Running on empty

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Thursday morning I made my way back over to the BSH facility to meet Ric Coggins. Ric is a first-class guy with a passion for history, and a great talent for story telling. Brought Walter Benjamin's essay about the Storyteller to mind. Quite unexpected. We had actually met before at a dinner at some trade event, but neither of us could figure out where or when. Ric gave me a thorough tour and recounted the history of the Bosch company, and explained the design narrative behind the facility. It was a fun chat that ran close to three hours. Did you know that the Bosch parent company is a non-profit? Bosch started back in the late 1800's as a mechanical and electrical "atelier" that perfected the magneto coil, the thing that gives spark plugs their spark, which was one of the enabling technologies that made internal combustion engines work.

Robert Bosch was a perfectionist, and a Schwabian, which led to some interesting tendencies - austerity being the most notable. He was also a socialist and a pacifist, so when the Kaiser wanted Bosch to supply the war effort, Bosch was a reluctant participant. He told the Kaiser that he was his loyal subject and would comply if he had to, but there was one thing the Kaiser could not force him to do: to profit from it. Thus he established the Robert Bosch Foundation. Bosch played a vital humanitarian role in Germany immediately after the World War, providing care and services for veterans when the Weimar government was insolvent and unable to care for them. Ric had many more stories like this to tell me (Ric's wife's family has worked at Bosch for four generations), and I encourage you to go to the Bosch website if you're curious. It's a fascinating story.

The rest of the day was spent working with Don Shultz, Mike Tadros and the folks at Premier Garage. Mike is helping them with an initiative to start using SketchUp, and I was just tagging along to listen and help as I could. At the end of the day, we adjourned to a local watering hole for a "board meeting" and then Mike and I headed off to LA.

We stopped at the California line for a bit to eat, but I forgot to fill up the gas tank. The warning light went on about 15 miles later, with about 49 miles range left in the tank. The next gas was at Desert Center, about 19 miles ahead, so I decided to press on. When we got there we found some very nice old gas pumps that probably hadn't been used in 20 years. Don't know why they can't make pumps look nice anymore, but the aesthetics of defunct gas stations don't get you down the road. The next gas was 19.6 miles away and I had 17 miles of gas in the tank. Somehow we made it to the next gas, running on 0 for about 3 miles. Mike took a picture of the dash with his iPhone. We got in to LA around 2am, I dropped Mike off and cruised around my old stomping grounds for an hour, then checked in at the lovely Marriott Sweetwater in Hawthorne. The good thing about arriving at a Marriott at 3am is the checkout time is at noon... on the following day. So you get two nights for the price of one.