Archives June 2009

10.99 mpg was our mileage yesterday after averaging 15+ the last two legs of the trip. Disappointing but expected considering the conditions.

So we headed out for a town we never heard of in New Mexico called Tucumcari.  As we left Wichita I was on the hunt for a post card.  I jokingly told my one buddy from work I would send him a postcard from Kansas.  Well I thought it would be funny if I actually did it.  However there was one problem, I couldn’t find any.  I stopped at least a half dozen places looking for postcards and struck out every time.  I guess Kansas isn’t much of a tourist trap. However as we drove along I saw sign for a place called Greensburg “Home of the BIG Well” Surely they had to have post cards.

So we pull into Greensburg and comment on how sparse everything looked.  We pulled up to the location of the vaunted BIG Well (world’s largest hand dug well) and all that was there was a small little shed and not a whole lot else but some bare concrete and debris.  I looked down the shaft of the well and confirmed it was indeed pretty big.  We went into the gift shop to score our postcards.  As I looked around I saw lots of inspirational slogans about rebuilding, starting over etc…  I asked the girl behind the counter “Was this place hit by a tornado or something?”  “Yes in 2007, it leveled the entire town” Wow.  The older woman at the store actually went through the nightmare and described it in detail.  The tornado was a mile and a half wide (that is a picture of it to the left) and it killed 12 people.  She started flipping through several books they had there that documented the event. 

I felt like a bit of a tool not realizing why everything looked so sparse.  Literally almost every single building in the town was destroyed.  The town however has taken a great attitude coming out of the disaster.  They are viewing it as an opportunity to start over and rebuild the infrastructure using modern, energy efficient methods like wind and solar power.  It was inspirational to hear the pride in the women’s voices as they talked about the future.  Wow all I wanted was a couple postcards and instead we wound up walking into something entirely unexpected. We hopped back in the van both dumbstruck that we stumbled across Greensburg.  As we drove out we actually noticed that any buildings that were around were either trailers or brand new construction.

Ali took over driving for a little while once we got into Oklahoma.  I settled into the back and was watching a movie on my Iphone.  A little later Ali waved at me to look out the window.  I pulled up the blind and saw just a wall of black.  I didn’t know what it was.  “What is it”? I yelled up.  “Cows” Ali said, obviously distraught.  We were driving by these huge fenced in areas of cattle.  They were packed together so tight in some spots that it was hard to make out one from another.  The stench of cow shit filled the van from the animals that had no choice but to stand in piles of their own shit. It instantly made me very sad and made me feel like a participant in their miserable existence due to my being part of the human race that demands that livestock be cultivated in such a manner.  We saw a couple of these along the way.  It’s easy to make a choice to eat meat when you don’t see the process required to get it to you.

I resumed watching my movie, trying to not dwell on what we just saw.  As I laid there I noticed that the van was constantly downshifting.  I assumed Ali was either driving too fast or was just being up and down on the gas pedal.  After awhile I got annoyed as I knew this would kill the gas mileage and I yelled up to Ali asking her what was wrong.  She said there was an incredible head and cross wind and she was trying to keep the van up to speed.  I saw she had a death grip on the wheel so I told her to pull over and I would drive again.  Since I drove all day yesterday she was hesitant to ask for relief duty but I told her it was fine. 

When we stopped to switch we stepped outside so I could take a leak by a tree.  Wow it was gale force winds.  I’d have to guess they were close to 40 mph gusts with a steady 30+.  Once I got behind the steering wheel I saw why the van was downshifting.  As soon as it would try to go into over drive the force of the head wind would knock the speed right down.  The wind knocking the van around didn’t make me as nervous as it did Ali so it was a good thing I took over.

As we crossed over the New Mexico state line we gained another hour as we moved on to Mountain Standard time.  We arrived in Tucumcari a little after 5 local time.  The town looked very small and old.  I did not expect the La Quinta to be much of anything.  Ali said the place was brand new.  Well we had a pleasant surprise when we pulled up.  The hotel was fantastic and only open for business 3 weeks.  It was the nicest  La Quinta yet out of the 5 we have stayed out thus far.  I would have never thunk it. 

So today we have a relatively short 5 or 6 hour drive into my dad’s place.  Internet access will be slim to none probably so I may be out of the loop until our journey back begins next week.

I spent so much time doing the blog post yesterday morning it contributed to us getting a late start.

Ali was freaking out about the predicted severe weather in Kansas for the drive there.  We did drive through some heavy rain but it was mostly in western Missouri.  By the time we got into Kansas it was all but over.  However when we crossed into Kansas and hopped out for our mandatory pose with the state sign we were blasted with some surprisingly cold air, it felt like the temps were in the low 60’s.

The drive was pretty uneventful and I was behind the wheel the entire way.  When I can listen to the Stern show it makes driving long distances much easier for me.  We saw some incredible open pastures while driving on the Kansas Turnpike.  In some spots the entire horizon was nothing but open pastures filled with nothing but grass and cows.  It was really cool.

Our stopping point last night was Wichita.  I had no idea what to expect out of a city in the middle of Kansas but it seems to be a pretty happening place.  There is a lot of road construction going on and the city itself seems to be clean and tidy.  Much of what you see is old but there also us a healthy amount of revitalization going on.

We ate in Old Wichita which is an old commercial district that has been converted to a social area filled with a lot of bars and restaurants.  We found a very nice place to eat with a beautiful outdoor patio area.   After that we drove down towards the Arkansas River area where we found a new park that is dedicated to the Wichita Indians that originally settled the area. 

Originally today we were going to push all the way to Albuquerque but we decided to opt out of the 11 hour drive and instead hit some town I never heard of in New Mexico, shaving about 3 hours off the drive today and tacking it onto our final leg of the journey tomorrow. 

While we were at dinner I said to Ali that I just realized that we could have asked my mom to come along on our road trip since she no longer had any work constraints.  I was pissed that the idea hadn’t entered into my head before now.  It would have been a nice little adventure for her.  She still could come with us on the drive back however and I am going to make the offer to her.  I already know her initial reaction will be negative towards the idea but I am hoping if she thinks about it she will realize it is actually an opportunity that she may never have again to see the countryside in a fun way.

I forgot to mention that when we went to St Louis Sadie refused to drop a deuce the entire day.  As dog owners you seem to get obsessed with a dogs bowel movements.  If they don’t have one then you always feel the need to keep taking them outside until they do.  Well of course Sadie held back until she was almost directly under the Gateway Arch to do her business.  I guess she felt the need to drop it in style.

I almost fell over dead when I calculated the mileage after filling up in the middle of Kansas yesterday.  We averaged 15 mpg!  I’ve never had a number that crossed 14 up to this point.  I am postulating that adding air to the tires yesterday morning and keeping the cruise control at a steady 70 mph contributed to the stellar gas mileage numbers.

So my mission Monday morning was to get the broken off tailpipe replaced.  The night before I had found a nearby Midas that was supposed to open at 7:30 am. I figured in an ideal scenario I get there first thing and am out of there in a few hours.

So I arrive at the Midas about 7:20.  There is an employee already there sitting in his truck and smoking a cigarette.  I figure he was just hanging out until 7:30 came so I just laid back, I didn’t want to bug him before working hours.  He then got out and walked around the building, to open it up I assume, however he returns to the truck, gets back in and talks on his phone some more and smokes another cigarette.  He is on the phone a long time and I continue to just pace the lot.  It was now 7:35 and the place was still not open for business.  I finally make my way over to the guy and asked if something was wrong.  He said that the key he was given to open the building was not working.  He was trying to get ahold of someone else to come open up. 

Oh ok, well how long will that be.  “It will take him about 20 minutes to get here”  Ah shit.  Well I explained to the guy my problem.  He proceeds to tell me that their welding machine is not working and they can’t do exhaust work right now.  He referred me to some other location that was relatively near by.  He said it was on the corner of two streets.  Not being from the area I pulled up my Google map view with all the pushpins for the various Midas locations.  He pointed to where it was.  Ok great, I’ll just punch that address into the GPS and head there.

So after a 15 minute drive or so I am approaching the location where this place is supposed to be.  The area is very congested with traffic, trying to scour the vicinity for a sign while trying to monitor all of the traffic around you isn’t much fun, especially in a big party van.  I drive right past where it looks like the place should be on the GPS but I see no Midas anywhere.  I turn around and head back the other way just in case I missed it. No luck.  I went back and forth around that intersection several times looking for the damn place.  Nothing.  Time was ticking away and I was getting pissed.

During my wild goose chase Ali texted and called me to ask how it was going, expecting that the van would already be in the shop.  Having to explain the situation just frustrated me even more.  Finally I pulled over in a parking lot and called the number for the place that was listed in Google Maps.  It was a private residence!  It was then that I also noticed that the place had an “unverified” status.  Great.  I then pulled into a convenience store parking lot and asked the clerks if they knew if there was a Midas around there. Nope.  They let me use the phone book to look up the other locations.  I wrote them down and then looked them up on the Iphone to see which was the closest.

I called the location that was sort of on my way back to the hotel.  Yes they were open, yes their welder was working, yes I would be there asap.  I didn’t get to the shop until probably 8:20 or so, I was quite flustered by my original plan being blown out of the water.  I explained to the guy behind the counter that I needed to try to get this fixed asap since we were in the middle of a road trip.  He seemed to think they could take care of it pretty quickly.  The report came back as the van also needing a muffler in addition to the missing tail pipe, nice.  Oh well whatever, the $250 repair quote sounded reasonable, I gave him the go ahead to fix it pronto.  In total I was out of there in less than two hours, not too bad.  By the time I got back to the room and checked out we made it just under the 11am check out time.

So the entire reason we went through Memphis was because Ali said it would be cool to see Graceland.  When we looked it up we were surprised that Graceland was not far away from the hotel, we were there in a matter of 15 minutes.  As we pulled into the lot we were straining to read the signs on the parking security booth.  It cost $10 to park but as we read through the various signs we saw the No Pets Allowed line.  Well f that, why pay $10 to drive into the parking lot and drive right back out.  So I swung a U-turn out of the line and instead we parked and took a few pictures of what we could see.  I felt bad that we didn’t get to see more of Graceland since Ali was the one who wanted to see it.  She said she was fine with it,  the price you pay for having two furry companions along.

So now it was off to St. Louis.  The drive there was uneventful. The most interesting thing we noticed was the weird way Missouri identifies exits with letters instead of numbers.  An exit would be called Z or D or in one case DD OO.  I’m not sure what that is about.

  It took about 5 hours to get there from Memphis.  We were hitting St Louis close to rush hour so traffic around the city was pretty slow going. The place we were staying was actually north of St Louis so on the way there we drove by the football stadium and the Gateway Arch.  The plan was to get checked into the room and then double back to see the arch since it was open until 10pm.  We checked in, unloaded our junk and then headed right back out.  I punched Gateway Arch into Google Maps and then took that address and loaded it into the GPS.  Once again Google Maps sent me on a wild goose chase.  We wound up going through various back roads that obviously was not going to get us to the arch.

We stopped and did a new search.  This time I used the points of interest feature on the Magellan GPS.  Finally we got some accurate information and arrived at the arch sometime after 6pm.  As we walked up through a beautiful park that surround the arch we got our first up close look at the structure.  Now I have been to the arch 25 years ago as a kid so I remember it being cool and massive but I didn’t remember just how cool and how massive.  Wow.  It is such an impressive structure.  I told Ali I wanted to take the ride back up to the top.  She was fine with that since had no desire to go up into it.  She said she would just walk around the park with the dogs.

I went down under the arch where the various exhibits are located.  If it was just Ali and I, I’m sure I would have taken a lot more time to see all of it.  Knowing Ali was outside with two dogs pulling her around made me head right to the ticket counter for my ticket.  I went up in the north tram.  The cars you ride up in are tiny.  There are 5 seats in each but even with 4 people in them you are all touching knees.  A claustrophobic person would not do well.  The cars appear to be the original ones from the 60’s, other than a fresh coat of paint, not much seems to have been done to them.

The ride to the top took about 4 minutes, it sort of felt like a cross between a ferris wheel and the part of a roller coaster where you get pulled to the top.  Once you arrive at the top you climb a stairway to get to the observation area at the top of the arch.  Up top there are tiny little windows where you can look out over St Louis on the one side and the Mississippi River on the other.  Because of the shape of the arch you literally lay across a carpet covered wall to look out the windows. 

While I was up there I called Ali on my phone and directed her to walk to an area where I could see her and the dogs.  I then did the best I could to zoom in on them from above and snap a few pictures.  The views were very cool but after 10 minutes or so I probably had seen all I was going to see so I headed back down. 

Ali and the dogs were waiting for me on a bench.  I told Ali she could at least go down under the arch to check out the gift shop while I watched the dogs.  While she did that Nicki, Sadie and I found a comfortable spot under the arch and just laid down in the grass.  It was sort of awesome looking up and seeing the arch and then looking around seeing the various people running, walking and playing.  Eventually Ali came back up and we started the walk back.  I can’t tell you how many times I looked up and just admired that arch.

Right near where we parked was a small, old social district with lots of restaurants, music and outside seating.  We thought one of the places might allow us to eat there with the dogs.  As we walked towards the place we were accosted by a guy saying he was homeless and asking for money.  Instead of blowing him off I said “I’ll get you on the way back”  surprisingly he was ok with that and said “Alright” ( he wasn’t there on the way back but I had 4 bucks rolled up in my pocket ready to give him)  We found a place that had a nice diverse menu, reasonable prices and homemade beer. 

Both Ali and I needed to wash our hands.  We were directed through a door and up some stairs.  As I climbed the stairs past the mounted heads of various animals I arrived to what was an eerily quiet and deserted area.  It smelled musty and very old.  There was an unused dance floor and another large room that was dark and empty.  It gave you a very creepy feeling like something out of a horror flick or perhaps somebody was doing crack in a dark corner of the room.  Well I used the bathroom and headed back downstairs without doing much more looking around.

Our meal was good and the dogs behaved well.  Lots of people wanted to say HI to them although I don’t think any of them were black.  It seems like many black people are scared of dogs, especially black dogs.  They veer away in fear on a regular basis.  When the pizza delivery guy came the other night, who was black, when I opened the door with two barking dogs by my side he jumped back a good 15 feet, you should have seen the look of a fear in his eyes.  I don’t know what the reason is.

Anyway like I said the meal was good, music was lively and the ambiance was just about perfect.  It was a great way to end a day on an up note after it started in such a stressful manner.  The stress wasn’t quite over though.

On the way back the GPS once again got us in trouble.  This time it pointed us off onto a side street instead of staying on the highway.  It then told us to make a left turn which I started to do to only see the street was blocked off so I spun the wheel straight again.  All of a sudden we found ourselves in a VERY scary looking neighborhood.  There were no cars in the street.  All of the buildings looked very old and mostly abandoned.  As we passed a group of people on the left they were looking at us funny.  I had images running through my head of them throwing something at the van.  Then I realized why they were looking at us funny.  I was on the wrong side of the road.  Between the lack of cars and my head spinning left and right looking at the desolate surroundings I hadn’t noticed that I was not on a one way street like I thought.  Woops. 

We continued on this street for a few miles being freaked out most of the way.  As soon as I saw an opportunity to get back on the highway I took it.  Once we got back I was EXHAUSTED.  After showering I was asleep in a few minutes.  Today we wind up in Wichita Kansas.

Oh one party van note.  Like I mentioned before the fan on the van has been problematic.  All of a sudden the air will stop flowing out of the vents for no reason at all.  Well yesterday we realized that the fan isn’t stopping, the van is switching the output of the fan by itself.  Evidently the controller for the vents is flaky.  It will randomly redirect the flow to the defrosters and then just as magically return airflow to the vents a minute or two later.  It’s more of an annoyance than a problem at this point.

As I sit in a Memphis hotel room after another eventful day.  I am just going to touch on the highlights.

On top of the on again/ off again fan issue, the tailpipe on the van was starting to fall off.  It was rusted through where the clamp is located.  As a result it was starting to hang down very low.  My first attempt to fix it involved buying a roll of aluminum tape at a local Wal-Mart.  As I was out in the parking lot laying down by the rear of the van trying to wrap the tape around the pipe I saw a car driving by me very slowly out of my peripheral vision. The car then stopped.

The driver, a younger black guy yells out to me “Hey, what kind of tape is that?”  I was a bit dumbfounded by the conversation but told him it was aluminum tape.  “Oh, can I have some?”  By this time I was standing up.  As I walked over to the full size car I noticed there were two other young black guys in the car.  “Sure, what do you need it for?”  He points to the B frame of vehicle where there  was some shiny but weathered chrome looking tape.  “Oh ok” I said, “how much do you need?”  “How about 4 pieces?” he replies.  I was still sort of amazed that I was being solicited for some of my metallic tape but ok, I’m a good Samaritan.

I tear off pieces of the tape as I tell him I am making them longer than he needs so he can cut it to size.  “Oh ok, cool, cool” the guy says.  After I get done tearing off the four pieces of tape he asks me how much I want for them?  “Nothing man, no big deal”  “Thanks man!” the guy replies as he drives off happy that he scored some free tape.  Wow, that was weird.

Weird moment number two.  After metallic tape and picture hanging wire I bought from Publix  failed to hold the tailpipe in place I made yet another stop at an Auto Zone around Birmingham.  It was obviously not a very good area but I didn’t care.  I found a strap specifically designed to secure exhaust pipes and was again on my back working on attaching it to the pipe.  Ali had walked down the sidewalk with the two dogs while I was working to see if they had to go to the bathroom.

Well again I hear a voice, again it is a younger black guy.  This time I have a real hard time understanding him.  He had a hard core ebonics dialect.  He said something about seeing my girlfriend with the dogs down the sidewalk.  Then he offered to help me with my repair.  Ali returned shortly after this second wacky encounter started.  He said he could hold the pipe while I worked on it.  As he reached for it I told him it was hot yet and he shouldn’t touch it.  He was just hanging around then talking and talking.  I could only make it out every other sentence or two. 

What I got from the conversation was he had a pitbull but he can’t afford to keep it.  He said it doesn’t like to fight but likes to play instead. He lives right down the street in some rundown blue house. Oh and he asked me for 50 cents.  I hurried up to finish my repair to get out of the conversation.  As I was walking to the trash can one of the employees of the store came out and yelled down at the guy telling him to leave.  Evidently this guy regularly solicits customers on the parking lot.   I gave the guy a couple bucks anyway.  Away he went after thanking me. 

After all of the efforts to save the tailpipe we later discovered it missing as we approached the Tennessee border.  All that remained was the empty strap.

The plan is to hit a local Midas when they open tomorrow to see if I can get a pipe thrown on it.

We wound up in Montgomery Alabama on night one.  It was a long, 650 mile segment.  The drive went relatively well.  For a brief period of time the blower fan in the van would stop and restart but the problem luckily went away.  I am crossing my fingers it does not reoccur.  I don’t feel like trying to replace a fan motor on the road.  I also need to do a quick repair to the tailpipe that was either stepped on or just dropped due to rusting.  Now there is a hole in the rear section of it.

The dogs have been handling the travel well.  They sleep for the most part with the occasional episode of ramminess.  Sadie’s favorite spot is Ali’s lap, Nicki prefers the bed in the back. 

The weather during the first half of the drive was on and off thunderstorms all the way into Southern Georgia.  Along the drive we passed a lot of pretty rolling countryside.  We also passed a lot of areas where you scratched your head when thinking about how these people did simple things like get groceries.  Certain areas just seemed very isolated and extremely rural.  We saw a lot of dilapidated structures, similar to what we encountered in the drive to to NE Georgia.

Today we have a short day with a lunch stop in Birmingham followed by a relatively short drive to today’s endpoint, Memphis. 

I have been fighting with the full moon shadow right now.  It has a magnetic pull on my mood right towards the “bad” part of the meter.

So yesterday I got home and walked around the front of the truck to walk down towards the mailbox.  I stopped dead in my tracks as I looked at the hood of my truck.  It looked like something brown was poured on it.  I then noticed the driver side fender and door had the same junk on it.  I had a shitload of stuff to get done last night, the last thing I felt like dealing with was the truck. 

I was unsure if this was a a result of some junk running off of a tree during the rain from that afternoon or from a deliberate act of vandalism by some asshole that thought it would be fun to pour a soda on the truck.  The stuff did not come off with soap and water.  I later hit the hood with some Turtle Wax.  It removed the dark pigments but you could still see the paint was stained.  With each circle I traced on the hood with the wax I got angrier and angrier. I had convinced myself by that time that this was the result of random vandalism.  I imagined what I would do to the individual that did this if I got my hands on them.

You can see here the line where I waxed and didn’t.  I called it into my insurance company although I am not sure if I will follow through with the claim or not.  As of now my plan is to have a body shop look at it and tell me if it can be rubbed out with buffing compound or not.  It may be able to be cleaned up that way.

I sent out a warning at work to people letting them know to be on the lookout for possible vandals roaming the lot.  One of the employees said she didn’t think it was vandalism.  She claimed the same thing happened to her after a rain when she was parked near a tree. However she also said that it washed right off with water.  Water didn’t do a thing to this stuff in my case.  Who knows, all I know is I am majorly annoyed right now.

If the truck situation wasn’t bad enough I had to deal with more aggravation when I tried to finish mowing the grass.  I noticed when I fired up the mower it sounded like it was laboring to spin the blades.  I shut it off and took a look underneath.  The top of the deck was packed full of glass clippings that were gumming up the works.  As I pulled clumps of wet grass out I felt something loose.  I pulled the loose item and realized it was the piece of metal I used last season to fix the hole in the mowing deck.  Evidently my JB Weld failed allowing grass clippings to once again barf out of the hole, gumming up the works. 

With as high as the grass was there was a ton of clippings flying everywhere.  Even though there wasn’t much real estate left to mow, it took me a long time to finish up.  I had to drive very slowly and stop multiple times to pull out clumps of grass by hand.  Add “fix the mower deck, again” to the to do list of things I have to handle at some point.

So last night after work I decided to work on mowing down our now very high grass.  Mowing high grass with our tractor isn’t a lot of fun.  It lacks the power to cut high grass without slowing down to a snails pace and even with doing so, often you have to double back to hit the area again to knock down the blades of grass it missed.   I knew it was going to take a long time. I could tell that summer had officially arrived, I was eaten alive by gnats until I went and coated myself with bug spray.

Well luckily Ali got home earlier than I expected and she offered to come out and mow so I could weed whack.  She got about 2/3 done before it started to rain.  It was raining hard for awhile so I had to retreat to the lanai and wait it out.  When the rain slowed a bit I decided to quickly head out and finish up even though there was some lightning and thunder in the area.  I have to admit I had thoughts of getting struck by lightning as I carried around my 4 foot long metal weed whacker. Each time I saw a flash I cringed a bit.

I got it done so all that I have to do tonight is finish up the mowing.  Then I can turn my attention to the myriad of other things that need to get done before we depart.

I finally caught an episode of Wipeout on the bedroom Tivo the other night.  Wipeout is the American version of MXC, the hilarious Japanese show where over the top exuberant contestants try to complete ridiculously funny physical challenges.  Along the way the players basically get beat to hell. 

Well Wipeout seems to have cranked up the difficulty a bit with it’s obstacle courses.  There is something that is just naturally funny watching people get flipped over, knocked down and beaten up.  I laughed out loud through out the entire show.  If you had a stressful day take a load off your feet, crack open a beer and watch Wipeout. You’ll feel better.

On the way to the gym I heard an old Van Halen song.  For a few moments I found myself back in 1985 driving my split pea green 1969 Buick Special Deluxe.  One of the first things I did when my mom so kindly turned the keys over to me was to install an Audiovox radio/cassette player along with two 9 inch oval speakers that I installed on the rear seat deck by the trunk.  I had two tapes that I played to death during those first few months, Van Halen & Billy Idol. 

I recall turning the volume up as high as it could go without distortion, rolling the windows down and just cruising the greater metropolitan Shillington area with pride. I desperately wanted to make my car more like a muscle car since several of my friends had SS Novas, Camaros and Chevelles.  The radio was the first of several “cool” upgrades I performed.  Air shocks, seat covers, wire wheel hub caps and a set of nearly bald tires rounded out the performance upgrades.

The balding tires allowed my 250 cubic inch inline 6 motor to kind of do a burn out if I slammed it into drive while revving the motor. If I slammed it into reverse the burnout was significantly better.  Of course the bald tires also was the cause of my hydroplaning incident in a hard rain storm that caused me to slide into oncoming traffic wrecking my Buick as well as 4 or 5 other cars in the process.  Kids are so dumb.