Ever Had a Road Trip from Hell?

[micmacny]

A few years ago, I helped my mom move from Albany, NY to Scottsdale, AZ. We planned the trip for a rigorous four days - with pet-friendly hotels scouted out along the way. (This will become important later.)

I knew day 1 was going to be a taxing one when I showed up at my mom’s house the evening before and the rented truck hadn’t arrived yet. We were supposed to drive 14 hours from Albany to Columbus, OH the next day so I knew we had to get packing. I packed all night, loading her washer and dryer on board at 3am by myself.

At sometime after noon on day 1, we were ready to depart! My sister and I piled into my mom’s Honda Accord with, get this, THREE cats, our dog, and a hamster. I was already exhausted, and we were looking at a 2am arrival time, followed by three more days of a grueling schedule. The cats were screaming bloody murder. That’s when the dog decided this would all be too easy. After no more than ten minutes in the car - that’s roughly 1/300th of the trip - she made a #2 right in the middle of the back seat and then promptly sat in it.

While my sister spent the next hour in the car wash, I jogged in a sleep-deprived haze to the nearest mega-store. Be advised: they will cut a sweet deal to someone with bloodshot eyes for bedding with already ripped and soiled packaging, but they will wonder about him as well.

We made it to Columbus, and eventually made it to Phoenix. But upon checking into that first motel room at 4am after being awake for 44 hours, we realized we didn’t have any litter boxes. And the cats, well they couldn’t tolerate each other or the dog one second longer. I’ll leave the rest to imagination. (No animals were killed.)

Mike
Cohoes, NY

[sls]

The Chicken Man

This episode happened during Christmas break in 1977. I was rushing back from Little Rock to Jonesboro, Arkansas where I was finishing college. I had a 5 p.m. interview at a restaurant where I hoped to work nights. The year before I had paid $200 for the car I was now driving, a 1967 Pontiac LeMans, after I decided I was in love with my psychiatrist and moved to Jonesboro to be near him. The car burned so much oil that I carried cans of it in the back seat and had to stop every 40 miles or so to ?reload.?
It was icy cold on this particular day and one of my back windows had been broken out for months. About 18 miles outside of Jonesboro the car suddenly lost power and drifted to the side of the highway. Mind you, this wasn?t an irregular occurrence – I habitually drove until I was out of gas, hoping to squeeze the last drop out of a tank. The difference was that this time I had plenty of gas and oil. I could see nothing but fields and trees in every direction. Then I remembered passing a store about a half-mile back, so I walked along the road until I came to a dingy shack advertising snacks and cigarettes. The grouchy couple who ran it didn?t seem to have a phone I could use, which infuriated me, so I bought a can of oil and stormed back to the car. It was getting dark and I knew I was going to miss my interview.
As I stood there cursing and crying and kicking the tires, a delivery van pulled over and a short, woeful-looking man got out and offered to tow my car into town. He appeared harmless and I was desperate, so I climbed into the passenger?s seat. The typical detritus of someone who spends long hours in a vehicle was strewn about - toothpicks, coffee cups, food wrappers. Then I was hit with a pungent smell emanating from stacks of cartons in the back. The cartons were full of eggs, and from what I could tell many of them were broken. A sickly rivulet of liquid was pooling at the spot where I was supposed to put my feet, and a half-eaten plate of cold scrambled eggs (what else?) sat next to me.
?The Chicken Man,? as I named him on the spot, said he had to make a couple of quick deliveries first. We headed onto a dark country road and soon came to a small grocery store in the middle of nowhere. To my surprise when we finished the second delivery we did not turn back but continued deeper into unknown territory. There was a third stop, then a fourth and a fifth. I wasn’t scared, just puzzled, but I didn?t think I could ask him where we were going because he was supposedly doing me a favor. After a couple more stops I resigned myself to a very long evening. Meanwhile he told about his life. He was in his late 30s and lived on a farm with only his parents - no wife, no children. He had taken over the egg business from his father. He was messy-looking and his clothes were none too clean. He spoke in a lugubrious tone and he was missing way too many teeth for his age.
I felt like I had slipped back a few decades, both because I was in the company of this strange little man and because of the stores where we stopped. I could see inside some of them - their shelves sagging under the weight of cans and wilted produce. They reminded me of Jack Jenkins, one of the two grocery stores in the town where my mother grew up. It smelled of cigarette butts and stale food and a layer of dust covered the canned goods. My grandfather finally stopped going there when a mother cat gave birth to kittens in the bean barrel. These were the kinds of places that bought eggs from my Chicken Man.
We had driven a twisting path for at least an hour and a half when he announced that he had finished his route. We were approaching a good-sized town, but it didn?t look familiar. I asked where we were. ?Right outside of Wynne,? he said.
Wynne, Arkansas, is 50 miles from Jonesboro if you take the highway. Heaven only knows how many miles we had driven.
He said he wanted to take me to dinner, and I gave in because I was starving. If you’ve ever looked for a nice place to eat in a small town in a dry county in Arkansas, you’ll know that a motel restaurant is your only choice. So that?s where we went. We ordered some kind of meat smothered in gravy and mashed potatoes, and all the while he told me what a nice girl I was and how easy it was to talk to me. It made me nervous. But I had to keep him on my good side until he got me back to civilization.
Afterwards he bought a rope at Wal-Mart and we drove the 50 miles back to my abandoned car. By this time it was about 11 o?clock at night. Just for kicks, I got in and turned the key in the ignition. The car started up with a healthy roar. Unbelievable!
I apologized profusely to him for all the trouble I had caused. At the same time I was relieved to get away from him at last; however, he insisted on following me into town. When I pulled up to my apartment I went to his window and thanked him. I hoped he would turn the van around and go, but instead he got out to walk me to the front porch. Before I realized it he was standing in my living room with me.
Right then and there, he proposed marriage.
I think I told him it was too late at night to make this decision and I was thrilled to be able to tell him I didn?t have a phone – my roommate and I shared one with the neighbor. He turned away in disappointment and walked out of the apartment, and that was the last I ever saw of the Chicken Man.
I had to ditch my car for good in February when it pulled the same stunt in the work parking lot and wouldn?t start for anything. I sold it to a mechanic for about 50 dollars. Amazingly, a few times after that I caught sight of it zipping around town, being driven by a gang of rowdy teenagers.
S. Sears
New York

[aphil003]

It was the summer of 1991. I was 18 and had a black Ford Escort with 150,000 miles and no air conditioning. What could possibly convince me to drive it from Wendell, NC to Chicago? True love. A few months earlier I had met the bass player in a traveling blues band who lived in Chicago. It was love at first sight. Before he got on the bus and prepared to leave for the next gig in the next town, he said, “If you’re ever in Chicago, come see me.”

So, I saved all the tips from my lousy waitressing job and a few months later, with a full tank of gas and $300, I was on my way. It was my first solo road trip, when I saw the Chicago skyline I felt like a real grownup.

My true love had given me the address of the club where he worked in the house band. I couldn’t wait to see his reaction when I walked through the door. However, there was one slight problem. I’d been driving for about 14 hours in a black car with no air conditioning and I was less than, well … fresh. I didn’t want our reunion to be marred by the pools of sweat that accumulated in places I needn’t mention. I decided to stop at a motel to take a shower and fix my hair, but I was very torn because the motel room would take a big chunk of my meager savings.

Imagine then, my delight when the first motel I stopped at didn’t charge for the night … they charged by the hour! This totally made up for the fact that the motel seemed to be in a rather rough part of town. I called home to check in with my parents and I told them my good fortune. My father, who wasn’t thrilled with this trip to begin with, told me to get the hell out of there – Which was fine because I’d already taken my shower and anyway, my hour was up.

Late that evening I made my appearance in the Chicago blues club where my Romeo was performing. I couldn’t wait to catch his eye and surprise him. Turns out, he surprised me. His live-in fiance was sitting at the table right next to mine.

I spent three more days in Chicago, determined to have a great time. Unfortunately, I spent most of my money having the great time and this forced me to sleep in my car in a McDonald’s parking lot. After a few days, I realized that any more of a good time would kill me.

Once again, I called my parents – This time to tell them that I had less than $50 and needed to get home. Also, my good time, combined with lack of sleep, had left me with a 102 degree fever, aches, and chills. My parents recommended I head to Warren, Ohio, where we had distant family members who would be forced to feed and house me for a few days while I recouperated. I could probably also fleece them for gas money. So, I headed east, and soon found myself on the Ohio Turnpike, sick as a dog.

It wasn’t long before red lights filled my rear view mirror. The cop thought I was wasted drunk because of the way I was weaving across my lane. The truth is, I was sick and exhausted. He quickly recognized this and advised me to pull over at the next rest stop and get a nap. I decided that was probably a good idea. He waved goodbye as I exited off the turnpike.

I will never quite understand what happened next. For some reason that remains lost in my feverish haze, I decided to get out of the car instead of just reclining the seat and taking a nap. What I know for certain is that I got out of the car and locked the door. The problem is, I neglected to turn off the engine before I did this.

Once again, I’m on the phone with my mom, this time in hysterics. I am locked outside my car, which is burning the last of my precious gas. My poor mother, a thousand miles away in North Carolina, told me to calm down and wait by the car. About 15 minutes later, the same cop who pulled me over came to rescue me and unlock my car. He gave me a hug before he left and told me to have a better day.

That cop from the Ohio Turnpike Authority has always been my hero.

I took a nap, finished the drive to Warren, Ohio, and had a lovely vacation with my distant relatives. Turns out, they were very nice people.

While I have taken many, many road trips since then, I have never again chased after wayward musicians.

[MisterHobbs]

Even over a decade later, I can not bring myself to put my road trip into words. Luckily, I’m a cartoonist! So here’s a drawing that captured a least part of the spirit of my big adventure…

[ASUdec]

A few years back my mom got this great idea that we needed to start camping more; wrong idea. She buys the biggest monster pop-up camper they make. Five of the six family members pile into the van and we were on our way to hell (theoretically speaking). My mom had this whole trip planned to the last millisecond and, well, plans fail sometimes.

One of the days we went to a peaceful lake that rents boats. The boat could only hold four people. My mom and sister willingly said that they will stay and that me, my dad, and my younger sister should fish for a couple hours and come back and we will switch off. We were out on the lake for our couple hours and we caught nothing. So we started to head in. My younger sister and I trolled our lines behind us. As luck would have it we both struck fish at the same time. My dad turned off the motor and helped us reel in these beasts. There was a strong wind and it had pushed us far away from our destination, the dock were my mom and sister were now boiling over on how we were late. We started to head in again and me and my younger sister again trolled our lines. Two more fish. We thought this was our lucky day, but I would trade every fish in the world to avoid what laid ahead. Racking in these fish one after another we lost track of everything else.

We finally made it back to the dock with a handsome basket full of fish. And then we saw her, my mother, broiling and beaming down on us. We should have pushed away from the dock at that moment and never come back. She ripped us down so bad. Endless yelling and screaming. I was sure her voice would finally give out and the noise would stop. She was still going after we had returned to the campsite and we packed everything up and headed for home. A six hour drive of complete silence and tenseness in the car. We sold that new trailer and everything with it and never went on a family camping trip again.

[lockie]

		Parking Upside Down in Yellowstone

I ran over my driver ed teacher’s foot in high school, and he banned me from further driving training, though I only broke three bones. I’m a distracted driver. A song on the radio sends me into a reverie that may last through a stop sign. 1990. My plan was to drive west to the home of my boyfriend, Tom, in San Francisco. Tom had long hair and was thus considered by my conservative Tennessee family to be a hippie. My father was a captain of industry, a military man. After many daughter-daddy arguments we finally loaded up my 1980ish Plymouth Turismo. The car, nicknamed The Deviant, was a gift from my father. Now heavily laden with all the prized possessions of a twenty-one year old girl and Tom the hippie we were off to explore parts unknown. Dad objected to Tom; he objected to the west coast; but mostly he objected to me driving such a long distance. Sometimes dads are right.

The Deviant was thus named as it was a feat of twisted engineering. Some electrical issue found that the radio did not work unless both the windshield wipers and headlights were on, so I did not listen to tunes unless it was dark and raining. The emergency brake was located under the driver’s armrest/cup holder, so when it was pulled, it sent a shower of soda or coffee into the backseat.

I blame the big incident on the scenery in Yellowstone. In addition to the flora and fauna, the back roads boasted steam pots spewing smoke from the ground, and the effect was ethereal. On a backroad, admiring the smoking Montana side of the park, the car drifted slightly to the right, and I felt a difference in control. I had, according to the park ranger’s reports, managed to puncture not one, but both, of my right tires on the shoulder of the road. As an inexperienced driver (with no formal training, through no fault of my own), I swerved, gaining speed and spin so that the car, upon reaching the right shoulder again, flipped.

It rolled several times before landing upside down, exposing its underbelly, the wheels spinning like an injured beetle. Tom the hippie and I hung from our seatbelts, eyes wide in wonder, not a scratch on us. Help arrived in the form of a park ranger, looking every bit the hero in his official uniform. He bundled me in his jacket and checked for signs of shock, marveling that we were unscathed It all felt surreal, more like an amusement park ride than a car accident, and to do this day I feel as if cars can flip on their accord, as the laws of gravity won’t hold their wheels firmly on the road.

I wrecked the car in Montana and skidded into Wyoming, and since it was a national park, the ranger struggled with the paperwork terminology. “After the accident the car came to a stop, resting upside down” one form explained. Another form asked me to describe the accident in short phrases in terms of road conditions and weather. Lighting: daylight. Weather: clear. Surface Conditions: dry. Road type: straight. Describe damage to your vehicle: car turned over. This made The Deviant look like one of those wind up toys, as if the car sprung up on its wheels on this clear sunny day on a paved road and launched itself over the cliff. (I thought of the small ravine where my car was resting as a cliff at this point). I now also looked like the world’s worst driver, a woman capable of making a car flip in normal driving conditions. I considered mailing the report to my driver ed teacher.

The ranger gave me a $50.00 ticket. “It’s a department of interior rule. We give tickets to everyone involved in an accident. Hit a deer, you get a ticket; deer gets a ticket.” The problem was arriving at an offense for the ticket. “Parking upside down?” Tom offered. The ranger settled on “failing to maintain control of my vehicle” which was true. We towed the car to Gardner Montana, where it was a source of wonderment. “How in the world did you flip it?” asked the man at the Shell station, the waitress who served us dinner, and the lady checking us into our room. “Wow, you really totaled it,” was the next comment. Totaled? I thought. Certainly she would need two tires?and a new sun roof, as she was “resting upside down” on it, but she can’t be totaled. I thought of totaled cars as mashed beyond recognition, nothing left but a steering wheel and some tangled steel. I had never heard of a blue book.

I called my father, and he refrained from saying “I told you so” though I could hear it is his voice. My father, a logical man, determined that I would need a car in San Francisco to start my new job. If we bought a car in SF, we’d still need to get from Montana to the west coast, and we’d need to ship all my prize possessions. so? buy a car in Montana. And not just any car. Since dad was writing a check, it must be an American car, and since I apparently can’t drive, it must be a mid size car at minimum as I would be crushed like a tin can in a compact car in my inevitable next accident. If daddy could have bought me a regulation army tank, he would have.

I still thought my little Deviant would see the roads again. She was not totaled but drivable. A knock on the door on Sunday morning and “Sheriff” awoke me and Tom. “Sheriff!” I said, throwing on a robe and cracking the door. Dad had somehow alerted all town officials to watch after his baby, and it was the sheriff himself who called me to the front deck of the hotel where the USAA man waited.

“Totaled” the insurance adjuster said, after a fifteen second glance at my poor little car. He then explained blue book values. “This car would be totaled if a windshield wiper fell off.” He wrote me a check, and I left my Deviant there, wounded beyond the amount of money she was worth in someone’s blue book. Tom was not very sympathetic as we drove from the dealership in Bozeman Montana to the sparkling waters of the Pacific, and, frankly, he insisted on driving the new Pontiac Grand Am that my dad bought.
2009. Last week I knocked off my third side view mirror on my new Prius?backing out of the garage?sometimes fathers are right.

[cdreger780]

Last winter I decided to move from Champaign, IL to New Orleans. Being the cheap-skate that I am I opted to load all of my belongings into a small U-Haul trailer and throw away everything that wouldn’t fit. The first problem with this idea was that my car was a 1998 Honda Accord that was not about to pull a trailer. To remedy this I borrowed my father’s 1999 Dodge Dakota and recruited two friends, Glen and Bobby, to help me with the journey. Now, Bobby didn’t have a driver’s license but he’d give Glen someone to talk to on the way back and he just really wanted to go to New Orleans.
On the evening of departure (we had a late start due to the previous day’s going away party) my 70-lb Collie, Dexter, and I were in the Dakota pulling the trailer while Glen and Bobby followed in the Accord. The temperature this fine December day was SEVEN DEGREES! The first hour and a half were rather uneventful but soon after that we found ourselves heading straight into a huge white-out blizzard. Obviously our progress was slowed but we trucked on. A few miles North of the Illinois/Missouri border we stopped for gas. Glen crawled under the Accord and knocked loose a bunch of packed snow and we were on our way.
Less than a mile after crossing the Missouri state line (around the time I passed a road sign saying the next exit was 10 miles ahead) Glen called to tell me something had fallen off the Accord and was sparking down the highway. I pulled over the Dakota and waited for them to catch up. They slid in behind me and bumped the trailer (no real damage). I climbed out of the truck and into the blizzard that was blowing across the dark, empty interstate. The Accord had died by this time and I asked Glen to crank it back up. Through the bellowing wind I heard a noise that reminded me of one I had heard on a Car Talk episode that was followed by Tom and Ray yelling “Turn it off! Turn it off!” so that’s what I yelled. I decided it was time to bring in the experts so I went back to the Dakota and called AAA. Because of our location the operator had to route me to the Missouri dispatch. “No problem,” I said and waited patiently. After explaining my location to the new operator I was told to wait on the line as this one “might be tricky”. She explained that due to our location she needed to find a tow truck driver who 1). Had insurance coverage to drive across the bridge into Illinois, turn around and come back across to reach us and 2). Someone who was willing to drive in this mess. Eventually she was able to find one guy crazy enough and with the right coverage to come to our rescue, but he had 2 other people to save before us and it would be about 4 hours. With nothing to do for 4 hours and we had to stay warm we squeezed into the Dakota to stay warm. 3 backpacks, 3 grown men and a 70-lb dog all crammed in the standard cab of a 1999 Dakota, watching “The Simpsons” on Bobby’s laptop for 4 hours.
The truck came, we found a hotel and the next day I drove to the shop to find out what had happened. “You gotta see this,” the mechanic said to me. We went into the shop and he grabbed a flashlight. “You see that hole? The one about the size of a fist?” Yep, it threw a rod. We looked around, trying to figure out what had happened and discovered that the oil filter had snapped off. I still haven’t figured out exactly how that happened since I wasn’t driving the car. Maybe when Glen was knocking stuff loose at the gas station? He won’t admit to anything.
Anyway, I still had to move to New Orleans and didn’t want to wait around for two weeks trying to sell the car so I just gave it to the mechanic.
So there we were, in Sikeston, MO, 9 hours from New Orleans in GOOD weather! It took us a little over 13. Three men and a dog in a Dakota, driving to New Orleans.

[morrisj]

It was 1993, long before cell phones. My family of four was on the road to visit relatives in Tennessee when the transmission died on our Ford station wagon. We were stranded on the highway at 11 o’clock at night in a rainstorm. With flashers on, we patiently waited for the state police. On hour later and no police, but a car pulls up behind us and then passes slowly around us and then parks in front of us. One of the two men in the car gets out. He had messy hair, wore a tank top t-shirt, baggy pants, a cigarette hung from his mouth and he had a limp when he walked. He talked to my husband through the window. During the conversation, he offered three ways to help us. (1) My husband was to get out of the and help the man fix the car. He said he was a mechanic! (2) My husband could go with him to get help. (3) We were to give him our AAA card and he would go and get a tow truck. To all the offers my husband said “No thank you. Please just call the police for us”. The man said, “This is a dangerous road. Anything can happen. I won’t hurt you. I am a Christian.” They then left.

A half hour later a tow truck came. Two different men were sent to us from the first two men. When we would not get out of the car, they hitched our car to the tow truck and lifted the car with us in it. They said they were taking us to the nearest Ford dealer, 15 miles away. It is pouring again. The windows are fogged up. We can’t see a thing. It seemed like forever before we got off the expressway. Once off the highway, they stopped and came and told us that they were taking me and the kids to a motel, and John, my husband, to the dealership with the car. We convinced them that we all wanted to go to the dealership. When we arrived there, my husband gave them a huge tip, and they left.

We spent the rest of the night in the Ford dealership’s parking lot, which was bright as day and we listened to country music from radio station WABX Louisville blasting out of the dealership out-door PA system. As dawn was breaking, the song “I Can’t Take This Anymore” echoed our sentiments.

What happened when the Ford dealership opened is another story from hell, but what we came to realize is that those men on the road turned out to be true Christians.

[pbr1893]

First off…my road-trip from hell involves a 1984 vw westphalia (will-fail-ya) but since most VW owners know that their beloved vehicles are a bit temperamental, we adapt and roll with the punches.
I had just picked up my van from a mechanic, who had just replaced the head. I was planning a trip to Asheville for a Taj Mahal concert and had three friends accompany me on the two hour drive. Knowing that Peggy-O (the name of my van which also frequently went by Peggy-Uh-Oh!) had a penchant for roadside breakdowns, we left early in the day in case of any problems. On the way up the mountain on I-40, one of my friends told me that the van was blowing out smoke. Hoping that it was just possibly oil burn off on the motor, I kept moving onward till the two friends in the back said that the van was filling up with smoke! Full Disclosure…people who drive VW’s tend to have a lot of smoke in their vans from time to time. However, this was not the smoke that most people associate with VW owners! We pulled over and flipped the engine lid and the motor was near a glowing red color. It seemed that we were done for!
We pulled out lawn chairs on the side of the highway and waited for the highway patrol. Needless to say, it took some time. So, we did things that people who drive VW’s do and then opened up a bottle of wine and waited. By the time the highway patrol finally arrived, we were very mellow and I asked the officer, "Where you been, man?!"
He called a tow truck driver and this is where it got "hellish."
A short old man by the name of “Bud”(honest to God, that was his name) put the van on his roll-back. My friends got to actually ride in the van on top of the roll-back while I had to sit up front. From the rearview mirror, I could see my friends enjoying Bud’s designated driving skills as they did what people who ride in VW’s do and I was resigned to hear about differentials and chasis for the next thirty miles.
Well, we made it to the concert and I even thought I had fixed my van and the next morning we started back down the mountain. But…once again, break-down on the side of I-40!
So, as stated before we tried to make the best of it and pulled out the lawn chairs and did what most VW owners do and even read the sunday paper waiting for the law to show up. And again here came the tow truck and again …here was Bud. He looked at me and chuckled, “I kinda figgered it was you.” He said he’d charge me $100 to tow me home and once the van was on the roll-back, he said,
"Well young fellar…hop in the front!"
So, I said, "Bud I hope you can understand this but since I’ve spent all this money on towing, I’d like to sit in the van with my friends instead."
And Bud replied…"I might be 74 years old but ya can’t pull the wool over my eyes…I know you’re gonna sit up there and do what VW owners do and drink that wine and beer as well!"
So, I said, "Does that mean it’s ok?"
Bud smiled and granted me my wish and even stopped off at a beer store midway through the trip so we could restock the cooler.
So, in a way this wasn’t a road-trip from hell because as I said earlier, VW owners expect the unexpected. If you read this on air…I’ll be delighted. Otherwise those reading on-line and who might be fellow VW owners will smile and say, “Been there…done that…got the tow bill!”

[big_bad_john]

I live in Milton Wi in sothern Wi. In the early 80s I had a Buick eledtra with a 400 trans in it. My famly and myself were on our way to Canada on a fishing vacation. We started out on a Friday and got as far as Eau Clare Wi. about 250 miles and my trans went out. I limped the car into a camp ground. The next day the camp ground owner told me where there was a junk yard not to far from there. I called them and they had a trans and if I could get the car to them they would put the trans in right away. Two hours later it was done and it did not cost me a arm and a leg.

We then got just south of the border and a fan belt came off. In the front of this Buick motor there is a oil presher plug. The fan belt twisted this plug out of the motor and we lost all the oil. I decided to hitch hike into the next town to see about some help. When I got there the town was just a wide spot in the road and being Sat. afternoon every thing was closed. I hitch hiked back to the car and was going to tell the wife we would have to find a motel room and have the car fixed Mon. Well I was gone the wife and kids walked back on the road and they found the oil plug the presher spring that went behind it and the check pall that goes on the end of the spring. What was the odes of them finding the parts? I put this plug back into the motor the hitch hiked back to town and was lucky to find a fan belt that would fit. I got the belt and oil and went back to the car and fixed it and we were on our way again.

The next day going through Canada we came upon some road construction. Up there there is no detors around road work so we had to drive through it. In this construction I hit a pot hole big enough to beary a horse in. It riped the exaust loose on the car. I was luckey the exaust did not fall off but it was loder than heck in the car. We finely got to our camp grounds and had a good two weeks of fishing. No problems coming home.

[pdm1973]

You know how they say you should wait for the water level inside and outside the car to be the same before opening the door (makes it easier). Well, they’re right. And don’t forget, opening the door too soon puts you at risk of capsizing. Almost did that too.

The car: a 96 Honda Civic, which I had for about 5 years. During the winter of 2001 various things started to wear out and break. Most expensively my drivers window regulator broke while on the Mass Pike: I got it fixed but started to consider trading it in. One Sunday afternoon I decided that I’d keep the car. Not fifteen minutes later, someone ran a red light and collided with the front end, doing $2000 in further damage. Who knew front bumpers could fly like that. Still drivable, but now taking on a new Mad Max look. And the police were great.

A few days later, the rains came, and one of the intersections I was passing through was flooded. This intersection is sort of bowl shaped, with each road descending into the intersection. In an effort to be “smart” I thought I’d sneak around the edge, cut through a parking lot and stay out of the lowest part of the “bowl”. Instead I found the deepest part, suddenly stalled and realized the car was now floating. Still going steadily forward, but now I’m sinking too. Awkward. After the car came to a stop I grabbed my lunch and got out safely - the water was only chest-high, but seeing water coming up into your car from beneath is something you don’t forget. I headed into a nearby car dealership and asked to use the bathroom. I don’t remember their response: I just kept walking and started wringing out my clothes once I was in the restroom. Yes, they did offer to sell me a new car. Also, I got the bill for the regulator that same day.

[caholmes1948]

My family decided to take a road trip in 1964 from Detroit to Los Angeles where my parents had previously lived and where my sister and I were born. My dad, mom, 14 year old sister and myself at 16 years old left Detroit on Friday, July 3, 1964 in our trusty 1959 Edsel station wagon. This was going to be my big chance to get lots of highway driving experience and help out my dad with the driving duties. Just before leaving on the trip my dad had a rebuilt carburetor installed on the car.

Everything went fine as we headed west. The weather was beautiful and the car was running perfectly. We arrived in St. Louis late in the day on Friday and as we entered the city and encountered stop and go traffic, the engine was hard to keep running. At red lights the engine would sputter and quit. We determined that it was flooding out at idle but it being the holiday weekend and after five, we had no where to take it and get it serviced. My dad told me to just pop the automatic transmission in to neutral at the red lights and keep the idle up to prevent flooding until we could get to the motel for the night.

Back on the highway the next day all went well and we traveled through Missouri, Oklahoma and across the Texas panhandle. We still had to put it into neutral and rev the engine when we got off the road for gas or food but everything was fine otherwise. And still we could find no service stations as everybody was closed for the holiday.

I don?t remember where we stopped Saturday night but Sunday morning found us heading into New Mexico, the ?Land of Enchantment? according to the motto on the license plates. I couldn?t see much to be enchanted about as we crossed the desolate stretch of country headed for Albuquerque. As we came down a long grade from the top of a mountain or hill, I took my foot off the gas and coasted. When we flattened out I pushed down on the gas and the engine was dead. I put the pedal to the floor hoping to clear the excess fuel and nothing happened. As we lost speed, I downshifted to keep the transmission engaged and then I downshifted again. Nothing! I pulled over to the shoulder as we coasted to a stop. No problem, my dad and I were pretty good backyard mechanics and we had tools ? a screw driver and a crescent wrench!

Pulling the bowl off the two barrel Holly carb revealed that the float had come loose and fallen off the fuel line fitting coming in from the side of the carburetor. All we had to do was take the fuel line loose from the fitting and screw the fitting back into the nut that held the float in place. Did I say we had a crescent wrench? That was half of what we needed to break loose the compression nut that held the fuel line to the fitting. My dad and I could not figure any way to overcome the problem and it was decided that I would try to hitch a ride to a town, if one existed, and get help.

Did I also say the territory was desolate? I mean we had not seen anything all morning as we entered New Mexico, there was no sign of life in sight and we were not seeing any passing cars. And the sun was quickly rising in the sky. Finally a car pulled up with a family headed for church somewhere out there. They said we were lucky they stopped as almost no one ever chances stopping to help someone along this stretch. The area is so deserted that criminals were known to fake a break down, rob and kill the good Samaritan who stops and then dump the body over the edge of the road with little chance of being found for months, if ever.

I got in the car and off I went, leaving my family by the side of the road for who knew what fate. We drove for about 15 minutes without seeing any trace of civilization. Then I could see a very small settlement of a few adobe type structures sitting off to the side of the road. We drove up to a structure that was a two car garage on the back and living quarters in the front. The man who had rescued me explained my problem to the lady who came out and she told me to come into the garage and wait for her husband to finish his breakfast.

There was a ?55 Ford in the garage with the heads removed and a bench full of tools. I could see part way into the house which seemed to consist of a kitchen and living space plus a bedroom. The table must have been against the garage wall as I could not see it or the people inside. In a few minutes I could hear the husband get up from the table and I saw him go to the bedroom door, put his right hand on the wall and reach around into the room with his left hand to retrieve his hat from a hook there. As he came out to the garage he guided himself with his hand along the wall to the door way to the bench and over to me. After all of this, with my family stranded in the desert and me as their savior, I get dropped off at a garage in the middle of nowhere run by a BLIND mechanic.

Well, you go with what you got I guess. We exchanged ?good mornings? and I explained the situation to him. He said it would be no problem and went to the bench to collect some tools. (I wondered how he was going to drive us out there.) Then he started shouting about his half ? nine sixteenths end wrench being missing and his teenage son came out and told him he had been working on the Ford and didn?t put the tools back where they belonged. The son then told me he would drive us to my car and we headed out.

Upon returning to the scene of the calamity, I introduced my parents and sister to the mechanic and his son. The son guided his father to the open engine compartment and the mechanic, upon feeling the carb, announced that it was a Holly and he would have it fixed up in a minute. Sure enough, it was all set in no time at all but the mechanic said we should try it out as the float adjustment might not be right. We drove down the road but the car would not get past about 25 miles per hour. We pulled over and the mechanic opened it up and made an adjustment by feeling the float level and put it back together. This time all was well.

We followed them back to the garage to square up the bill and to purchase some tools the mechanic insisted we should take with us. We could not believe the small cost for the service call on a Sunday including driving way out to our car and back. Plus he sold us those tools for just a few of dollars. He could have charged us anything in our predicament but he was an honest man. And a great mechanic.

It was certainly an experience to remember! And when we got to Los Angeles, Dad took the car to Western Auto and when they checked the carb float with a gauge, it was right where it should be.

The rest of the trip was without incident and California (I had not been there since we returned to Michigan when I was four) was beautiful, the surfing was cool (I was a huge fan of the Beach Boys) and the west was fascinating. Other than our enchanting experience in NM (and my mother checking my speed out of the corner of her eye) it was a wonderful family road trip.

[chinyla]

My Trip From Hell started in March of 1970 when I picked up my new Orange manual transmission VW fastback for a leisurely drive from New York City to LA.
Mine was the last car to cross Central Park before the floods closed it to traffic. I easily made my way through the garden state, then a Trailways Bus flew past doing over 90 mph in the snow. Twenty minutes later we came to a dead stop while they cleaned up bus parts, etc. So much snow accumulated that they shut down that section of the turnpike for the first time since it was built.
As I pulled into a guest house driveway I drove through a puddle pf water. Three days later, when truckers at the Somerset diner told me the snow had been cleared, I packed up the car, started the engine and couldn’t move! The bearings were frozen. My V dub had to be towed into a warm garage until the ice thawed.
On I went to Chicago where my parents warned me NOT to take Cicero to my sister’s, as there was too much truck traffic. They never mentioned these guys didn’t know how to use their brakes. So when the light turned green, I stalled the engine and the truck behind me just drove forward like I wasn’t even there!
So after my little car got a new bumper, I continued south to the legendary Route 66 – or what remained of it.
Driving through Texas one dreary afternoon I felt another truck make contact with the back of my car. I looked in the rear view mirror to find a good ol’ boy, rifle mounted on the dash of his red pick up truck, playing bumper tag at 65 mph!
I sought refuge in a roadside stop filled with a bunch of campers. The redneck blocked the exit so I hoovered at the entrance. He eventually got tired of waiting and made his way through the campers. I took it as an opportunity to escape. I backed out onto the highway and floored it. Silly me – I was thinking, “How big could the engine in that little truck be?” What I should have considered was, "How small the engine in my little VW was."
As I struggled to reach all of 90 mph, he was easily gaining on me. Then I spotted my saviors – two Texas Rangers on the opposite side of the divided highway. I turned on my emergency flashers, rolled down the window and frantically waved my arm.
As they crossed the grassy knoll, a small plane descended swiftly between our vehicles. The last I saw of the red truck was the cloud of smoke his wheels sent up in an attempt to avoid a head on collision with the plane, then a hill blocked my view.
A few minutes later the Rangers at a road block refused to tell me what this guy had done. I was states away when the paper came out the next day and wonder to this day who my terrorist was. I know it’s been more than 39 years, but does anyone out there know about a March 27th, 1970 (give or take a few days) crime?
The next morning I flooded the engine. When the auto mechanic from down the street walked over and explained all he had to do was find the carburetor, I knew my car didn’t have one and just smiled.

[UsaSzerelem]

Back in 1995 timeframe I lived in the north eastern desert of Los Angeles, California. My mother in law came to visit us for 3 months and it eventually got to a point that I ran out of entertainment options of where to take this lady. To add to the difficulties my ex-wife’s sister also came to stay with us for a month. Well, what to do with all these ladies, I thought it would be a good idea for all us to drive to Las Vegas for a long weekend as none of us have been there. I had a fairly new Mercury Grand Marquis car in impeccable condition so I was sure we would be able to make the long drive through Death Valley, in August.

After we drove for two hours I noticed that the air conditioner stopped working and it was getting increasingly hotter in the car. I rolled down my windows, but as my arm was hanging out the windows and the outside hot air was rushing over it, it was so uncomfortably hot that I had to bring my arm in. My mother in law, my ex-wife?s feisty sister was pouring drinking water over themselves in the car and they were begging me to turn around.

As none of us have been in Las Vegas, I thought to myself, how much further can it be? So I convinced them that Las Vegas should be just around the next mountain and we should continue our march through Death Valley. In Baker, CA where they have the claim for having the world’s largest thermometer it was registering 125 degrees. I stopped at a gas station where they had a mechanic who came out in full blue work overall and started to see if he could get the A/C going. The evaporator had a hole in it, and he did not have a spare part so we had to continue our drive towards Las Vegas.

By now the women in the car would have killed me, but they were too exhausted. Eventually we arrived to Las Vegas where the women were huffing and puffing by the hotel room A/C and I went down to quench my thirst with two beers.

We still had to endure the trip back home to Los Angeles and it was truly a trip from hell. The good thing that came out of it was that neither my mother in law nor my ex-wife’s sister ever came back to visit.

[denismenis]

-may be duplicated, disappeared on preview, too

Hi Tom and Ray:

DON?T TRY THIS AT HOME (abridge if needed)

As a sprite young man of 19, and not too long after graduating from high school, I had landed a job at the local telephone company (this was 1974). With my new-found stable employment, and after having to drive a succession of “beaters”, I finally had the means to purchase a relatively (emphasis on “relatively”) sound vehicle.

So I bought the vehicle of my dreams for a 19 year old kid in 1974 - a 1967 VW Microbus. It was shiny two tone royal blue and white, with Kombi windows, and already equipped with air scoops on each side. After installing an eight-track tape player and speakers, I was in heaven.

My girlfriend and I traveled all over Washington State in it, and it was quite reliable, despite the many instances of moving in third gear at 30 mph at the slightest grade. One of our regular road trips was from Tacoma to Bonners Ferry, ID, to visit friends.

Which takes me back to the telephone company.

On Friday before Memorial Day weekend, in response to the customary ?What are you doing this weekend? question, I mentioned the planned drive to Bonners Ferry. This suddenly piqued the interest of some other folks in the office. Bear in mind, in 1974, a certain brand of beer was not available for sale in Washington State (hint hint: it’s made with Rocky Mountain Spring Water) but was for sale in Idaho. Apparently this “pseudo-ban” made the product that much more desirable in the eyes of my workmates, and before the end of the day, I had requests (and cash put in my hand, since it was payday) to pick up some of the beer and bring it back. One person in the office gave me $60 to get ten cases! In that day, the drinking age in Idaho was 19, so logic dictated (apparently to everyone involved) that I could purchase it legally in Idaho.

Anyway, we were off - my girlfriend and I, her dog Seward, and another couple who came along - and arrived early Saturday morning. We had a great visit with our friends, and on Sunday afternoon, made the dutiful rounds for my colleagues at work.

Now, many 19 year olds are schooled in the laws of physics. But I was not one of them (my focus in high school was journalism). At the Safeway in Sandpoint, we figured that if a few cases of beer were good, then more would be better, so we loaded the VW with ? yes - 27 cases of beer. Our couple traveling with us was accommodated by sitting on top of the beer in the back of the bus. We loaded up and were off for Tacoma, with all 40 horsepower pushing us down the highway.

We did well most of the way, until the 90 degree heat and rolling hills of Eastern Washington began to take its toll. Near the town of Wilbur on U.S. 2, the van began to emit an ominous ?ticka ticka ticka?, and before I could ask what that noise was, a huge ?BLAM? blasted from the rear of the bus ? the telltale sign of a piston crashing through the block, and the bus listlessly limped to the shoulder.

We were now in crisis mode; a broken down VW van on the side of a lonely two lane highway among the wheat fields of Eastern Washington. We decided I would hitchhike into Wilbur for a tow truck. I quickly got a ride, summoned a tow truck and rode back the 20 or so miles to the scene.

Upon arrival, the tow truck driver and I pulled up to find a Sheriff?s car, and two state troopers pulled up behind the van. My girlfriend, the couple, and the dog were standing in the hot sun, and all of the beer was stacked up on the side of the road. I was greeted by Deputy Stan, who grinned and said: ?Well, Dennis, we?ll have to take your beer - so, let?s all go to jail.? At that moment, my girlfriend burst into tears and said ?Can I take my dog??? Deputy Stan grinned and said, ?Of course, dear, the dog can go to jail, too.?

The deputies and two state troopers had to load all the beer into the trunks of their cars (for some reason they didn?t ask us to help) and ferried us to the county seat, 40 miles away. When we arrived at the courthouse, we were asked to help bring the beer down to the cool basement, which we obliged. As the last case was stacked, the deputy marked two of the cases with a grease pencil as evidence. I asked him if he was going to mark them all. ?Nope, these are all I need,? he said. I surmised the County Employees? annual picnic was later in the month.

We sat in the courthouse on a Memorial Day Sunday, while Deputy Stan dialed all sorts of phone numbers (ATF, FBI, Liquor Commission, who knows) and couldn?t get any answer on a Holiday weekend, apparently in either a ruse or genuine attempt to figure out how to deal with these stupid kids in a blown up VW bus loaded with beer. He then said he?d have to call the judge, and left a message with hizzoner?s wife.

And we waited. And waited.

After about three hours, a short, 50ish gentleman, with about three days? growth of beard and grease smeared on his overly tight, ill-fitting shirt and (who knows why) stocking hat, came into the office. Deputy Stan rose and addressed him as ?your honor.? Taking the cue, we stood up, too. Hizzoner was not happy, and groused ?Why did you call me in here! I was working on my tractor!? The deputy then told him he had some ?minors in possession?, which enraged the judge further, until Deputy Stan interrupted him with ?they have 27 cases, your honor.? The judge looked at us and said, ?What the hell are you doing with all that beer??? We just gave a sheepish grin, and in a moment of both disgust and dismissal, he said ?Fine ?em 25 bucks apiece and get them outta here.?

And he left the room.

My girlfriend, who was the most well off of all of us, wrote a check for $100 for the four of us and we were free to go, but now we had 40 miles to get back to our blown-up VW bus, with no beer, a towing bill and also how to figure out how to get home. We managed to hitch a ride in a pickup truck back to Wilbur, where the towns? rumor mill was in full swing, especially at the ?Billy Burgers? restaurant, where we had become somewhat of a celebrity.

We managed to get a hold of my sister in Tacoma, who dispatched my two brothers with her 1969 GTO and a tow bar. The six hour trip back to Tacoma was quiet and solemn, but uneventful, although my younger brother enjoyed sleeping in the drivers? seat of the VW while it was being towed, as all of us were wedged in the GTO and he was low on seniority.

I returned to work on Tuesday to explain my story ? no beer and a blown up motor. The lady who gave me $60 laughed it off, but one colleague was very upset and demanded her six bucks back.

The motor was replaced in the VW and I kept it for about a year, then sold it to a fellow worker. Shortly thereafter the transaxle failed. I have owned three VW vans since then, all with similar stories, (including driving from Mount Rainier National Park to Tacoma stuck in first gear all the way).but not as egregious as this one

After my brush with crime, with disastrous results, I have since lived the life of a model citizen, with three grown kids, five grand kids and a life of volunteer public service and 36 years in the telecom business. Although whenever I see any of my kids looking wistfully at a VW Microbus, I?m tempted to give them a dope slap and say ?forget it!?
And my wife gives me one when I think about it, too.

Nowadays, when I cruise through Wilbur on the way to Spokane, I?ll stop at the Billy Burgers, I tell the staff to say hi to (now retired) Deputy Stan, and that ?he didn?t catch me this time.?

Regards,

Dennis T
Hines, OR

[samblack]

After graduating from high school, 3 friends and I planned a road trip in a 41Chrysler convertible from Ca. to Detroit to pick up at he factory, a new Dodge Cornet.On the grade from Las Vegas to St Goerge Ut. in the middle of the day, the motor vapor locked. After several hours, a tow truck arrived and towed us to St George. We parked on an incline with very high curbs. After dinner, we could not put the car in reverse, as we were tight against the curb and with Fluid Drive, the car had to be able to move slightly to shift gears. The same tow driver arrived and muttered, Oh, you guys again.

[wmtparker]

In October of 1980, we decided to take a long overdue road trip vacation with our three young children. It was our first time in over a year to get away from the long hours of a resident physician during training.

The first night we stopped at a motel in Banning, CA. After settling into our room and getting the kids ready for bed, we heard loud voices coming from the manager’s office a few hundred feet away. A male voice shouted “Don’t shoot, please don’t kill me!” That was followed by what sounded very much like four gun shots and then the hysterical voice of a female crying out “Look what you’ve done, …what are you going to do now!!!”

We began to suspect that something was amiss, so I naively went out to see what was happening while my wife put the kids in the tub and and crouched on the bathroom floor. Sure enough, as I peeked around the corner, there was a man in the manager’s doorway holding a rifle, while a woman continued to shriek from somewhere inside.

At that point I thought it would be wisest to return to the room and rejoin my family. When I got back, my wife informed me that she had tried to call 911, but the switchboard was not transferring her calls. So she rang the manager’s office until a male voice answered and proceded to tell that voice that she thought that something was “terribly wrong” and then carefully whispered our names and what room we were in… He calmly informed my wife not to worry and that he had “…taken care of everything.”

When we thought about that for a moment, we decided that we probably just told the shooter where he could find some potential witnesses. We immediately pushed the cheap set of dresser drawers against the door, …thus sealing our only escape route, and waited …and waited. About fifteen minutes later, we could hear the police sirens as they got closer and finally arrived.

After about half an hour we cautiously slid the dresser drawers back away from the door to see the “alleged” shooter being escorted to the police car. We were later interviewed by the police, but they must have decided we were totally worthless as witnesses because we never heard from them again.

It turned out that two murders had been commited and the shooter was eventually found guilty and given a prison sentence.

As if that weren’t enough, the very next night we decided to stay at a motel in Beaumont, CA. As we were going up a set of outside steps to our second floor room, we suddenly heard a loud crash and a woman frantically screaming “You’ve killed my baby!”.

Now being veterans of this type of thing, we got all our kids down on their stomachs military style, and crawled up the rest of the stairs and along the outside walkway into our room.

After everyone was in the room, we cautiously peeked out the door only to see that there had been an auto accident where some neighbors were very upset, but no one was seriously hurt.

A few minutes later, our six year old daughter answered an unexpected call on the motel phone while we were trying to unpack. My wife went over to get the phone, and our daughter handed it to her with a puzzled look saying “I don’t understand this man, Mama.”. It turned out to be an obscene phone call.

Fortunately, our “vacation” ended two days later. Despite this rather unfortunate beginning, some thirty years later, we all still take a summer vacation together as a family every year!

Bill and Janet Parker

5279 Gaylord Place
San Diego, CA 92117

(858) 273-1743
wparker2@san.rr.com

[Capt_n_Ted]

Submitted by: Ted Mattson Word Count: 559

	       Palmer, Alaska 99645	

Driving in the Motherland

We rented the car in Barcelona and headed south to the Mediterranean. It was a vacation to visit the ?Motherland? of my wife Cindy?s and her twin sister Phyllis? parents. Brother in law Gary was doing the driving. The girls were sitting in the back calling out ?directives? at every opportunity. The picturesque little hillside village, houses glistening white in the afternoon sun was just too nice to pass up. ?Go up there!? came the directive from the rear.
Somewhere we must have missed a sign because we soon came to an old man sitting outside his doorstep who had to move his chair in order for us to pass. We should have stopped then but no, we kept going. Turning down the steep hill between houses that were now so close you couldn?t see the roof lines was another clue we should have paid more attention to but we let that one slide as well. BIG MISTAKE! The only way forward now was a hard left turn still going down an all too steep grade but it looked promising. Slowly Gary eased into the turn and then realized too late the car wasn?t going to fit. Another few inches and his door would have been pinched against the corner of one house while across the street the front bumper was about to mash into another. The street, we now realized, was a paved donkey and cart path. By now every window of every house had the curtains back with people staring at us from all angles. Gary tried backing up but stalled the car almost immediately. It was only his quick reflexes on the brakes that prevented us being wedged there permanently. The next time, with the engine screaming and slipping the clutch, we made a bit of progress and stalled again. Smoke was pouring out from under the hood and people were now streaming out of the houses with looks of disbelief on their faces–some excitedly talking on their cell phones. The crowd of onlookers swelled. The ?girls? by this time had seen enough of this picturesque hillside village and were slumping further and further towards the floor. Another few bursts of roaring engine and screaming clutch made so much smoke it was hard to see the houses and people were coughing but we finally made it back up the hill where we could finally turn around and retrace our path. The old man with the chair was looking our way and again before we could start driving his way got up picked up his chair and moved into his doorway. By now our resident Spaniards in the back seat had seen all of the Motherland?s backcountry they could handle and were flat on the floor. As we drove past the old man, he politely nodded his head in our direction but whatever he was thinking he kept to himself. Three years later, the relief of driving unscathed out of that little hillside hamlet has never left any of us.
The trip to the rental agency was anxious but the clutch held. The next renters would have to deal with that. We, on the other hand, carried our bags straight to the train station.

# # #

[AU_guy]

Years ago when I was a hippie there used to be annual treks called “the gathering of the tribes”. Three committed friends of mine and I decided it would be real far out to gather with the others. Not that we knew what it was but knew we would be welcomed. In order to haul all of our camping gear we decided to take my trusty VW bus. This fine beast had been professionally converted by the previous owner to a (heavier) camper model.
Did you know that 1958 VW’s had 36 hp?
We loaded up from our village of SLC, Utah and headed to Granby, Colorado which is about 400 miles away. Trying not to disrupt traffic with my speedy vehicle we decided to take Hwy 40 which seemed to be a quiet, less traveled direct route.
Did I say the VW had 36 hp?
Not far into the trip we notice the hitch hikers were very abundant and all we gathering to the same place as we were. After passing many fellow travelers someone comments that we should pick up a couple. We were driving a bus, right. What’s fifteen hundred pounds of human flesh and camping gear to a bus?
Did you know that Hwy 40 is a mountain road and Granby, CO is nearly 10,000 feet elevation? Neither did we.
This epic trip required 22 hours, non-stop! 400 miles? Do the math.
When we arrived we find out that the gathering does not allow modern vehicles (that shouldn’t apply to us), no electricity and we had to hike for 10 miles UP to the gathering at the lake. Six wonderful days of communing with nature requires some serious supplies so that was two trips for us, on foot. Do you know what kind of dust is stirred up by thousands of tired, overloaded sandal wearing hippies? What happens when it rains? Tents? Na, we are communing with nature, we build lean-tos with pine boughs. Yada, Yada!
No problem going home right? It has to be down hill! Did you know that a VW bus with 36 hp is about as streamlined as a brick? The trip still took 18 hours. We had a few mechanical problems though. Did you know that you can change drivers without stopping a VW bus?
I sold that bus soon after returning home.

[BertSheldon]

In 1968, I was driving my Austin Healey to school. With about 200 miles to go and in the middle of nowhere, I ran out of gas. This seemed strange since I had filled up recently and my gauge showed three quarters of a tank. A bit of checking revealed a faulty fuel pump. The Austin Healey 3000 had an electric fuel pump bolted to the gas tank. The fuel pump had an electro magnet that would suck in a plunger pumping the gas which at the same time would open a set of points stopping the current flowing to the magnet so a spring could push the plunger back reading it for another pump. The points were shot but the plunger was still working. I discovered that when I turned the ignition on, I could hear the pump click. Turning it off and back on produced another click. After a few times I could start the car but soon ran out of gas. Tracing the wire leading to the fuel pump back to where it attached to the ignition switch, I disconnected it and re-attached it to the panel light switch. When I turned my lights on I could hear the pump click. I turned the panel light switch off then back on. Click. Off on click, off on click. When the carburetor filled with gas I started the car and drove off, flipping the switch as I drove. It wasn?t long before I started getting blisters on my fingers so I stopped to regroup. I put Band-Aids on my blisters and added a handball glove. By resting my arm on the gear shift and keeping the switch between my index and middle fingers I could just hold the car at about 65 miles per hour. If I wanted to pass someone or stop pumping long enough to change gears then I needed to get my whole arm in motion. For 200 miles I drove flipping the switch the entire time. The next day I made some phone calls, located a new fuel pump and drove an additional 90 miles to pick it up.

Yours truly,
Bert Sheldon