Car trouble, Lily's B-day, Eric Arvai lives, I boulder?

Monday I find out that the van broke down again as it came out of the bay after getting 2 new tires and a new distributor (more on that later).  Bummage seeing as it's Lily's birthday on Tues (March 31st) and we had planned on going to the eastern Sierra's for the week.  I made my way to Santa Cruz via a loaner car and got to spend time w/ Lily on her birthday.  She scored a new Camp ice axe via yours truly.  We spent a good part of the day trying to get the van fixed and/or look for new cars.  We end up getting a new air box hose (200$) and that was after getting hooked up w/ no labor!!  He got all matter-of-a-fact on us as we rolled up to pick up our "done" car.  They couldn't get it started after the repair and were trying to figure out WTF was up just as we rolled up.  Classic timing saved us 200$$  in labor.  I'm all "well the blown head gasket could be contributing, eh?  He's all "what did you just say?!!"  "If I would have known that I wouldn't have fixed this thing!!"  "I'm not going to charge you labor, but you should get it somewhere safe while it's running!!"  No problemo!!  Just 4 hrs back home, then on various road trips deep in the mountains, then back to WA!!  We go to get our spare key from Auto Shop #1 (Fidelity...don't go there in SC!!) where I find out that they didn't even put a new distributor in it, but still managed to charge Lily 340$ for a cap, rotor, and plugs.  OUCH!!  I had to remove myself from the shop voluntarily because I wanted to drop kick him.  To vent my frustration I cooked Lily one hell of a dinner AND a birthday cake (from scratch).  We sipped champagne and ate strawberries.  It was grand.  The next day we met up w/ long time friend Eric Arvai at Castle Rocks for a boulder sesh.  And what a sesh it was!!  I climbed harder than I thought my sorry off-the-couch self would.  Lily cranked out some good problems, and Arvai was on fire for most of the day (climbing every other day will do that!!).  We made our way back up to Truckee yesterday (Apr 2nd) w/o any van issues.  We stopped at a rad fruit and nut stand on the side of the hwy that had crazy deals.  Today we went to Mt Rose, NV and did some backcountry boarding (Hourglass and Prolateriat Bowl).  It was kind of dust on crust, but at least 2-4" of dust!!  Mark Parkinson is coming to visit for the weekend and will be in for one helluva adventure seeing as we have a rental splitboard sitting in the garage waiting for him!!