The Berlina Comes Home

[Scott Fisher <sfisher71@domain.elided>]

The plan, of course, was to trailer my new Berlina
back to Portland rather than try to drive it, just in
case any unknown problems cropped up.

In three days of commuting, lunches, and otherwise
tooling around in the Bay Area, the Berlina had
actually started coming back to life rather than
getting worse, a sure sign that the car had been well
cared-for up to its being parked by the people Andrew
bought it from.  Once or twice, the brake light on the
dash flickered on while driving; since it started when
I had pulled on the handbrake while stopped at a long
light, I first thought it was the switch at the
handbrake.  Cleaning that, however, made no
difference, and eventually Jeff suggested it might be
the fluid indicator.  (After returning home, I checked
the fluid -- it's black.  I'll flush it in the next
week.)

The plan to get it home was for me to drive it just
out of the Bay Area, to a large parking lot (which
ended up being Bill & Kathy's Family Restaurant in the
heart of downtown, metropolitan Dunnigan, CA).  This
is about two hours from Sunnyvale, where I was
staying, and constituted my least-favorite part of the
drive I've made so many times in the past year, so it
was a good back-to-back test since I'd driven the
Spider on the same road only three weeks before.

Nothing on that drive convinced me that the Berlina
had any shocks installed -- okay, we'll surf the Web
for the best prices as soon as I get home.  (Rainer
Hurtienne, no surprise, wins -- $55 US for Konis!  I
may break out of the Bilstein domination that is in
effect on the Spider and 356.  Report later.)

Fortunately, nothing convinced me of the Berlina's
incredibly good condition, apart from general
cleanliness, old fluids, and bad shocks.  We got in
the neighborhood of 25 mpg, at speeds that included a
longish run through the Danville area with an AMG
Mercedes and a new 7-series BMW.  I don't think they
expected this funky little box to keep up with them at
speeds of 80-90 mph.  (I *like* this car.)

Jeff and I met as planned, drove the Berlina up onto
the trailer, and proceeded to have a blissfully
uneventful trip home, marred only by a long stretch of
I-5 facing a monstrous headwind that dropped our
mileage to about 10 mpg for that leg of the journey. 
We eventually arrived back at Jeff's house, I started
the Berlina (fired instantly) in the trailer, and
drove home about 11:30 to find my wife and the girls
still up waiting for me.  

It turns out this is at least in part because Jeff was
locked out -- Kim had the key to his house (they'd
been feeding the pets and watching the goats for the
past week, as Jeff's wife and daughter were in Santa
Cruz that week).  So I got to drive her back to Jeff's
farm at midnight, and the Berlina earned her
whole-hearted approval.  Even the soft shocks were a
plus on the road to Jeff's, one stretch of which we've
taken to calling "Kandahar" for the huge sinkholes and
patches that look like it's been strafed.

I arrived home about midnight, which made it official:
March 29th is THE day to bring Alfas to Oregon -- it
was the anniversary of the day I drove the Spider home
last year, another faultless and incident-free
journey.

Next up: how she cleans up.

--Scott Fisher
  Tualatin, Oregon
  1974 Spider/1973 (well, 74) Berlina
  + a bunch of German cars
.
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