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.
Engineer’s Log 7-17
July 17, Austin, TX
We have had a charming day in Austin, found the cool and funky part of town on South Congress, and spent the night in the definitely Unfunky (but inexpensive) Extended Day Suites about 15 miles on the north side of town in superhighway and supermall hell.
I spoke to the mechanic this morning, and he confirmed our fears, that the Cacafuego’s engine has probably suffered terminal damage. The compression on the left cylinders is at about half capacity, while the right side reads fine, which, even to a layman such as myself, indicates that there is a pressure leak on that side of the engine block or head. We could have the cylinder head removed and tuned and planed for a particular sum of money, which does not guarantee that the block or the pistons, or the rings aren’t screwed as well, or for somewhat less than double that amount, we could have a used engine from the local auto recycler (read “junk yard”), which comes with a 90 day warrantee, put in it’s place, OR, for even more money, we could install a freshly rebuilt engine with a GM certification, OR, we could junk the scarey son-of-a-bitch and buy a cargo van and a trailer.
We held a family conference this morning, and, much to my surprise, everybody expressed too much affection for the old goat, and the adventure as a whole, to contemplate throwing in the towel on her, so we elected the middle road choice of putting in a junkyard engine, provided that the warrantee has any real meaning once we leave town. I have not heard back from the mechanic on that score, he was going to get a copy faxed to his office and let me know what he thought of it. In the meantime, we have extended our car rental, and are looking for a better hotel, or at least a more convenient location, and expect to spend the next week touring around the Austin/San Antonio area. We had lunch at an outdoor creperie in a park, and talked with a charming young man at our picnic table about the local attractions, so we are set for a few days of local interest, at least. When the Cacafuego is serviceable again, we will hightail it out of town and try to catch up to whatever amounts to a schedule, meaning making it to the Grand Canyon in time for our reservations on the 26th and 27th. If we don’t make those dates, well, flexibility remains the watchword.
Engineer’s Log 7-16-08
July 16, Rockdale, Texas
The Cacafuego is down, and maybe for the count. We broke a belt after a picnic lunch at a rest stop west of the Brazos River, and, although Ann and I changed it, the time spent with the water pump not moving must have done some damage. The engine started rough, and a quarter mile down the road a rattling began. I pulled off the road, and immediately the cooling system exploded spewing radiator fluid all over and generating a huge cloud of steam. I thought we had an engine fire. So did a passing driver, who called 911, and shortly we had a helpful samaritan and a sherriff’s deputy on hand to help us decide what to do.
The deputy called for a wrecker, and we towed the vehicle several miles into town, and left it at the Chevy dealership. We were quite lucky to be that close to civilization. We spent the night in a hotel, and Ann has gone on her moped into Taylor, the next town 30 miles up the road, to get us a rental car so we can go into Austin and settle in for a couple of days while the Chevy people figure out what to do. I spoke to them already this morning, and it was being looked over at the time, so we should have an analysis fairly soon. It needs a new radiator, and is leaking oil somewhere, but there is also the rough engine bit, which is the most worrysome. We may be home sooner than we thought.
Engineer’s Journal entry 2 (Tom)
July 13, Sunday evening, Euporia, Mississippi
Yesterday morning we left Asheville for Brevard, NC, in the hopes of catching up with Jonathan and Barbara, friends from my dojo, who were on a B & B tour down the Blue Ridge on their motorcycles. Turned out they were a day behind us, but Jonathan gave me directions from his father to find a famous cascade of seven waterfalls across the border in South Carolina, where you can swim, and dive under the falls and come up in a tranquil grotto behind the deluge. Unfortunately, I misread the map, and went down the wrong spur of a particular highway, and we ended up 25 miles in the wrong direction, so we gave up.
The drive through the Smokies was splendid nevertheless, taking State Road 64 west from Brevard through some countryside of beautiful vistas of mountains, canyons and what must have been a spectacular waterfall, although we never saw it. We had been driving next to a beautiful stream, with pull-offs across the road filled with cars indicating tourists and swimmers every mile or so. I finally couldn’t staunch the urge to stop, but in the time it took to find a suitable pullover, what was once a stream 20 feet or so below the road, suddenly became a distant sparkle – I SWEAR – 500 feet below us. There were no further pulloffs, and a challenging road ahead, so I had to just keep going and wish I had seen the fall.
The road leveled off shortly thereafter, and we meandered into Chatanooga, where we went to the Barnes and Noble for internet access, and found ourselves a real live downhome RV Park, called Racoon Mountain. It had a grotto, and gem mining, and a swimming pool, and glory of glories, electricity AND parkwide wi-fi.
No vehicle issues yesterday, except we topped off the coolant in the morning, since it was low, but it never overheated.
This morning we got up, and practiced emptying our sewage tank, even though it didn’t really need it, and we set off through the rolling southeast Tennessee hills.
Our first stop was Laurenceburg, home of famous native son Fred Thompson, actor and ex-republican primary candidate. We stopped to view the Davey Crockett statue in the town square (I guess he had a connection too, but he DIDN’T have a billboard). Sunday morning in Laurenceburg town square looks a lot like the first scene in The Andromeda Strain, except without the tumbleweeds, but we did get to peer into the empty windows of ThompsonTown, the best used candidate paraphernalia emporium I have ever seen. Fred Thompson t-shirts were a dollar. Plain t-shirts were two dollars. I guess they’ve already saturated the market for the printed ones. The also had Fred Thompson bumper stickers, and ice cream. I wonder what flavor? We’ll never know, since they were closed, but I definitely would have bought stuff.
We turned south on the Natchez Trace, which is a cool two lane parkway running 350 miles from Nashville to Natchez. Eat that, Garden State Parkway!! It is well paved, beautifully kept, and quiet on a Sunday. We stopped at a scenic turn-out for a nature hike, then decided to unpack the bikes for a ride down the parkway for Ann and Elinor, with Sarah on the moped and me driving the RV to an undetermined pickup point down the road. A small adventure occurs involving a moped and a black tire mark on the fender of a white passenger car, but it isn’t my story, and nobody got hurt, so I will leave it for someone else to tell.
We are now at the new town RV park at White’s Creek Lake outside Euporia, Mississippi, where the town leaders have crafted a series of hookups under the pines outside their local picnic area for use by travelers such as ourselves. For $15 dollars Tommy Lott, the Mayor of Euporia, turned on our water himself, and two police officers collected our money and personal information. We also have electricity, but unfortunately, no wi-fi. I don’t know how they expect to compete, even with the personal service.
Today’s log for the Cacafuego: another half gallon of antifreeze was added this afternoon, along with two quarts of oil. The long tube connecting the oil filler cap to the crank case came off in my hand, but we put it back on with cable ties, so, no bad. We also developed a leak in the fresh water storage tank, which dribbled out into the road all day, as well as under the cabinets. When we settled in this evening I found the leak and packed it with silicon caulk which I brought to seal leaks in the cabin from rain, and we will find out in the morning if the repair holds. For now we have city water, so we can wait.
In a few minutes we will find out if all my clothes are soaked, including my PJ’s. I’m going to bed either way.
Monday, 7/14. Bastille Day, elsewhere.
Rte 82 west of the Mississippi. South Arkansas bottomlands.
We are driving through cotton and soy farm lands now, and everything is as flat as the sea. This is helpful since we have been listening to Patrick O’Brien’s Master and Commander in audio book form from Elinor’s iPod, and I found it very disturbing to do so earlier, when we were in the mountains. Now my inner picture of the actions at sea more or less match the visual reality around me, except for the color. It is a beautiful sunny day, surprisingly cool and dry.
We stopped at the Arkansas Welcome Center, situated on a gorgeous long crescent shaped lake, which is one of the lost loops of the Mississippi River, cut off by silt and sediment until it became an independent body of water, half a mile across and about 30 miles long, and coiling like a worm from its old connection points on the river itself. The river is constantly moving, and redefining it’s path. The state lines stay the same, though, so if you look at a map, you will see odd little areas of Arkansas jurisdiction east of the river, and little pieces of Mississippi on the west. Sometimes these anachronisms are no more than a few acres. I guess that every once in a while the respective governor’s and property owners sit down and horse trade control so that it all gets redistributed again.
Across the street from the Welcome Center is the JJ’s Lakeside Cafe, so we sat down to a southern buffet lunch of fried chicken, shrimp and catfish, with hush puppies, sweet and white potatoes, iceberg salad, and banana pudding with Nilla Wafers. It was heaven. It was dinner, too, since we ate enough for two meals apiece. I think I must not be doing my duty in keeping these people fed. I also think it touched a suppressed comfort food nerve in Ann, who grew up with a mother who had deep roots in Southern cooking.
We hope to be in Shreveport this afternoon, and cross into Texas before finding a place to spend the night. That will put us ina position to make Austin by the end of Tuesday, where we plan to take a tourist day off the road, and submit the Cacafuego to a day in drydock. I would like the cooling system looked over as I think we are going through radiator fluid too fast. I topped it off before we left this morning, and added another smaller dose at lunch. We haven’t overheated, and the level roads and moderate temperatures have helped that, but I would like it all trimmed up a bit before we get to desert country.
I found another leak in the water tank when I tried to refill it this morning. There were two areas of previous epoxy repair, and last night I fixed the obvious first one, but as soon as I put any water in the tank, the second one, underneath, started leaking as well. The epoxy peeled right off of the polyethylene tank, so was clearly not doing its job, and I have slathered that crack with a great fistful of silicon caulk as well as adding a second layer to the first repair. It will get another layer when it dries, and this evening we will try the tank again. I don’t see any third epoxy patch, so I have hopes that it will work just fine.
We would like to extend special thanks to the lovely Miss Marilyn of Euporia, who stopped and took our family portrait in front of the local Sinclair station this morning. “What’re y’all doing in Euporia, anyway? You don’t have relatives here or anything? ‘Cause that would be like – SHUUT UUP!!”
About an hour west of the Mississippi we leave the farms of the river delta behind and enter what they call Timberlands. It starts out as bayou with live oak, cottonwoods and cedar growing out of the water. Suddenly the ground rises a bit, and now it is pine forest (lodgepole, maybe?), all open and airy underneath, and then just as suddenly, dense, impenetrable Eastern Pine. The soil is a different color, too. This morning it was orange, with remnants of the red clay of North Carolina and Tennessee, but now it is a pale ochre, making me think of the western deserts to come.
Sarah drove for over two hours today, her first shift on her learner’s permit. She did quite well, I am relieved to report, so well that I let her onto Interstate 20 for the trip through downtown Shrevesport. That part was a nail-biter for me, as her co-pilot, but she didn’t do anything wrong, or give me any resistance to my few and totally rational suggestions as we went. She gets credit for the entire state of Louisiana.
Evening. Rusk State Park, East Texas. Midway between Houston and Dallas.
It is humid as shit now. We are spending the evening in the RV with the AC on. We have set up the tent so that someone (me) can sleep outside, as that fourth body just doesn’t quite fit, but I don’t know if it will last.
thoughts on the road – Tom
Oooh the adventures we’ve had, and we’re hardly started! I am writing from the passenger seat rolling down I-81 south of Staunton, VA , 8 am on Wednesday morning, day 2. First though, the setup: I bought the Cacafuego in May, when she was just an unnamed, generic vehicle, and it took two weeks to get an appointment to have it inspected, then the RV dealership kept it for two more weeks before getting around to actually performing the work. We missed the opportunity to take her out for a trial run over Memorial Day weekend, so this grand tour is also our virgin voyage. Nobody I know or have met thinks this is a good idea, but so it goes, as Kurt Vonnegut said.
Slowly, over the last few weeks, Ann and I have been gearing her up, with dishware, jacks and tire irons, pressure gauges, etc., and the RV center checked all the accessories to confirm that they worked. At one point I checked them as well when I ran the 110 AV line up to the house to plug it in and make sure the AC was ok.
Last Friday was July 4th, and Ann’s cousin Margot was out from the west coast for a visit, and with her help, we dived into the final process of gearing up. Margot is an expert at this sort of thing, as she has a houseboat on the Sacramento River that she uses as a weekend getaway and a summer home when she is not busy with work in San Francisco. She knows all about septic tanks, grey water, water pumps and such, so it was a perfect opportunity to get that stuff in order. We filled the water tank, and the first thing we discovered was that the pump didn’t work. As a matter of fact, none of the accessories in the rear cabin worked at all. It quickly became clear that the auxiliary battery was inoperable, so I hooked up my car battery to it with jumper cables and we ran the water and
flushed the toilet and learned about all those tricky little things. I took out the aux. battery and set it on the back porch attached to Ann’s moped battery charger and left it overnight to recharge. In the morning it held 7 volts, and the charger was a dead lump of plastic and metal.
I discovered that the previous owners had had problems as well. Under the carriage of the vehicle, the cable connecting the auxiliary battery to the alternator had been deliberately disconnected and the mounting clip had been wrapped in copious amounts of electrical tape.
I thought “Aha!!” and made a big spark when I went to hook it back up, so I disconnected the main battery and tried again, then reconnected both batteries to the system. Insert long drumroll here….
Nothing. So after some tinkering with a voltmeter, I gave up. Sunday we spent on family visit stuff, and took Margot to the airport with the wiring issue unresolved. Monday morning (T minus One) I called around and found a repair shop that promised nothing, but suggested I bring it by that afternoon so he could look at it and give me some advice. Around 2 pm I drove out to Randallstown in the beloved old crate, and, after a few pokes with his voltmeter under the carriage, suggested that the solenoid switch behind the battery was the culprit, but not only did he not have time to do anything about it, he would have to special order the part!
The his voice dropped – sotto voce, sub rosa, behind his hand, “Unofficially? Hook that wire to that other wire and skip the solenoid altogether. That’s what I’d do. Go inside the parts store and look around. I’ll find you in a minute”.
While I was looking at the septic tank toilet paper a little thing skittered acros the floor under my feet and bounced off of the end wall. About six inches of insulated wire with a connector clip crimped to each end. I looked up and the guy waved.
“You know what to do?”
“Sure.”
“Good luck. I’ll be praying for you.”
I came home, disconnected the main battery first, performed my little bypass operation and everything fired up just fine. Apparently the only new risk is that I can’t isolate the main battery from the auxiliary one and preserve it from being drained when we are running the accessories at a campground. My unnamed benefactor suggests that that risk is low since we are not running TV’s and VCR’s while
we camp. So…
With the last obstacle out of the way, Tuesday came and we packed the food and luggage inside, hung the bikes and the moped off the back, and hit the road at 12:05 pm.
By 12:45, not yet to Frederick, MD, the water temp gauge is redlining.
“This can’t be good”, says I to myself, so we stop at a pulloff. But there is no steam, and when we open the hood, the fluid levels are fine, the overflow chamber well filled and placid (dirty, but full), and no other signs of agitation. When I get back into the cabin and restart the engine, I notice the second water temperature gauge reading a mild 180 degrees, rather than the 250 degrees registering on the factory gauge. I am vaguely reminded of the auto mechanic previous owner telling me that he had installed some new, better gauges, so I guess the wire from the old one rests lightly on the engine block or something.
All is well, tra la la, so off we go again.
Justy short of Harper’s Ferry WV, is the turn off for Boonsboro, MD, and Ann called out “Detour!” We had just passed the sign for the original Washington Monument, which is built out of fieldstone and sits on a ridge along the Appalachian Trail about 15 miles off of our course. Ann and I both have childhood memories of visits to the tower, which was built in 1827 of local fieldstone from the top of a pile
of scree by nearby farmers with nothing else to do with their time. Off we went, through farm land and silos, and finally to the base of the ridge and up the hill. I wasn’t really thinking about it, but this was the first REAL challenge the Cacafuego was to face, and by the time we got to the top, a strange sound was coming from the engine room. I opened the hatch, and THIS time, the coolant was
anything but placid, roiling in the overflow chamber at full tilt and spewing out the overflow valve like a trooper. We went for a walk.
After enjoying the historical structure and the views, and looking at the muskets in the civil war museum, the engine had cooled enough for me to add a half gallon of fresh fluid. Cleverly I had stowed two bottles of ten year old Prestone antifreeze from the supply of seven gallons I got from Ron Milio when he moved to England with his wife, Kristen, and has neglected to ever come back and
collect. (I still have your Jaegermeister in the freezer, too, Ron, I just never seem to get around to enjoying it.) I tried to stow a third gallon, but Ann thought I was being silly. Guess I showed her. We all resolved to wathc the water temperature more closely, and off we went again.
We were planning to drive all the way down Skyline Drive, but after that scare, we decided that discretion bade us stay in the valley, so we kept to the lowlands until it was time to head up the mountain to find our campground. I watched the water temperature like a hawk this time, as it crept up from a comfy 180 degrees, to 190, 195, and when we stopped at the ranger station to check in, we lost the cooling breeze, and it capped 200, so I pulled over to let it cool a bit. It seems that when you are near the edge, and you lose the breeze across the radiator imparted by forward motion, the heat in the engine block continues to transfer to the coolant, so when we stopped, it started to boil over again. Just a little this time, so I added just a little more coolant.
Elinor was feeling ill by this time, and that is all I care to mention. No doubt she will describe the story in great detail, so I, who have no wish to tread in her territory, nor any desire to relive that part of the tale, will leave it at this: A rest was well called for, so both of the delicate ladies were given ten minutes to soothe themselves.
Once on the ridge, Skyline Drive is relatively level, although far from straight. The Cacafuego behaved nicely, but Elinor suffered. We were 15 miles from camp, on top of Loft Mountain, so we pressed on, and arrived with just enough daylight to set up our tent and share a can of Hormel Chili.
