Toyota Echo Headlight Adjustment?

While driving my 2000 Toyota Echo across the country on an interstate highway with the trunk and back seat heavily laden, the headlights pointed much too high. One trucker I was behind in Montana put his wheels off the pavement so they'd throw rocks at me, and when I finally got around him, he got on my bumper with high beams and stayed there until I outran him at nearly 90 mph.

Thereafter, I overtook and passed traffic with headlights off, until I came to a lighted area at which I'd adjust the lights. The only problem was, I could not find any means of adjustment. The owner's manual was no help.

Being an ingenious fellow, I discovered that I could push down on the exposed back ends of the headlight bulbs. That raised the bulbs within the headlight, and that directed the beams downward. I cut a couple of sticks about four inches long and wedged them between the backs of the bulbs and some sheetmetal above them. For the load in the back of the car, the beams were exactly right. I left the sticks in for the rest of the trip.

In leisure time, I checked in daylight for some means of adjustment. No luck. I posted a query on the Car Talk forum and got one response that didn't seem to address the problem. Then today, in a moment of inspiration and desperation, I asked at the service department of a Toyota dealer: There is no adjustment, he said. The lights are set at the factory and that's that.

No wonder Toyota discontinued the car, I said. Too many Echo drivers killed by irate truckers.

Now, where did I toss those headlight adjustment sticks...

CheapTickets.com smells scammy

I checked Travelocity and Cheap Tickets online and found much better prices for the trip I was planning on Cheap Tickets. More than a dozen flight choices at $329.

But! Every time I selected one, it came back with, "Sorry, that flight is now $800" or thereabouts.

After wasting time with this bait-and-switch game, I called Cheap Tickets on the phone. The voice said the inaccuracies occur when airlines don't update their prices.

I went back to the Comment page on Cheap Tickets and expressed my displeasure in what I consider a civil manner. Suggested they insist the airlines post accurate prices or dump the airlines from the service.

Now, back to Travelocity...

ABC and the end of the LLWS Championship Game

People who run the TV industry are sometimes stupider than the people who watch the crap.

Tonight, what will probably be the most exciting baseball game of the year went into extra innings for the Little Leage World Series Championship. After the regulation six innings, after Hawaii came back to tie last year's champion Curacao in the bottom of the sixth, ABC shunted the extra innings over to ESPN2. Nothing wrong with that, unless you don't happen to receive ESPN2, which I don't.

And why did ABC bail out of the game except on the west coast and in Hawaii? So it could do what every other network and all the news channels were doing at the same time--telling us about the hurricane that isn't doing anything to anybody yet!

I was steamed. I don't watch TV enough to know if this sort of thing is common, but I enjoyed the LLWS far more than major league games. The kids spit less and don't scratch their balls on camera.

I tried to call ABC, but--surprise--the phone was busy. So I fired off an email that probably should have waited for revision after I'd cooled off. But, as I said in my email... Well, never mind what I said in my email.

Hawaii won, though, which was a good thing if only because the home plate umpire had earlier called a Curacao runner safe at home when he'd clearly been tagged out. Had the umpire had a better view of the tag, Hawaii would have won in regulation and the finish would have fit into its alloted slot on ABC's scheduling clipboard.

Rick Epting

Two good friends exactly my young age have died in the past year. The first was from cancer and the second, Rick Epting, was from heart attack.

Rick and I were friends since grade school. In the second half of our lives, we lived only fifty road miles and a short ferry ride apart. We managed to visit each other maybe three times in those 30+ years. What the hell, there's always tomorrow.

No, there isn't always tomorrow.

http://www.skagitvalleyherald.com/articles/2005/08/13/obituaries/obits04.txt