the left 2 or 3 feet so as to eliminate all doubt.  I have been known to slow down trying to decipher which lane the light is for, and worse, Liz will gasp when she realizes I’m going through the intersection that appears to her to have a red light.  I’m not sure I’ll get used to it.

As I mentioned earlier, we are spoiled in Vancouver.  We have so many conveniences near our home.  Costco, Home Depot, gas stations.  We can get to those places within 3 minutes.  They are all within 2 miles.  Here in Riverside, the traffic is “considerable.”  I have to chuckle when someone says that a specific store is 4 miles away, but it takes 20 minutes go get there!  It feels like each mile of city driving takes 5 minutes.  If you drive on the freeway, it may only take 7 or 8 minutes to go 5 miles; that’s when traffic is flowing smoothly.  However, at times, for some unknown reason, traffic comes to a complete standstill.  When you get up to where it begins to return to freeway speeds, there is no indication as to the cause of the slowdown.  No accidents.  No cars pulled to the side of the road.  No police cars.  No clue.  Estimating how long it will take to drive someplace on the freeway requires a crystal ball and some serious luck!  We have had to take some missionaries to LA to apply for their visas.  It takes anywhere between 1 to 3 hours.  That means we have to plan on 3 hours, just in case.  Our next trip to LA will be the week after next.

Missionaries arriving at airport

Transfers went well last week.  We had 36 new missionaries arrive on Tuesday. That’s the largest batch of new missionaries ever to arrive on the same day!  It’s fun to see the excitement on their faces, mixed with some apprehension.  But after a few days, they begin to settle in and learn from their trainers. 

This is a picture of Elder Pond and the mission office couples taken last week.  He has been here in Riverside for less than a year.  A little over a week ago, Elder Pond was pulling out of the parking space at his apartment in the mission’s only Tundra. 

He was fastening his seatbelt while pulling out and got distracted.  He sideswiped a parking pole next to the parking spot and did some serious damage from the rear passenger door almost the wheel well.  $6,500 repair bill.  Ouch!

This picture is of Elder Pond was taken Saturday.  Between the first and second picture, he was transferred from Riverside to Novosibirsk, Russia, which is in Siberia.  So, when I talk to the new missionaries about driving safely and not allowing yourself to be distracted, I will remind them of what happened to Elder Pond.  He wrecked the truck, and was transferred to Siberia just days later.

The battle of the cockroaches continues.  While the frequency of sightings has diminished, we are still finding at least one every day.  To augment what the pest control people did recently, we purchased a can of Raid and hope to drive them out.  We learned that the Pest control people treated the apartment behind ours, which is perhaps why we are seeing more than we expected.  They are scheduled to come back in about 10 days.

This will be a very exciting and busy week.  Elder Pingree, a General Authority Seventy and his wife will be visiting the mission for a “Mission Tour” this coming week.  He will be speaking to 5 of the mission zones on Wednesday and the remaining 5 on Thursday.  Thursday evening, the senior missionaries are all invited to the President’s home for dinner and a devotional.  We are looking forward to this coming week.  Liz is responsible for organizing all the food for the missionaries on Wednesday, Thursday, and the dinner Thursday evening.  He will also have a meeting with the Zone and District leaders and Sister Training Leaders on Friday morning.  Liz will provide lunch for him and a few others before he leaves for his next assignment at noon on Friday.  Elder Pingree has asked us to prepare for the mission tour by studying some specific chapters in the Book of Mormon.  We expect to be spiritually fed, as we were last week during General Conference.  In these turbulent times, there is nothing like General Conference to ground us, and help us to remember what is important.

Most of our time here, on our mission, has been spent in the office, working to keep the physical structure of the mission intact (cars, medical, finances, travel, visas, mail, etc.) are some of the responsibilities of the senior missionaries.  These last few weeks, the missionaries have asked Liz and I to accompany them on several of their teaching opportunities.  We have really enjoyed it and have experienced how quickly you learn to love these people, who are just beginning to understand how much God loves them and wants them to be happy.

We are tired. We miss our family so much. Despite that, we love our mission and feel privileged to be able to serve.