Crank it UP!!
Willy Nelson: “On the road, agin,”
Martin Luther King Jr.: “Free at last! Free at LAST! Thank God Almighty, I’m FREE AT LAST!”
Tom Hickey: “Ow!ow!ow!ow!ow!
After ten days (not all of it wasted) we are finally travelling again. We meant to spend maybe three days in the Austin area, and were happy with the amusements of about seven of them. Austin is a swell town, much like other university towns large ans small, with coffee shops, an unofficial motto of “Keep Austin Weird” and they do a pretty good job. I got to go to one Aikido class there, so that justifies bringing my gi bag along. They seem to be a sattelite dojo from Takoma Park with three transplants from that dojo that I recognized – Violina Rindova, Dinee (sp?) and Nancy, both of whom I don’t remember their last names. Nice people, nice class, no pictures.
We struggled with the repair shop for days over the work schedule to get the new engine in the Cacafuego. First they said, “Wednesday evening or Tursday morning.” Then, “Thursday evening or Friday morning,” then “Friday evening or maybe sometime Monday.” Things got a little tense at that point. Finally, at 5 pm on Friday evening, interrupting the matinee of “The Dark Knight”, (which is, by the way, the best batman movie to date, by far), the service manager called and said the mechanic would work late and call him when he was done, and he would in turn call me, and it should, God willing, be ready at 8 am Saturday, after a test drive.
At 8 am Saturday I was at their gates. I could see the mechanic inside, through the window, with the engine compartment still disassembled. They let me in and I sat for three hours with my book. (As yet another aside, I highly recommend revisiting the old John D. McDonald “Travis McGee” detective stories from the 60’s. Iconic stuff.) At 10:30 the service manager said that they were finished, they just needed to rebundle the wires and hoses, take it for a test drive, and let it go.
By 2 pm we were on the road.
By 7 am we were in Santa Fe.
With the time zone change, that was 750 miles in 15 hours, not including stops for gas, a visit to WalMart for a new tire. The rear wheels come in pairs, for a total of six, and when we were running low on the outer tire back in North Carolina, I guess we damaged the inner tire without knowing it, and as we approached a small town it started thumping like mad. Fortunately for us, the service department was still open, and we were the last vehicle, so all five mechanics pounced on the task, and we were back on the road within the hour.
We drove all night, in one to three hour shifts, and dawn in the desert was fantastic. It rained for a hundred miles, from Roswell NM half way tp Santa Fe, and the clouds were just breaking up as the sky lightened. Fog rose from the desert floor, and the sun broke brilliant on the cloud bank over our shoulder. This is the weekend for Spanish Market, and we parked just two block off of the main square in tyown where they hold the festival. We have toured the Georgia O’Keefe museum, had a siesta, and now we are laying plans for the final run to the Grand Canyon this evening. It’s just six hundred miles, so we hope to get there in about 15 hours. Our original reservations at the North Rim campground are for tomorrow night.
