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  Edition # 113  
San Francisco, 11-08-2015
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Figure [1]: These San Francisco residents in Chinatown can now legally air-dry laundry on their balcony.

Angelika Hanging laundry outside to let it dry is seen with suspicion in the United States. Americans prefer running electric dryers inside the house to airing clothes in the wind. Dryers are consuming energy, though, so airing it is the greener approach. But until recently, many appartment complexes prohibited hanging laundry outside. Powerful homeowners associations (HOAs) consider laundry an eyesore, fear sliding property values, and therefore until recently expicitly disallowed the practice in contracts signed by home owners and their renters.

Starting January 2016, however, California residents can now legally hang their laundry outside to dry. Our governor Jerry Brown signed the new law in October, as California strives to be with the top of the pack when it comes to being environmentally friendly. California State Assembly representative Patti Lopez of San Fernando had brought the new law on its way, but not mainly for environmental reasons. Many of her voters can't afford electric dryers and air-drying laundry on a clothes line comes at no cost. A few other states already have similar laws in place: Florida, Hawaii, Maine, Utah, Vermont. And if you've ever been to San Francisco's Chinatown, you have probably noticed that it's very common there to see laundry fluttering on clothes lines in the wind. It's always been this way, regardless of old or new laws.

Top Product: The Tile Key Finder

Figure [2]: This keyring carries a small gadget by Tile that helps locating it when misplaced.

Michael Some people in our household, and I'm not naming names here on purpose, are constantly misplacing their keys and wallet. You'd think that's an easy to solve problem, simply make it a habit to always put them in the same place, but with progressing age, it gets harder and harder to change bad habits.

Figure [3]: An icon on the map shows the current location of the keyring.

But there's help for people who are constantly searching for misplaced items. The startup company Tile, located in Silicon Valley (where else), produces slender white plastic squares to attach to your key ring or stick inside your wallet. They can't determine their GPS position on their own, but are in constant contact with their owner's cell phone unless it moves away more than 30 feet. If the Tile app on the smart phone notices that the tile goes out of range, it stores its latest known position. Now if you misplace an item with an attached tile, simply pull out your smart phone, open the app and see the last known position of your item on a map. If it's within Bluetooth range of the phone, the app can contact the tile and make it play a ringtone, so that it can be located even if it's out of sight, like in between the sofa cushions. And since the smart phone app is constantly updating the Tile servers with its current GPS position, other cell phones on the same account can be included as well and get a copy of the location data.

The tiles cost about $17 each and last about a year. As the embedded battery can't be replaced, new tiles need to be purchased if they run out of juice, that's how the company makes money.

Figure [4]: Zwo key rings and two wallets are constantly monitored with this app.

If an item with an attached tile is hopelessly out of reach, for example because a wallet has been stolen, it can be registered as lost with the Tile app. The Tile server then broadcasts the missing tile message to the Tile apps of other users, which then internally report if they come across the missing tile by accident. If this happens, the original user gets a report on where the missing Tile has been located, that's hilarious!

And the Tile app has another interesting side effect: In our household, for example, we have a total of four Tiles in use, and they're being monitored by two different smartphones. Since the tiles are usually close to their owners, you get a pretty good idea on where they're located at any point in time. For me, this means that I can find out almost instantly where Angelika is milling around at the moment, because her smartphone reports its position to the Tile server, which updates my smartphone with her position. That's quite handy, I've got to say, but if you don't want to be tracked, simply turn off your phone's GPS function.

Figure [5]: This San Francisco resident endorses proposition F, which wants to introduce legislation to restrict Airbnb rentals.

Will San Francisco limit Airbnb?

Angelika It's fairly commaon that the city of San Francisco lets its residents decide on political matters with so-called propositions. In every local election, there's a whole slew of them on the ballot, and citizens need to make up their minds whether they endorse or reject a fair number of individual proposals to new legislation. For this reason, November 4th this year wasn't only the date for the mayoral election, but also for a decision on "Proposition F", commonly known as the "Airbnb proposition".

You're probably familiar with Airbnb, it's that web platform that lets you book short term stays in other people's appartments. It was established by Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia and Nathan Blecharczyk in 2008 in San Francisco, shortly after the three founders had decided to rent out a few extra beds and air mattresses in their appartment during a design conference in the city. They talked their friend Nathan into launching a web site originally called "Airbedandbreakfast.com", and the rest is history.

Despite these humble beginnings, the company has meanwhile become a big and well-known brand name. While Airbnb (the originally longer name was shortened in 2009) had been expanding into other cities and even foreign countries, it also got into the headlines and under significant political pressure, especially in San Francisco, where we're now facing the anomalies of another tech bubble which has created an absurd real estate market with limited supply and overwhelming demand.

Figure [6]: Airbnb offerings in our neighborhood.

At its roots, Airbnb is a brilliant idea. Residents who aren't using their appartments or houses while they're out of town for some time, are renting out single rooms or their entire place for a limited time. They're making some money this way while relying on a proven process controlled by a trusted web site. They conveniently don't need to worry about managing the process, and on the other side of the deal, the traveling tourists appreciate that they get more personal accomodations than just another bleak hotel room. But critics now object that many landlords find that they can make more money by repeatedly renting their properties short-term through Airbnb, instead of letting regular long-term renters move in, which takes more and more properties off our rental property market, which currently has very limited supply, but boasts record highs in demand.

The San Francicsco housing market is infamously overpriced and tight, which is why this issue is all over the news now. Proposition F would limit short term rentals to 75 days per year by law. Currently, residential home owners are allowed to rent our their homes up to 90 days per year while they're out of town. If the home owner is actually present in the rental object, there's no restrictions on how often it can be rented out to strangers.

If the proposition became law, it would require residents who sublet their space to file detailed reports to the city on how long each short term rental lasted, to allow them to verify if they exceeded the 75 days limit. On top of that, the proposed law would makes it easy for neighbors to report noncompliant short term landlords and file lawsuits against them. It's hardly surprising that Airbnb has spent 8 million Dollars in their campaign so far to thwart Proposition F. Their main slogan tells that Airbnb enables residents of San Francisco to earn money via short term rentals, to support them financially and enable them to stay in their beloved but horrendously expensive city. Update: Proposition F was turned down by the voters 55% to 45%.

Election Campaigns: Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders

Figure [7]: Always entertaining: Donald Trump.

Angelika Although it's still quite some time until the next presidential elections in November 2016, we're already in the middle of fierce political campaigns this year. That's in part due to the long-winding process of the so-called primaries, in which the two major political parties, Republicans and Democrats determine their front-runners. Candidates need to mobilize their base during this time and pull out all the stops in order to distinguish themselves from the often unwieldy number of their competitors.

Given the choice between all the Republican party's candidates, both German and American news outlets have been focussing on Donald Trump so far. His provocative loudmouth demeanor along with his celebrity status have secured him the number one spot in the news. At first, many political analysts and most commentators of major newspapers like the New York Times belittled the Trump phenomenon as a bad joke and predicted its quick demise. But unexpectecly, Trump prevailed, albeit by causing irritation in the very same Republican party that supported him in the first place. Common wisdom in these circles has it that he distracts from other viable candidates who would actually have a greater chance to get elected into office.

It's tempting to simply write off Trump as a crazy person. It's true that his behaviour is often unacceptable and what we keep hearing from him are mostly empty platitudes. But it would be a mistake to underestimate his abilities. Although his chances of being nominated are slim because he's severly insulted several big voting groups, he's heavily fueling the election campaign and takes away the attention from other Republican candidates. Especially his radical attitude towards illegal immigrants will almost certainly backfire at some point. His idea of building a wall at the border between Mexico and the United States and his plan to deport all illegal immigrants back to their home countries is rather ludicrous. Knowing that the Republican party needs the votes of US citizens with Latin American background to win, that's not such a hot idea.

Trump has also scared off many voters with the most ridiculous claims. For example, he once stated that most illegal immigrants are criminals. However, this is clearly incorrect, as offical crime statistics prove that illegal immigrants are less likely to commit violent crimes than natively born Americans. If you think about it, this is what you would expect, knowing that it would very unwise for someone to attract unwanted attention while living in a foreign country without legal papers. Unsurprisingly, Trump's tirades have since, raised the ire of many Americans with ties to Latin American countries, who don't find it especially humorous when their countrymen are subject to baseless accusations.

But the question remains as to why Trump obtained so much traction in the first place. He apparently primarily attracts Republican voters who generally feel betrayed by the majority of politicians in Washington. His target group are the lower middle class voters and small business owners, who are feeling threatened in their existence by the current immigration and globalization policies. Another part of his audience are right wing extremists who fear the country's downfall because they're white Americans who are no longer in the majority. Trump is an outsider, and just like Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina, who also have hopes of getting nominated by the Republican party, has never held any position in American politics. But that might actually help him, just like it seems to help Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina. Problem is, though, that people seem to forget that no president, Trump or not Trump, can act like a pitbull in the White House, because his success depends largely on how he can strike deals with the Senate and the House of Representatives in the democratic process, which requires more negotiation skills and the willingness to compromise than anything else.

Interestingly, Trump originally ran as an independant candidate, but later switched to become a candidate for the Republican party. I still want to believe that his whole campaign is only a PR gag that will help him get another successful television deal like the former hit series "The Apprentice" (Rundbrief 05/2004), and maybe this time, he'll be able to even squeeze more money out of it.

Figure [8]: Democrating runner Bernie Sanders enjoys surprising popularity. Foto: Brookings Institution

Switching our focus to the Democratic Party now, it's interesting to see that a new contender from the bylines has joined the race. Bernie Sanders doesn't get as much media coverage as Trump, but his fan base has been growing steadily. He is attracting voters from the Democratic Party's left wing, mainly citizens who are deeply unhappy about the fact that Barack Obama hasn't accomplished as much as they'd hoped for, and who are committed to prevent another incarnation of the Clinton dynasty from happening. The 74-year-old Sanders even boasts an impressive following amongst younger voters. Unlike Trump, he believes in the democratic process, and he's is quite an experienced hand in Washington. Since 2007, he's been holding a seat in the Senate for the State of Vermont. From 1991 till 2007, he had been a member of the House of Representatives. He's even been the major of the town of Burlington in Vermont before. Only since 2015, he's been a member of the Democratic Party, before that, he had been running as an Independent for his various positons of political office.

He's been active for over 40 years, pressing for equal social rights. He calls himself a socialist democrat, which is almost a bad word in the United States. Bernie Sanders pushes for fair wages, better working conditions (like legally guaranteed sick days), universal healthcare, and, above all, less influence on the policital process by the utra rich through party contributions. He's opposed to the so-called super pacs (Rundbrief 11/2012) and is funding his election campaign through small time donations of under $200 each by regular citizens. It remains to be seen how well he's going to do in the primaries. The Clinton apparatus will leave to stone unturned to prevent Sanders getting nominated. Ironically, he's not favored by minorities, although these voters would benefit most from his proposed politics. He's simply not that well known in these circles.

Laws for Assisted Suicide in California

Figure [9]: Jerry Brown, governor of the State of California. Foto: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

Angelika Just like in Germany, there's been an ongoing intense debate here in California during the last couple of years on the legality of assisted suicide. There have been numerous attempts to pass new regulations through the state senate to legalize assisted suicide for the terminally ill. Time and time again, however, new legislation failed to pass, but recently, supporters prevailed, when the California senate passed a new law, signed by governor Jerry Brown, which will take effect in January 2016.

It was long believed that Jerry Brown would veto the new law, since clerical organisations built up a lot of pressure and Jerry Brown obviously struggled with the decicision. To understand this, you need to know that Jerry Brown once wanted to become a Jesuit priest and had spent some time in a Jesuit seminar. But in the end, he signed the new law, and told that he finds it comforting to have the option of assisted suicide when his own life ends, should he become severely ill. After all, Jerry Brown is already 77 years old.

Since I'm working in the social field, my opinion is somewhat ambivalent when it comes to assisted suicide. I think it's more important to accompany people through the dying process, and for example make sure to prescribe appropriate medication to relieve any pain, as well as refrain from unnecessary diagnostics or treatments. Assisted suicide tends to easily wander off into hardly predictable gray areas. The new law requires two independent doctors in California to confirm that a patient has only six months left to live. The patient must be able to express their explicit will to die and must take the prescribed lethal medication themselves without assistance. Doctors and hospitals have the right to refuse to participate in the program.

Hiking near the City

Figure [10]: Mount Sutro Forest: Can you believe this forest is located right there in residential San Francisco?

Angelika We've been living here in San Francisco for what almost feels like an eternity, and over time, we've certainly found our favorite places and parks in the city. But the longer you stay in one place, the more it becomes routine to keep going to the same places over and over again.

At least, that's what we've been doing until recently, when we decided to discover something new every Saturday. This was partly prompted by Michael moving to a new job. It came with the standard two weeks per year vacation package, which is significantly less than he had accumulated over the years at the old one. That's why our weekends now need to function as mini vacations to make up for it.

And indeed, we were surprised to realize how many hidden gems we hadn't discovered yet. Who would have thought, for example, that San Francisco has a forest within its city limits? Many tourists are familiar with Golden Gate Park, but you won't find any out of towners in Mount Sutro Forest. Tucked in between the neat houses of Cole Valley and the UCSF university hospital building on Parnassus Ave, there's a 100 year old oasis featuring loop hikes lined by eukalyptus trees, some of which are more than 100 feet tall. Three quarters of the forest are owned by the University of San Francisco, and the rest belongs to the city. It was planted by Adolph Sutro, mayor of San Francisco between 1894 and 1896, who had immigrated to the United States from the city of Aachen in Germany when he was 20 years old. You'll find the name Sutro quite often in San Francisco: Mount Sutro Tower, Mount Sutro Baths, Mount Sutro Forest. Now you know why.

Figure [11]: Hiking in Tilden Park in the East Bay.

Since Mount Sutro Forest is located in the foggy part of town, photographers it enjoys great popularity amongst photographers who cherish its spooky and magical touch. When we strolled through on a Saturday, the sun was out, but we were surprised how few people we saw on the trails, because usually, the beautiful places in San Francisco tend to suffer from severe overcrowding. We almost forgot we still were in the center of a major metropolitan area, only every once in a while we were reminded of it by distant city noises.

Figure [12]: There's always someone who can't help but goof off.

Similar to the Mount Sutro Forest in San Francisco, there's another hidden gem located in the East Bay: Tilden Park. It's busier and actually can get quite crowded on the weekends, though. It's hidden behind the hills of University town Berkley and over 2,000 acres in size. It's a mix of city park with attractions like a botanic garden, a golf course, a mini steam engine track, and forest areas with hiking trails. There's also a lake called Lake Anza, which is open for swimming unless one of those recently pesky algae infestations is rampant again. Many of the hiking trails offer great views of the city of San Francisco across the Bay, and of course of the Easy Bay and the San Pablo reservoir, unless it's clouded by fog of course. We hiked both the Quarry and the Big Springs trails around mid day and enjoyed a lot of sunshine.

Figure [13]: The German outdoor restaurant "Brotzeit" in Oakland even has an impressive collection of drinkable German beers.

One of the benefits of hiking in urban areas is that there's often great restaurants nearby. After our hike in Tilden Park, we stopped at Brotzeit Restaurant in Oakland. It's beautifully located next to a small boat harbor and its outside area features authentic German Biergarten tables and benches. Also, as it's customary in Germany, customers share the tables, which is traditionally quite forein to the U.S., but nowadays every once in a while you can see this "community tables" concept pop up here and there. Those are long tables occupied by different groups of guests at the same time. During our visit, we realized that at the same time many miles away, in Munich, Germany, the Oktoberfest was in full swing, and we ordered some of the German beer on tap. To our surprise, they didn't only have the usual selection available in the U.S., but also a few local Munich brands we had never seen anywhere outside of Germany before. Food was a mix of German and American fare, as expected the usual grilled sausages, even jägerschnitzel, and of course sauerkraut, but also fish and chips and burgers. The German dishes were on the fast food side, but actually quite good.

Royal Nuts: Hawaiian Host

Figure [14]: A box with two layers of Macademia nut chocolate truffles won't last as long as you might think.

Michael Recently, at Costco, I discovered that they had two-packs of the "Hawaiian Host" macademia nut chocolate truffles on sale, and couldn't help but buy one immediately. Sweet, sweet memories of one of our first Hawaii vacations dating almost twenty years back! I vividly remember how we arrived at our vacation rental back then from the airport, how we opened the the screen door and kept watching the ceiling fans rotating slowly. A nice breeze cooled the appartment, and while inspecting our new quarters, we opened the fridge and found a box of exactly these "Hawaiian Host" chocolate truffles.

Figure [15]: Macademia nuts, covered in a thick layer of milk chocolate.

Now, as you're probably aware, I'm no friend of cheap sweets and for the longest time, none of us touched the pack in the fridge. But eventually, we got curious, opened it, and tried some of the milk chocolate pieces, each coating two macademia nuts. If you've never had a macademia nut before, it can best be described by the fact that it desintegrates into a thousand small pieces if you bite on it, and the pieces start swirling around in your mouth, spreading a mild nutty flavor, which is often also salty when the nuts were sprinkeled with salt grain. It's quite the experience!

And in case of "Hawaiian Host", the milk chocolate takes the experience yet to another level. I usually put one of those big chocolate pieces in my mouth and let it melt for about two minutes with very little movement, and when the chocolate is all gone, I then bite into the now free floating Macademia nuts. It's incredible! If you see Hawaiian Host for sale at a supermarket near you, by all means, buy a pack immediately, because that's possibly an unbelievable coincidence, as the product is usually sold exclusively on the Hawaiian islands.

Earthquake Proof Buildings

Figure [16]: Thanks to these six diagonal shocks, in case of an earthquake, this building will be shaking slowly and then settle.

Michael San Francisco has strict building codes making sure that the next earthquake won't wipe out its infrastructure. Contractors need to be licenced and are required build by the letter of the code or won't get their permits. Most houses around here are held together by wooden beams and plywood, it's quite rare to find brick and mortar residential buildings. That has the downside that you might fall out of your bed at night when your neighbor sneezes heavily in an appartment building, but in the event of an earthquake shaking the building, you're pretty safe. Unlike brick buildings, wooden structures won't crack and crumble and collapse, pancaking the downstairs neighbor right away, but swing left and right and then settle slowly.

Figure [17]: According to the city building department, this building is no longer safe.

Even do-it-yourself home improvement projects can be fraught with legal pitfalls. If a crafty homeowner builds a new sundeck, for example, it is subject to approval by a city inspector. However, this is often forgotten or deliberately avoided to save money and hassle, but if the house is sold later on, there's usually another inspection which reveals such unapproved projects that weren't done by "code". The seller then needs to either get them fixed by a certfied contractor or lower the price of the house to compensate the buyer for the problematic areas.

Figure [18]: This home owner forgot to hand in a required form an now this sign at the front door tells the world about it.

It's also quite common that cost-concious home owners resort to employing illegal immigrants from South America for construction projects, whose craftsman skills are usually on par with certified workers and contractors, yet don't meet the official bureaucratic requirements. But since a construction project handled that way will cost only a fraction of what workers with clean paperwork would charge, illegal employment practices are rampant in the private sector for home construction and repairs, and the fact that the results don't meet the code requirements is simply accepted.

Figure [19]: The shocks are mounted flexibly so they can gently turn and twist.

For public construction projects, the city makes sure to only select licenced contractors, who strictly build by code. However, it is pretty much the norm that no project completes on time or on budget. Also common is sloppy execution, as you can see with the numerous quality problems that occurred while building the new Bay Bridge, including rusty steel bolts that were supposed to hold it together (Rundbrief 09/2013).

Figure [20]: Tall buildings feature gigantic shocks to absorb the forces generated by an earth quake.

Generally, it seems that San Francisco has turned into one gigantic never-ending construction site lately. I find it mind-boggling that no one seems to be upset when projects take forever to complete and corrupt builders aren't held responsible for breaking their contracts. If I wanted to paint myself into some kind of eternal hell, it'd be buying a fixer upper house and falling victim to a sleazy contractor with his shoddy craftsmen, who'd come up with new excuses every day on why they didn't finish, driving me slowly but steadily towards an early grave. That will never happen, never!

Bye bye, Perly Perlman?

Figure [21]: Our car Perly Perlman during its prime time around 2004 on an unpaved road along the "Lost Coast".

MichaelYou're going to have a hard time believing this, but when we moved to California in 1996, we actually were on such a limited budget that for an entire year, we made due without a car of our own. Then, in 1997, I got a great deal from a colleague at AOL, where I worked at the time. He had a six year old Acura with 100.000 miles for sale and wanted $3,300 for it. Cosmetically, the car wasn't in great shape, as its clear coat that once had covered its black paint had been burned off by the relentless California sun, but I didn't care about looks. It only had a manual transmission, but that's what I was used to from driving in Europe anyway. And the previous owner, a Frenchman, had, apparently without thinking, bought the car with no air condition, but that didn't bother me, as I wasn't familiar with the murderous Southern California sun yet. I was young and mostly up and about in windy San Francisco, so this didn't seem like a show stopper. We shook hands on the deal on the AOL parking lot and from then on I was the prowd owner of a 1991 Acura Integra.

Figure [22]: Perly Perlman could cross small rivers even without a four wheel drive.

While growing up watching German TV, I had always been admiring the personalized license plates some people drive around with in the United States. Because of my professional focus on the programming language Perl, I searched for "PERL MAN" on California's vehicle registration site DMV and confirmed that it was indeed available. I had to pay the registration fee for my new car, plus about $30 for the personalized licence plates. I vividly remember how I picked up the plates at the DMV in Redwood City. Right there on their parking lot, I pulled out a screwdriver and mounted them in front and back. "Perly Perlman", which is how the car would be referred to from then on, was born.

There's a legendary photograph of Perly Perlman on one of our trips, barreling down an unpaved road along the Lost Coast in Northern California, while I'm stretching my head out the driver side window (Rundbrief 08/2004).

Figure [23]: It had to be a personalized license plate.

And, as you can see in Figure 23, I mounted the rear plates onto a black plastic holder with the ancient Yahoo logo, which has since become a collectible item. And there's another notable observation to be made on this picture: Perly came with two exhaust pipes, directly adjacent to each other, and since 1997, the left part has been missing its chrome ring and looking rather rusty. Guess what, back then, I was extremely cautious, and to avoid any potential costly mistakes on an investment of $3,300, before the final handshake, I went to a repair shop and had them evaluate the car. Their written report had mentioned that the exhaust pipe needed to be replaced immediately. However, fast forward to 2015, and, 18 years later, Perly's exhaust pipe still hasn't fallen off yet. And if you know me, you'll guess correctly, that I'm not going to do a damn about it. If there's one piece of advice I, as a seasoned veteran would like to pass on to future generations, it's this: If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Remember that, kids!

However, there's significant risks involved in driving a 24 year old car. For instance, it doesn't have airbags (those didn't come standard in 1991), and the vehicle could easily turn into a death trap in case of an accident. And once you've seen American soccer moms driving their monster minivans for miles without looking up, because they're busy texting on their mobile phones, you'll realize this is a real safety hazard. Or, while driving a car without anti-lock brakes, have you ever tried to avoid rear-ending the vehicle in front of you on a wet road whose driver just slammed on their anti-lock brakes for no apparent reason? Not many people can handle that.

Figure [24]: Kalifornien gibt mir 1000 Dollar, um Perly Perlman zu verschrotten.

Recently, I've received a letter from California's "Vehicle Buyback Program" in the mail (Figure 24), which offered owners of cars built before 1994 the astounding amount of \$1,000 if they volunteered to take the car off the road by bringing it to an approved dismantler. As you can verify on the Vehicle Buyback Program Website, there's a few conditions for the car to qualify. For example, it must still pass the bi-yearly smog test required in California, otherwise the car's not really in driveable condition and the owner couldn't use it anyway.

Figure [25]: The California smog test for a car verifies a whole slew of emission values.

For quite some time now, Perly Perlman's smog tests have always been a close call. The printed report in Figure 25 documents that hydrocarbon emissions of cars in California average 39 ppm, with an allowed maximum of 87 ppm at 15 miles per hour. Perly had exactly 87 ppm, one hydrocarbon molecule more and it would have flunked the test! Other measurement points during the smog test are carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and nitrogen emissions. Because of Perly's somewhat advanced age, for the last couple of years, the DMV had mandated the tests to be performed at a "Star" station. These specialized smog testers only perform the tests and offer no other services, like repairing cars, so there's no conflict of interest. By the way, smog stations also perform other tests, like if the gas tank cap is sitting on tight and provides a good seal. If it's leaking air, the car won't pass the test, but the smog station usually has a new gas tank cap for sale at $10 a piece, to fix the problem right here and now.

But there's a few more requirements for the car to be met before the government-sponsored dismantling can take place: According to the "Vehicle Buyback Program" website, the windshield needs to be still in place, and at least one of the side windows. Further required are the engine hood, a driver's seat and at least one headlight. The engine needs to start without the driver having to apply magic fluids in the engine compartment, and the car must be able to move at least 25 feet forward and 25 feet backward without manual interaction. Check, check, and check! In the next issue, I'll be reporting live from the scrap press!

Greetings from the country without biyearly car inspections:

Angelika & Michael

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