Ever Had a Road Trip from Hell?

Maintenance/Repairs
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321

Here is a copy of a letter I wrote to U-Haul about their equipment and service. Naturally, in keeping with U-Haul’s tradition of crappy customer service, I never received a single word back from them.

March 19, 2004

Dear Mr. Shoen, President U-Haul Truck Rentals

Mr. Schoen, this is what your company did to me. What do you intend to do to make us happy? Please advise.

On Tuesday, March 9, 2004 my friends Steve and Vicki rented a 26 foot U-Haul truck and car trailer in preparation for a move to Phoenix. After fully loading the truck with household goods and furniture and the trailer with a Jeep Cherokee, also fully packed, I drove off in the truck to change clothes, pack a few things, and head out for Phoenix. The time was about 8 p.m., and the truck was fully loaded. Near my home, a red dash light turned on as I approached my off-ramp, indicating an ?aux brake? problem; the light was accompanied by a loud incessant steady ?beeeeeeeep? sound. I immediately pulled over, shut off the engine and made a quick inspection to see if there was a brake fluid leak or something else apparent. There was not. I climbed back in and restarted the engine, and the light and annoying sound were gone.

I left Portland around 11 p.m. and headed south on I-5. I reached the outskirts of Medford before I pulled over for some rest. As soon as I restarted the truck, the same warning light turned on and the sound began again. I called information on my cell phone and was advised that there was a U-Haul service center in Medford and I took the truck in to check on the problem. It was around 8 a.m. on Wednesday.

The mechanic seemed very knowledgeable and proceeded to make the necessary repairs, commenting on how some one else had attempted a similar repair and had used a bolt instead of the correct pin. He took about 2 hours and completed all the necessary repairs to prevent the light and annoying sound from returning, including resetting the ?computer? box inside the truck cab. He stated that the problem was fixed and wished me continued good luck on my journey. Off I went.

About 50 miles later, in the middle of the Shasta forest, the light and sound returned. I pulled off, turned off the motor, waited a few minutes, and restarted the engine. The light and sound went away and I continued on my way, cursing my luck and thinking of some less than friendly things to say to U-Haul at the end of my journey. Little did I know that the problem would re-occur and persist the entire length of my trip, requiring me to pull over every 45 ? 60 minutes to turn off the annoying sound and to keep from going out of my mind for all 1,356 miles of my trip. In other words, I had to pull over to reset the alarm problem about 20 more times during the trip. Gee, what fun. If the Chinese ever drove one of your trucks with a similar problem, I am sure the standard torture for all dissidents would be to drive one of your trucks for 24 hours. When their drive was over, without further persuasion, they would all confess to stealing the Lindbergh baby, confess to being on the grassy knoll in Dallas, and confess to being a spy for the Yankee imperialists. It was a miserable experience. The only redeeming quality of this particular truck was that the radio volume was louder than the screeching alarm sound. But what is a little aural nerve damage and deafness for a customer; they usually recover. However, the saga continues.

While traversing I-10 between Indio and Blythe, my ?adventure in moving? with a U-Haul truck stepped into overdrive. The flat fan belt broke about 1 p.m., leaving me with no choice but to either unload about 15,000 pounds of household items, unhitch a trailer carrying a Jeep Cherokee, and push the truck to a repair shop or take my chances and call U-Haul for some help. Prior experience with U-Haul made it a 50 / 50 proposition. I opted to try U-Haul again.

I called their 800 help line. They asked where I was and I advised them of the recent rest area I had passed. Not good enough. They suggested I walk to the nearest milepost and walk back, call them again, and tell them where I was. I suggested to them that since the temperature was about 80 degrees and I suffered from an arthritic knee and can?t walk very far that they look on a map and figure out where I was based on the rest area I had recently passed. They said they couldn?t do that, so off I went to locate a mile marker for them. After about 30 minutes in one direction, I turned around and headed back to my truck, hoping that banditos had not run off with my stuff. I contacted U-Haul again and suggested that they call their Indio rental center and tell them where I was and maybe they could locate the rest area and my location. Nope. They needed me to positively identify my location before they could even think about where to call to send help. I asked for a supervisor and low and behold, someone with a brain got on the phone and said they would call the Indio center and get help on the way.

Within one hour, I was called by the Indio service center and ?Don? advised that help was on the way. Was help on the way??? Nope. After about one hour, the driver sent to my aid called and said that I was outside their service area and I was closer to Blythe. Since I had little idea where I had been, let alone how close I was to the next place, I said, ?Ok, now what?? He advised me to call U-Haul again and tell them to call the Blythe center for help.

Which I did. It is now about 4 p.m., and my imagination is beginning to get the best of me. I am sure that the coyotes are beginning their ?fat-Italian-food-for-dinner dance? around my truck. Not to mention the tarantulas, scorpions, and other assorted demons of death that lurk along the highway waiting for creaky U-Haul trucks to break down and disgorge their unwitting passengers for the desert banquet du jour.

The Blythe center called back and advised me that they could not locate a new fan belt since all the parts stores were closed in Blythe ? an unusual occurrence, to be sure ? by 4 p.m. on a Thursday. So they said they would just tow the truck with the trailer to Blythe and fix it in the morning. There was no suggestion that U-Haul would pay for my hotel / motel in Blythe, assuming that they weren?t closed, like ?all the auto parts stores? were, according to the Blythe guy. I tactfully suggested to the caller that 4 p.m. was a little early for the auto parts stores to close and that maybe he should call U-Haul again, before he left for his Mensa meeting. He said he couldn?t do that and that I would have to do that.

Which I did. U-Haul said that they had to look into the situation and seemed unconcerned that it was getting darker by the hour and the varmints were getting hungrier by the minute. I began to wish I was a bony pilgrim left over from the 1846 Donner party rather than a fat Italian with plenty to go around. Was help on the way??? Nope.

After about 15 minutes, U-Haul called me back and said that they were going to tow my truck and trailer all the way to Phoenix, about 250 miles. Once again, I tactfully suggested to them that perhaps they could find a mechanic and send one out since it would be cheaper and quicker than a tow. U-Haul said they would call me back.

Darker and darker it got. Finally, about 6 p.m., U-Haul called and said they were sending out a mechanic and he would contact me directly. Was help on the way??? YES. My joy knew no bounds as I was going to be saved. The desert would not claim me as another victim.

A fine mechanic, Larry, called me from C & S Tires, about 5 minutes later, asked where I was, and I gave him the same directions I had given at least five other people. He said he knew exactly where I was and would be out in about an hour and a half, since he had to travel from Quartzsite. He said that he needed to stop in Blythe and pick up the fan belt (evidently unaware that they all closed by 4 p.m.) I asked if he could work in the dark and he assured me that he could and not to worry. I didn?t worry in the least until he mentioned that I was next to the state prison. Now I worried.

My thoughts went to all the prison movies I had seen in which the guards are brutal to the prisoners so that when the prisoners finally escape, they hate the guards and kill them. Once again, my fears returned ? forget about the coyotes, scorpions, lizards, big foots, rattlesnakes, and tarantulas. I was worried about a guy named Bubba, who had been tormented by a fat Italian bully who looked like me. I closed the doors and windows, began sweating like a pig, and kept an outlook for the searchlights that would signify a prison break. I was sure that if Larry didn?t arrive soon, I would become the sexual satisfaction for a deprived prisoner who would have his way with me and leave me for the coyotes, scorpions, and the rest of the desert no-goods.

But to my everlasting joy, in my side mirror, I saw salvation from Bubba, coyotes, and all the evil that lurks in the desert night. I saw a small white pick-up with a flashing yellow light atop pulling over in front of me. Not only did Larry show up on time, as promised, but he also showed up with a jug of cool water. He assured me that since he was slightly fatter than I was and probably couldn?t run as fast, he would be the first to go if the coyotes attacked. My heart rate slowed to normal, my thirst was quenched, and my truck got fixed. In about 90 minutes (9 p.m. and about 8 hours after my first call to U-Haul), Larry had me on my way. He followed me about 10 miles to make sure I wouldn?t get into any more trouble and to make sure the coyotes weren?t following me. He is a good man.

In summary, my trip to Phoenix took about 15 hours longer than it should have, due to truck problems. The truck broke down twice. I used up about 48 minutes of cell phone time trying to resolve my dilemma. Moreover, the charges from the local rental facility were about $150 more than Vicki was quoted.

Sincerely,

Dennis Honse
Portland, Oregon

322

Here I am again. Did so editing. Final draft! Promise!!
Mr. Not Ted & The Girls
Recounted by-Dr. Nancy Ronne

Hi,
I am a psychoanalyst/SEX therapist. Now that I?ve gotten your attention?.It was the summer of 1999. My daughter, Margo, had decided to spend the first half of her junior year in St. Petersburg Russia. She was a Russian literature and language major at Reed College in Portland Oregon. Margo was intent on driving her 1967 Chevy Chevelle from Portland to Los Angeles so that she would have a car waiting for her when she returned to Los Angeles. Now I?m not a mechanic (although my father taught Hi School auto shop) but I?m scientifically minded and I know a bit about friction, metal fatigue , and the unreliability of older autos especially a THIRTY-TWO year no-power anything, well used car. I tried to dissuade her?it was a no go. Being the good, worried mother that I am, I was not going to let her drive those 962 miles by herself. I purchased a one way ticket (LA to Portland). I flew United because in those days you would get free peanuts with your beverage of choice. It was a Friday in late July. I feeling trepidations about the drive but looking forward to spending some good road trip time with Margo. We made sure all the requisite fluids were topped off, the gas tank full. We took off mid-morning on Sat. About two hours into the trip we stopped and ate the picnic lunch Margo had made?.chicken pesto sandwiches, fresh peaches and ORGANIC apple juice from a local grower.
It was late afternoon when we drove through Dunsmuir California. Dunsmuir (pop. 2000) is about 300 miles north of Portland and 11 north of Mt. Shasta. You might remember hearing about Dunsmuir?.known for its pure, fresh snow runoff water. Unfortunately On the night of July 14, 1991, a derailment of a railroad car resulted in the release of approximately 19,500 gallons of biocide. The biocide killed every living thing in the river for a distance of some 38 miles. This was one of the most severe toxic spills in U.S. history. But I digress
We were cruising on the highway, about 60 mph, with the magnificent snow capped Mt. Shasta in the rear view mirror, suddenly there was a loud noise (metal on metal) followed by thump thump thump. We looked at each other. Margo had a terrified look on her face. She mumbled ?that doesn?t sound good?
No it didn?t. I pulled the car onto the shoulder. Margo started to cry. It took all my restraint to not say ?I told you this wasn?t a good idea? I said ?someday we?ll be laughing about this, but now you?ve got to stop crying, we?ve got to deal with this.? Seemingly out of the blue a tow truck pulled up beside us and the oh-so-dead Chevelle. Out of the cab lumbered guy who like too much like someone from the movie Deliverance . He sauntered up to us and queered ?Problems?? I explained the best I could. Margo was trying not to cry. ?Well? he announced as he hooked up the Chevelle to his tow cable ?I?ll tow your car to Fred?s station. Boy you?re lucky I?m not Ted Bundy.? We reluctantly climbed into the truck?s cab. Margo held back nudging me to sit in the middle next to icky ?not Ted Bundy?. Mr. Not Ted told us about how crowded the town was and wasn?t sure if there were any rooms available. In-between a detailed accounting of the motels and their no vacancy sign, he would mumble something about ?lucky? ?not Ted Bundy? ?two woman alone? He said that if we couldn?t find a room we could ?bunk down? at his house! We would rather have hiked back to the Chevelle and slept in it before we would bunk down at Mr. Not Ted?s place.
Luckily for us there was one room left at the Dunsmuir Inn?..Dunsmuir yes, Inn no. It was a funky (and not in a charming way) beaten down motel under construction. The drive way and walk ways were chopped up and large broken pieces of concrete were unceremoniously scattered about. It was around 11pm before we got settled in our room. We were starving?.those pesto chicken sandwiches were but a faint memory. The friendly kitchen flunky said he would make us something to eat. I opted for the French dip sandwich, Margo got pancakes. The food arrived at our room. Margo?s pancakes were fluffy and steaming hot. My French dip was DOA. Margo later told me to always order pancakes because it is the one thing that has to be made fresh. Wow I guess that $80k we spent on her education at Reed really did pay off.
As Margo was drifting off to sleep she told me that the back door to our room wouldn?t close because of the construction and general state of the place. She fell asleep and I was suddenly wide awake. I went around pushing chairs under the door knobs, locking windows and listening for sounds of Mr. Not Ted and his posse breaking in and killing us on the spot!. The last thing I remember was seeing the sun glinting off Mr. Shasta.
Sunday late morning we got up and walked over to Fred?s service station. We introduced ourselves to Fred and his two weather worn cronies. We had interrupted their intense game of Gin Rummy. These guys were familiar to me. I grew up in the San Fernando Valley in the late 40?s when vast alfalfa fields, grove after grove of orange trees, and acres of tomatoes covered the landscape. The Basque shepherd and his Australian Shepherd guided his flock through town to graze on the alfalfa fields. Growing up we hung out at Gus?s Gas Station?.bought candy from the glass unlocked cupboard and pulled cokes out of the big red Coke container filled with chunks of ice and Cokes in glass bottles (5cents). There were always numerous guys hoisting their cars on the lifts to fix the transmission or just change the oil. The guys at Fred reminded me of the guys who hung out with Gus. Fred informed us that we had blown a gasket and he would have to send away from some parts. I knew ?blown gasket? was bad.
For the next two days Margo and I walked around the town (3 blocks long) looking at the stores that contained nothing you needed ?..souvenirs, knick knacks, miniature models of Mr. Shasta, a smiley face refrigerator magnate, wooden signs reading sayings like ?This is the first day of the rest of your life?, a three minute egg timer painted in day-glow colors… We ate, played Hearts, laughed, and walked around in the 95 degree heat.
It was Tuesday and we couldn?t wait any longer. We bought two tickets on the Coast Starlight train (#610) that was heading south, leaving Dunsmuir at 12:35am on Wednesday, arriving Los Angeles? Union Station at 9pm?.a 21 hour train ride. We walked back to Fred?s. I approached one of the ?guys?-Joe. I asked Joe if (once the Chevelle was fixed) he would be willing to drive it back to Portland. He said sure. I gave him the spare keys, $200 cash and directions to Margo?s apartment. I had no doubt that Fred would do what he had promised.
At midnight we boarded the train. A week later Margo took off for four months in St. Petersburg. When Margo returned to Portland she found her Chevelle, parked right in front of her apartment and the keys in her mailbox.

323 
 Dear Tom and Ray,
 The road trip in this story is a short one, but what it lacks in length, it makes up in terror. When my husband was young, he was living outside Springfield, Mass., and making frequent road trips into Boston (some 90 miles away, for those unfamiliar with the area), where he played in a band.  He began getting a lot of flat tires- possibly due to a bad alignment (he was too lazy to get it checked), possibly due to getting cheaper and cheaper tires to replace the flat ones. As time went on, he went from carefully tightening all the lug nuts to just slapping the tires on as fast as possible. On the day of the fateful trip, he got into Boston, where one of his band members mentioned that there was a strange noise coming from the car.  My husband had noticed this noise as well, and decided maybe it was time to check it out- when he got back to Springfield.  They rehearsed, he took off, down the Mass Pike, exiting onto I-91 south, barreling through lovely downtown Springfield, in the far left lane, on the bridge going over the downtown area, doing about 60. 
  This is when the left rear tire came off.
  Somehow, my husband got the car stopped in the infinitesimal amount of space between the left lane and the guard rail, with maybe a foot to spare between his car and said guard rail, without killing himself or anyone else.  As he's sitting in the driver's seat, thanking God that he's still alive, even more dumbfounded than when he started out, he sees something in his side view mirror.  It was the tire.  It was still going about 50 miles an hour, in a straight line along the guard rail, and it had just enough space between my husband's car and the guard rail to zoom past him, on its way to Connecticut.  Though my husband later looked for it, it was never seen again.
324

My husband and I made a trip from Houston to Spokane, WA. Everything went okay on the way up. My husband’s mother had moved to a nursing facility and we went up there to pick up some furniture from her. We were driving a VW van (I can’t remember the year but it wasn’t very old.) We had the middle seat out and had a roll top desk in there plus a bunch of stuff in the back. This van had the engine in the back. Going into the mountains in Montana the engine was kind of missing, but that cleared up on it own. I was driving as we were coming into Denver on the interstate. There were lots on lanes and lots of traffic going really fast. I was looking for the Loop and was white knuckling it all the way. Finally I found the exit for the Loop and happened to look down at the dashboard and the temperature light was on. I pulled over right where the interstate and the Loop intersected, which was a very busy place. My husband had to unload all of that furniture from the back to put some water into the radiator. Then we loaded it all back up and continued on. We had to do this several times. When we got to this small town, Cameron, Texas, he put water in it and it just came running right back out. It was in the evening and there was no place to get it fixed. Somehow we found a guy to tow us about 50 miles to College Station (home of Texas A & M.) My son lives there. He met us at the VW repair place in his pickup and we loaded all the furniture into his pickup. We had just gotten it loaded when it started pouring down rain. Needless to say, we didn’t have a tarp. They worked on the car for 2 days and said they “kind of” had it fixed but not to drive to fast on our way back to Houston. We took it to our regular mechanic and practically the next time we drove it, it broke down again going to my grandson’s birthday party. After that we sold it, as is.
Frances Wilson

325

Dear Tom & Ray:

Our trip from hell happened when our dear friends Dick & June, decided to move from Alamosa, Colorado to Fort Davis, Texas. Like good, loyal, friends, we offered to help them move. We packed up a 5 ton U-haul, which Dick drove, Daisy, their mixed breed dog, rode shotgun. June followed in their packed-to-the-rim, Toyota pickup, with their other two monster, Great Piranesi, dogs?Heidi and Gena. Gene & I followed in our Toyota pickup with misc. items and our dog, Decker. Four dogs, four people, it was a disaster waiting to happen.

Twenty miles from Clines Corners, the U-haul started to sputter and crawl. Reaching Clines Corners would make things easy. It was slow going but we made it. We sat and had lunch while the gas station mechanic fixed the U-haul— A couple of hours delay, but no problem!

As the day wore on, it got hotter and hotter, it was time for dinner and we communicated by cell phone that we?d stop in Roswell, New Mexico. After we rolled the windows down and found shade for the dogs to park under, we had a decent dinner. We came out of the restaurant only to find Gena had an EXPLOSIVE episode of diarrhea on the front seat of June?s Toyota! The guys didn?t seem too upset, as they watched June & I clean it up from a distance. I felt so bad for my friend June, who would now have to ride in a god-awful smelling car.

Fifty miles outside of Roswell, I called June to see how she was doing. A voice answered ?Front Desk?. It was then we realized June had left her cell phone at the restaurant in Roswell. We flashed our lights and pulled over, with Dick and June following our lead. As June got out of her truck, Heidi bolted from the front seat and headed straight to the highway. As the rest of us panicked, Gene ran after the dog to prevent an accident.

It was like the coyote in the Road Runner Cartoon, Gene seemed to suddenly jump and float on air as he ran after Heidi. He was still screaming ?snake!? when he was pulling Heidi back by her collar to the truck. Trying to gather our wits and figure out what to do next, we decided we?d wait for June to drive back to the restaurant, pick up her phone and catch back up to us. June said the look on the cashier’s face was priceless when she walked in, sweaty and smelling like dog poop to pick up her phone.

Mary in Alamosa, Colorado

326

This was October 3 years ago. Our destination was Bainbridge Island, WA take a ferry to Seattle and see Dave Mathews Band open for the Rolling Stones. We were taking our 1990 motor home. We left our house in the morning from Atascadeo, CA (central CA) with our cat Harvey, we had had for about 4 months. We got on the highway and right away the motor home started sputtering, my husband pulled off as soon as he could, shut it down and it restated right up. We headed down the road, stopped for coffee and it started right up again. I suggested my husband call the mechanic just to be sure, he had taken it it before the trip and spent almost $400 on service. He called the mechanic suggested we pull over and try restarting again, we went about 20 miles before the rest stop, he tried it again and it would not start, we asked people at the rest stop if the would jump state us they all said NO. There was no cell phone service, then we had to ask for change for the phone, they did help us with that. He called the mechanic he suggest we call Auto Club, they came out tried to jump start it , it would not jump. They towed us back to Atascadero, about 40 miles out, Harvey had to be towed with the motor home. As it turned out we need an alternator $250 later we were back on the road. We got to highway 5 and were heading north about 5:00 pm we had a front tire blow out, he pulled into the very skinny emergency lane with the blowout on the curb, trying to get out of the lane, it was very scary the cars were going to fast. Another call to Auto Club, they fixed the tire told us we had to get a new tire the spare was not in great shape. There was an RV park the next exit, as we pulled in a lady told us our right headlight was out. The next morning we went to the tire store, we needed two new tires on the front, you can’t replace just one. They also informed us that all the tires were under rated for the size of the motor home, we couldn’t spend the money on all six tires. The front were $300. We head back up highway 5 to Eugene, OR made it there before dark, still had a bad headlight. My husband discovered that all the wires from the tire shrapnel were ripped out from the headlight. We were headed the next day to Salem, OR we found an auto parts store he got what we needed to fix the head light. I went to the mall, as he was fixing the head light the radiator started spewing and he realized the tire shrapnel knocked a hole in the radiator, another call to the mechanic. He took care of that too. We headed out again we made it to Tolken, WA to a small RV park, then we discovered the refrig was not working, we had to throw out all the perishable, and use the freezer as an ice chest. We also discovered when we plug in there was an electrical smell, like it was burning. We still headed north the next day to Ocean Shores, WA. It was a beautiful camp ground, Harvey was enjoying watching the chick-monks and the small birds. When we went to leave from there, my husband opened the door and Harvey bolted. He just disappeared with out a trace, we waited and looked for him for 3 days, we missed the concert, I just wanted to go home. We made the decision to go home and were heading south on highway 101, we saw a huge newer motor home pass us going north, we came around the bend and saw a tree fall across the highway. We were the fist vehicle to come up to it. We just looked at each other and said lets get home. We made it the next day. We were so grateful we made it home on one piece. We have not taken a trip in the motor home since. We only recently got it fixed. We are talking of a short trip local trip at this time. Thanks for letting me share.

327

I was driving my 1975 Dodge Colt to Santa Barbara to put my newly minted college degree to work. A month or two earlier I had picked up the dull little car from my sister, who had kept it for me for the previous two years, while I was living in New York City.

Now it was late July. I packed it with my most valuable possessions and set out. The first leg of the trip, to Chicago, went smoothly. I was making good time, helped by the fact that I slept in the car to save money and keep my stuff secure. All went well until the very early morning, east of Denver, when the car began sputtering. Fortunately I was near an exit to an actual town, so I limped off the road and slept until the local mechanic appeared in his garage.

The news he had for me was disturbing but it seemed like it could have been worse: There was no fuel filter on the car. That seemed odd until I recalled that my sister must have had the car serviced at some point in the previous two years, probably by the same mechanic who notoriously had once taken something like a year to repair her own Honda Civic. It happens that the shop was in your fair city, but I?m giving you the benefit of the doubt that you weren?t the guys who wrecked my engine.

The Colorado guy added a fuel filter and fiddled with the car enough that I could drive it away. Back on the road I made it without incident to Denver. I thought about pulling into a Dodge dealer for a more thorough checkup, but I was concerned about losing time and potentially having to spend the night there. As I said, my car was packed with almost everything I owned, and the job I was going to California was not exactly going to make me rich. So instead I started climbing the pass up into the Rockies, where the sputtering of course resumed.

The car sputtered but it didn?t die. Every few miles I pulled over, let it sit, hoped it was just the altitude, and then started again up the mountains. I drove that way all through the night. Every 30 minutes I?d stop, sometimes just sit there, sometimes open the hood and fiddle with things. But inevitably the car would start and I?d go a little further.

All in all I must have lost a day?s worth of driving, though most of that trip remains a stressed-out blur. I have vague images of winding through dark little mountain towns and stopping at mini marts for gas and beverages. But it comes back into focus again with the last leg, through Los Angeles. The car had sputtered and died and restarted all the way through the desert, but at least it was easy to pull off and wait a few minutes for it to restart. In LA there was a record heat wave, and unforgiving drivers, and rush hour traffic. I started to worry about overheating on top of the other woe. The worst moments came as I was heading north on a packed Hollywood Freeway, veering off onto the shoulder every few miles so the engine temperature could fall and the car would not die in a traffic lane.

Miraculously, I limped into Santa Barbara. The mechanic there wound up welding a crack in the cylinder head (and emptying my bank account) all because some hippie mechanic back in Cambridge forgot to replace the fuel filter. Had Car Talk been national at the time, I might have called in to ask what chain of events, if any, a missing fuel filter could cause that would lead to a cracked cylinder.

Ironically, the California guy made a similar, if less catastrophic, contribution that I only discovered when I drove the car back east a few years later. It was the dead of winter, so I took the southern route out of California. The car ran fine ? pretty impressive given its history – but as I headed up north from Texas it got colder and colder inside, no matter how high I turned the heat. It was frigid all the way through Illinois to Chicago, and that?s a long state. Turns out he had removed the thermostat, so almost no heat was getting into the car. The Colt actually limped back to Massachusetts before being permanently retired in 1984.

328

After being awarded a sizeable amount of money from a long sordid court case in New York City, I decided it was time to do 3 things: bond with my eldest sister, bring my mother and her only sister back together again and see PARIS (France, not Texas).

So I booked the trip for all of us for the first 10 days in May (wasn’t there a war someplace duing that time?)

I crafted a wonderful itinerary including Monet’s garden, wineries, Mont St. Michel on the Britanny coast - THE WORKS!

Turns out everyone overpacked so no one could get on the plane without leaving stuff behind. Then, when we got to Paris, my mother was upset that there wasn’t an outdoor pool in the hotel (we were next door to Notre Damn (I mean Dame).

I rented a car, a tiny car for our 3 day road trip to Givery, the country inns, antique hunting, Brittany. It had a stick shift, nothing else was availible. NO ONE KNEW HOW TO DRIVE IT.

We all took turns and it was so bad we all got car sick and the arguments about every past negative thing that had never been aired got raked over the coals.

By the time we were at Moet’s garden no one was speaking and we all got drunk at the hostel and the next morning in the jerking car everyone took thier turn throwing up. We left a trail of puke 75 miles long.

Finally things got patched up and the coast of Brittany was heaven. Except during a lunch on the patio of a scenic cafe I found out what I had eaten when I looked up the words in a French dictionary.

Got in the car and this time I didn’t open the window or the car door fast enough.

A few days later handing the car back in Paris I was charged a hefty fee for the smell which still lingered. I tried to convince them it was brie but no one was buying that story.

Viva la France!

Joyce Faiola
humorist/writer

JLFaiola@juno.com

329

It was the summer of 1970. The glow of the ?Summer of Love? still lingered. We were three high-school buddies heading for college and work in the fall. We were going to drive a 1957 Mercedes 220S Sedan from Washington D.C. to UC San Diego via a free music festival in Canada, hippie communes in Northern California, and Haight-Ashbury. What could possibly go wrong? [see attached photo]

Lots. The car was great; a classy, comfortable old tank with a 6 cylinder overhead-cam engine, dual down-draft Solex carburetors, and a 4 speed shift on the column. It was good for at least 117 mph on the Interstate in South Dakota, just before one of the rear tires blew out–but I?m getting ahead of the story.

The first of our misadventures happened at the outset. Our first destination was going to be really far out; a huge free music festival over the 4th of July weekend in the comfortably lenient environs of Toronto, Canada. We had just picked up the last member of our trio after work when I rear-ended a guy in a Ford Maverick on the Interstate late that night. This jerk had been drinking and decided to hit the brakes, come to a stop in the left hand lane in order to make an illegal u-turn. Wham! Bummer! It was a good thing we were driving a tank. We suffered a mangled left front bumper and fender. In contrast, the Maverick?s frame was bent and the body wrinkled right above the rear doors. I was at fault of course and there was no excuse. Fortunately, the other driver had no more interest in reporting this than we did and we limped back home in embarrassment.

There were no funds for a body shop or even new parts, even if they could have been located. But there was a junk yard with the parts we needed still on the frame–the type of place that, back then would let you remove them yourself for a song. So on a Saturday before the 4th of July, we were out there sweating and cursing in 100 degree heat trying to unbolt the fender. After several hours we knew we were licked; the blind bolts were just spinning, and we could not get a wrench on the other end. We swallowed our pride and paid the junk-yard guy a few bucks to burn off the bolts with a few miraculous puffs of oxygen from his oxy-acetylene torch. We spent the next two days rebuilding the car, helped along by my Dad, who was a talented mechanic, and owner of a couple of Benzes of similar vintage. I heard later he had applied a few judicious whacks from a sledgehammer to the front of the frame. We applied some paint that roughly approximated the grayish green original color and 3 days after our intended departure date we were heading North, hoping to catch the end of the festival. We got there too late–the last of the hippie tribe was drifting off as we arrived. Oh well.

While I was off on a side trip hitchhiking to the University of Chicago to apply for admission, Paul and Linc missed their ferry connection across Lake Huron and ended up driving all the way around the Lake on the 2-lane northern route and then down through Wisconsin in the middle of the night. Why they thought that would be the better route is a mystery lost in the psychedelic twilight zone.

Somewhere west of Madison Wisconsin we misplaced the gas cap. Again, where in the hell would we get a gas cap for a 1957 Mercedes Benz in the Midwest? This was back before the days when Benzes were commonplace. We did however have a fresh lemon amongst our provisions, which turned out to plug the filler hole nicely. From then on, it was a pleasure to pull into the full-service lane at gas stations and wait for the inevitable wisecracks from the attendants.

Further adventures ensued; various romances and one night stands; hanging out with bikers in Wyoming, and flinging Frisbees from the top of a 10,000 foot spire in Idaho. And that high-speed blow-out? I sometimes think I have a guardian angel. My buddies were sleeping in the heat of the day. I had a nearly empty Interstate stretched out across South Dakota in front of me. The car easily accelerated through 100 mph, then higher, and a little higher yet. Cool. Or not. The pavement temperature was probably over 100 degrees. After a spell at that speed I decided to pull into the next rest area. As I slowed down below 30 mph, the left rear tire collapsed. Why it didn?t blow at speed I?ll never know, and I?ve never driven that fast again.

Our most serious automotive challenge occurred in the gorgeous, mountainous, and sparsely populated terrain between Missoula and Spokane. The fuel pump quit on a long uphill grade about 60 miles east of Spokane, Washington, where a cousin awaited us in his gypsy school bus. This was back before the day of ubiquitous credit cards or next day delivery of odd bits for any known make and model. Those bikers in Wyoming had been camped out for several weeks waiting for some bearings they needed to rebuild a transmission. I doubt we had the funds on us at that point to pay for a long tow. However, I don?t remember that we even seriously considered that option. We studied the map and formed a rudimentary plan. There were really only one or two major grades ahead of us, and after that we thought we could coast downhill the all the way into Spokane.

We had a sturdy rope in our capacious trunk (which also held the remains of a large inflatable dome we had been using as our home away from home–but that?s another story). We stuck out our thumbs, and remarkably, some helpful soul agreed to tow three long-hairs and their 4000 pound tank to the top of the grade. As we coasted down the other side, I tried the starter, just out of curiosity and the engine started! Groovy! We floored it up the start of the next grade and the engine promptly died again. Bummer! We stuck out our thumbs again, and our luck held. Another Good Samaritan towed us nearly 8 miles to the top of the last pass east of Spokane. Coasting down, the engine started once more and we drove gingerly into the outskirts of Spokane, where it died again. The fuel pump, a rudimentary mechanical affair bolted to the side of the engine, was now clearly fried. The diaphragm only had enough life left to pump fuel into the carburetor with the gas tank was uphill.

Consulting the Yellow Pages, we found a junk yard four or five miles away. What were the chances that it would have any old Benzes, let alone a 220? In spite of the odds, we set out, by means of a peculiar fact. In contemplating the fuel pump, we noticed it had a little lever on one side; some sort of auxiliary priming pump. We found that if we pumped this lever hard about 20 times we could fill the carburetor bowls, and drive about 3 or 4 blocks until the engine died. I drove and every few blocks Linc would jump out, pop the hood, pump up the carbs, jump in and away we would go. To our amazement, the yard had a Mercedes with a fuel pump in it that looked like an exact replacement. Ten bucks, two bolts, swap the fuel lines, prime the carburetors and, and crank the engine. Vroom! Far out! For good measure, we copped a gas cap too. Life was good and groovy again.

We had no further mechanical misadventures on that particular trip, though Trips of another sort were a different story. Linc drove that car for another 3 years or so before he threw a rod after one too many drag races. That was damage that couldn?t be repaired via a quick trip to junk yard. He then acquired a Ford Pinto of unusual ancestry which, it turned out, was our vehicle for a return trip of similar scale and adventure several years later.

330

Its 1993, I?m 25 and living in Kailua-Kona Hawaii. Nights I work as a Sommelier (wine stewart) at one of the finest resorts in Hawaii. I spend my evenings making tons of money dispensing, and drinking (that is my job as a sommelier after all) some of the finest wines to the who?s who of the rich and famous. I spend my days catching blue marlin on my dads fishing boat, surfing or playing beach volleyball with my brother. I have an oceanfront condo, brand new red Jeep Wrangler and motorcycle.

Needless to say everything in my life is nearly perfect. The only thing missing is a women to share it with. Do I need to say that this is the point where things get interesting?

My brother introduces us. She is here visiting her mom from Boulder Colorado and absolutely stunning. I find out later that she was the runner up in the Miss Hawaii Pageant. Did I also mention that she is a trust fund baby and has never worked a day in her life? In retrospect I should have known she would be trouble, not that I have anything against rich beautiful women.

Months go by with us flying back and forth visits. Eventually she talks me into leaving my wonderful life in Kona for what she promises will be a long fulfilling life together in Boulder.

Fast forward 1 year, my now ex-fianc? is back with her ex-husband, I am unemployed and penniless. Everything I own in the world is in the back of my 1974 Volkswagen Rabbit ready for the 22 hour drive to California where I plan to restart my life.

The faithful trip begins. I back out of the driveway into the street and shift into first gear. As I let out the clutch I hear a loud metallic clunk and the engine redlines. I get out of the car and see one end of my drive shaft hanging down from the transmission. I walk next door to a friend?s house to see if I can borrow some tools. Larry opens the door and says ?dude you?ve got to come see this. Your ex is on TV.? I walk into his family room and sure enough there she is. I say just long enough to see her win a bikini contest during a surfing contest in Hawaii. Now it?s really time for me to hit the road.

We get the car running and I head west. Once on the freeway I quickly realize that my 22 hour trip is going to take considerably longer. With all the weight in my little car I can barely hit 50 on the freeway. I figure out pretty soon that if I draft very closely behind a semi that I can get it up to about 65. However, Every time we go up any kind of a hill I loose my draft partner and have to wait for the next one.

About half way across Nevada my engine conks out. I pull over to the side of the road watching my drafting buddy disappear into the horizon. At this point it hits me, I am homeless, jobless, and broke with every worldly possession in the back of my broken down car quite literally in the middle of nowhere. At this point I tell myself not to panic. It?s about 115 degrees outside; I have half a can of warm soda and $40 in my wallet. I kept telling myself, ?just remember, today is the first day of your new life?. So I start walking.

Fortunately I get a ride pretty quick to the next town. There is no mechanic but there is a payphone. So I call the only person I know west of Colorado, my best friend Jeff in California. After telling him my story the first thing he says is ?wait there I will come pick you up?. That?s about an 8 hour drive one way. Now you see why he?s my best friend. I tell him that?s ridiculous and that we should try and fix the car first. He suggests that?s it vapor lock due to the heat and it will start after the motor cools. Hard to test with my car 30 miles to the east. We come up with a plan. I will hitch it back to the car and try and start it. If it doesn?t work then I will hitch it back to the phone booth and we will come up with a new plan. So off I go.

I insert the key into the ignition with all my fingers and toes crossed. It fires up instantly purring like a kitten. I make it back to the phone and call Jeff with the news. He suggests that we meet up in Reno and have a nice dinner, do a little gambling and stay in an air conditioned hotel for the night. I tell hit that that sounds great but by the time I get there I will only have about $20 left. He says ?don?t worry about it, I will pay for it and give you a couple hundred bucks to gamble with and you can pay me back when you make your first million?. A cool room and a good meal sounded awfully good at that point.

Several more drafting partners later and I?m in Reno with my friend eating rack of lamb. As it turned out I was able to pay him back sooner than I had expected. We hit an amazing streak at the craps table and walked away with a couple grand each.

That really was the first day of the beginning of a great life. I now own my own successful business and am married with a wonderful family. Funny how things work out in the end.

331

An MGB, a wedding, and the kindness of strangers
It was the mid-90s and my youngest cousin was getting married in a small East Texas town about 150 miles away. I had just had my 1979 MGB tuned up; had new tires all around; and it was the perfect spring weather for a road trip in the convertible! No matter how much I loved the car, my husband, mother and kids were all skeptical about me making the journey alone, so it was agreed that my son (also a 1979 model) would ride with me. He didn’t want to …and I didn’t want him to. He, his sister, and I agreed that they would ride down with another friend, giving me a pleasant, relaxing 3 hours alone in my beloved MGB.
Despite an invasion of ‘love bugs’ that splatted what looked like blood all over my windshield for about 20 miles, it was a pleasant, uneventful trip. I got checked into the small motel, changed and headed to the wedding. It was a beautiful, garden wedding that came off without a hitch (they were ‘unhitched’ a few years later, but the wedding WAS beautiful!).
After the wedding I went back to the motel and changed into more comfortable clothes for the party which would follow at my cousin’s homeplace. My kids changed their clothes in the hotel room, my son leaving his baggage and my daughter taking hers so that she could go home with her friend that night, and they headed out for the party. I decided to be a bit more leisurly and relax before getting on the road again for the 15 mile drive.
Leaving the motel, I putted along the country highway for about a mile, and then my beautiful little car died …in the dusk …in the middle of the highway …in the middle of nowhere. I coasted to the side of the road, got out, opened the hood, and began to curse. It wasn’t as much about the fact that the car broke as it was that the rest of the family had been right!
Thank heavens for the innate kindness and helpfulness of Texans. I hadn’t been on the side of the road 5 minutes when a pickup pulled over behind me and two ‘good ole boys’ got out to help. Seems like the wire that connected the gas pedal to the fuel pump had broken. They got me turned around in the highway and pushed me back to town to the motel (most of the time actually pushing the car since the truck’s bumper was a LOT higher than the back of my car!)
The party was out of the question. When my son was dropped back off at the hotel, he was MORTIFIED that the car was broken down. WHAT WERE WE GOING TO DO???
The next morning, a Sunday, I got up bright and early and walked about a block to the auto parts store, not really expecting it to be open. But it was. And not expecting that they would have the cable. And they didn’t! BUT the clerks in the store said the local postman had an old MG in his garage, and they gave him a call and asked if his MG was running. Nope. And he said he didn’t need a cable on a car that didn’t run. So he brought it over to the motel. And put it on. The car didn’t want to start because the battery had gotten low, but he kept with it and got it started, suggesting that we not turn it off for a while until it had built up a charge. And refused money! Wished me luck and went home.
I woke my son up, told him to get it together so we could get home. We stopped for gas and I made my son pump the gas with the car running (he stood on the side away from the gas tank in case the car exploded!), while I ran in, grabbed snacks and paid for the gas. About 15 miles down the road, we stopped to say goodbye to our relatives (and explain why I didn’t make it to the party). When we came back out, the car wouldn’t start. We finally got it charged up and took off with the intention of not stopped again until we made it home.
No such luck. About 30 miles down the road, I slowed to merge into another road, the car died and wouldn’t start. Another ‘good Samaritan’ pulled up and offered to jump me off. Which didn’t work. So he got his truck running, took his battery off and swapped it with mine. My car started and I followed him to his home, so he could look into it a little closer. Both vehicles ran fine to his trailer, but when we swapped them back, my car wouldn’t start again. He did have a nice living room, and a really sweet wife, several nice step-kids and a really cute new baby. WOW. My son kept looking over at me and his eyes got a little bigger as each additional person wandered through the room. My good Samaritan decided it was the generator. He suggested that he tow me home, but we couldn’t find a towbar, so we devised a plan. We got both batteries charged up, put mine on his truck and his truck battery in my little car. He followed me and we drove about half way to my home, then pulled into a Dairy Queen and swapped batteries.
Many thanks and no money later, he turned around and headed for his home and I hit the road to home, swearing not to stop until I got there. Then the rain started. And I couldn’t stop because if the car died I knew it would never start again. So we drove on through the rain, my son and I.
We made it home and pulled up into the garage. At this point I got out of the car and gave my son a great big bearhug. And swore to him on everything holy that if he EVER EVER EVER told anyone in the family about the trip, not only would he never drive a car I owned, but there was a good possibility he wouldn’t live to see the light of the next day.
And then we went in and told the family about what a GREAT wedding it was.

332

My husband, a professor in college, was working at a regional university in Alabama in the late 90s and his department was involved with setting up a faculty/student exchange with a technical university in Vladivostok, Russia. Part of the arrangement called for the President of Vladivostok State University to come to Jacksonville State University for an official visit. Since it was my husband’s department that was involved in the exchange, he was in charge of the hosting arrangements. The nearest international airport was located about 75 miles away and my husband “borrowed” my car (he drove a pickup truck at the time) so that he could accomodate the visiting President and his interpreter as well as the President Emeritus of JSU and bring all back to Jacksonville.

I had been complaining to Stan, my husband, for several days about my car, a 94 Mercury Sable, ocassionally just quitting on me; it would crank again after a few minutes cooloff. He had not experienced this and obviously didn’t believe it was a mechanical problem but an operator problem! Well, the trip to the airport was uneventful. But, the return trip saw the entourage of 4 about halfway home when “my car” just quit at interstate speeds. My husband manuvered to the roadside, checked under the hood, and generally wasted time while the car cooled. As I had told him, it did restart after a few minutes. Very much embarassed, he apologized profusely to the visiting President and the local emeritus president. All the while, the interpreter was relaying information about what was happening. The VSU President chuckled and said, “Not to worry. We have cars like this in Russia.” The ice was broken and the 2-day trip turned out to be a fun, friendly and productive one.

Cindy Aman

333

Hello Tom and Ray,

In 1982, I came up with the brilliant idea to drive with my punk rock star husband Jello Biafra from the San Francisco Bay Area to New York and back in our 1960 Mercedes Benz 220S sedan. We were on our way to Europe to tour with the band and it meant that we would be away for around 6 months. We back-roaded it across the United States, having many adventures, especially when we had a great big breakdown in Memphis.
Biafra decided that we should try to return home in the middle of February, so we started out from Long Island via his parents home in Boulder CO en route to San Francisco. After making it over the Rockies in a snow storm at night with only one chain on the car, (the other had broken) I begged him to go south so we wouldn’t have to do a repeat performance going over the Sierra Nevada mountains. Well, we were in Utah and for some reason I will never understand, he decided that we should go over Soldier Summit on a little two lane road, again at night and again in a snow storm. We still only had one chain. Just after we went over the 9,000 and something foot pass, the car went out of control, almost went into a deep dark ravine and ended up crashing into a snow bank. Fortunately, another car took us a mile back to a repair shop and the wonderful mechanic got enough of the front end damage to our car back together so we could limp into Provo, Utah.
Biafra left me in Provo to get the car repaired properly as he had a gig in San Francisco 2 days later. I was 19, stranded in Provo, Utah with only a drivers permit staying in a roach infested hotel. I don’t know how they found the parts for a 22 year old Mercedes, but after a week the garage had the car all fixed up. The problem was that Biafra didn’t want to come and get me and I couldn’t drive home without a driver’s license. Oh how deserted I felt! I didn’t know how I was going to get home.
I got a call from my girlfriend Shelly, and she said that she would come and get me. Well, her mother lived in Los Vegas and did some fashion coordination or Libarce. She came to Utah, we drove to her mother’s in Vegas and I ended up getting to not only see Libarace perform but then go backsstage and meet him. I likes to dress in 1950’s dresses and he said I look marvelous! After 6 months it was quite the end to an oddessy, from punk to Liberace!

My current non-punk husband and I love your show! Thanks
Theresa

334

My Road Trip from Hell (see attachment)

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Dear Tom and Ray,

My “Road Trip From Hell” story takes place in 1964…when I was not quite 2-years-old and my older sister was not quite 3-years-old. I am submitting this story on behalf of our mother…for whom this “adventure” surely could not have amounted to anything less than a road trip from hell. In July of 1964 my father (“Stan”) decided it would be “fun” to pack the family into a Ford Econoline Van for a trip that would begin in Lambertville, NJ and wind through Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, Canada, Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Arizona, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and finally (almost 2 months later) back to New Jersey. Can you think of a better way to spend a long, hot summer than traveling with two toddlers (one still in diapers) across the country in a van with no air conditioning and sleeping either in the van along the side of the road, or if you were lucky, sleeping in the van (that you have just spent the entire day riding in) at a camp ground. If you were really lucky the camp ground had running water and flushing toilets! My sister and I believe that it was on this road trip that our mother earned her free ticket to enter paradise. I know details of this trip because my “saintly” mother kept a journal of this adventure. Her journal documents dates, stops, odometer readings, vehicle maintenance, camp ground fees, and “interesting” activities that took place along the way. I will share one of her entries with you now. On July 25th our merry little band drove from Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming to Sulphur Springs, Montana (approximately 300 miles). This was after having spent a sleepless night sharing our camp site with a group of rowdy, hungry, roving bears that kept us up all night. On the morning of July 26th we started out towards Great Falls, Montana. It was then that my Dad noticed a strange rattling noise coming from what sounded like the roof of the van. Before I relate what happened next I must explain that when my father was born God must have decided that my father would be assigned two guardian angels…because there was no way that one angel could possibly deal with all the life threatening situations my father would get himself into! In later years I thought that my father’s hazardous decisions were a result of increasing age but after reading the following entry from my mother’s road trip journal I am convinced that my Dad had at some point in his life simply “taped over” all of his “warning lights”. As my brother-in-law likes to say “With Stan as your father I can’t believe that you two girls ever survived to adulthood!”. Here is my mother’s entry from July 26th, 1964:

“Stopped at Great Falls and picked up film and a few groceries. I (Dottie) drove from there until we hit Conrad (9,000 odometer). Stan bought an air filter. Developed what sounded like something loose on the top of the van outside of Selby. After a couple of tries of replacing buckles, etc., Stan asked me to drive while he rode on the roof. He told me to get it up to 50 mph to see if he could pin down what was causing the noise. I got it up to 50 mph but he couldn’t hear the noise from up there. I could. Finally I decided it must be the water bag up front…sure enough it was!”

I hope the image up of a 30-something overweight man clinging to the roof of a van traveling down the highway at 50-mph with his wife at the wheel yelling “Do you hear it now?” while his two potentially orphaned toddlers tumble seat-beltless between the bench seats of a Ford Econoline Van tickles your funny bone as much as it did mine when I first read this entry.

336

After graduating from college in 1976, seven of us left the Lehigh Valley of PA, and rented a six-sleeper, cab-over, Dodge motor home, touring the west?s National Parks. It was memorable, beginning at the second mile, with milk and eggs toppling out of the refrigerator because some numbskull (not me) didn’t latch the door (fess up Wilbur), to leaving Colorado’s Estes Park two days before the catastrophic Big Thompson River flood, to witnessing the filming of a then-record-165-foot-freefall-stunt-jump off Utah?s Virgin River Bridge?the opening scene from the movie “The Car” starring James Brolin. But I digress.

The ?hell? part of our road trip happened the night we drove up north out of Mill Valley on California?s serpentine Route 1. The right-rear outer tire blew when the rim bent after hitting a rock shelf (good one Bob). We turned around, spending the night on a narrow pullover facing oncoming traffic. Next morning, the tow-truck driver told us tales of the buses he?d towed in these hills, reassuring us it?d be no problem. After lashing the steering wheel with the seatbelt, he lifted the rear and pulled us uphill, but the mirror began scraping the hillside. He stopped. Bob released the belt, sat in the seat and prepared for steering. As the tow-truck driver lifted it higher this time, Bob yelled, ?#@*IT!? Odoriferous, brown fluid in the rear holding tanks, now higher than our shower drain, flowed along the carpeted floor, out the passenger doors, headed south on Route 1, and under the now backed-up traffic with their trapped occupants rapidly closing windows while holding noses.

Two weeks later, we went nuts in the stifling 105-degree South Dakota heat, unable to escape the four platoons of blissful flies attracted to trace odors of sewage, eggs, and milk.

Can you contact me if you read this so I can give the guys a heads-up? I?m finishing another ?hell? story when keys to a 73 Charger were lost in a WVA cave and a mechanic hand-filed one.
Thanks, Ralph Yoder, Wilmore, KY.

337 
   My road trip from hell begins as most, with great optimism for the relaxing journey ahead. This past May, having grown weary of the perpetual Montanan winter, my new boyfriend and I decided that a trip to the desert would be paramount. Like anyone heading towards 4-wheel drive country, we thought it best to take my 1992 buick century (i should say that the buick in question only had 92,000 miles and had not broken down a single time in my 6 years of ownership). 
 I must admit, our week of camping in and around Canyonlands, Utah was absolutely incredible........it was the day of departure that solicited this response. I awoke at dawn covered from head to toe in the most ferocious case of hives I hope to ever experience. My skin read like a topography map of the Rocky Mountains, which is always how a girl hopes to wake up in a tent with her new boyfriend. I took 2 benadryl, we packed up camp, and were on the road headed north by 6AM. 2 hours into the voyage home, just north of Price, Utah, my trusty couch on wheels decided it no longer wished to aknowledge gears. As we sat there on the side of the interstate trying drive, overdrive, and reverse to no avail.......we were still optomistic that it was merely a hose that had been shaken loose from all of the rallying that had taken place the week prior. Luckily for me, the benadryl had receeded the hives off my face and arms by the time the tow truck driver arrived to take us back to Price. However, when i attempted to pay for the tow with my "emergency" credit card it was declined due to fraudulent activity on the card. After cancelling my only credit card, we learned that it would cost $1600 ($700 more than i paid for the car) to fix my ailing transmission. It did not take much deliberation to decide that the Buick would now become a ward of the state of Utah. 
 Now there was the small matter of getting me and my boyfriend, 2 mountain bikes, and a weeks worth of camping gear back to montana. This would not be a story from hell if we were able to simply rent a car to get home. We had to rent a car from a local car dealer to get to Provo..... to rent a car we could take out of state......which we had to drive back to Price and load up all of our gear. By the time we had miraculously crammed all of our stuff into a toyota corolla, and were ready to get going, it was 10PM and the hives were returning with a vengence. We stopped at a local grocery for more benadryl and were on our way.

Having been up since dawn, we stopped for a nap just north of salt lake city. When we awoke, i thought my lips felt a little…odd…larger than usual. As we drove into the night, my lips continued to grow at an alarming rate. By 4AM it was decided that my face mutation warrented a stop at the emergency room. We pulled off in Pocatello, Idaho, where i was pumped full of adrenaline and steroids by an incredibly worried ER staff. Could it have been the 10 pb&j’s i had consumed in the past 48 hours, the accumulation of filth in my sleeping bag, sun exsposure on my hike out of the needles, a radio-active spider, or the pizza we bought out of desparation and starvation in Price that caused my intense allergic reaction? Maybe we will never know…but i get to carry around an $80 shot of adrenaline now, just in case.
They discharged me from the ER at 8AM with an abundance of paper-work, $900 worth of bills, an incredibly resilient boyfriend (who had to experience my face like no other mere mortal shall ever be forced to encounter),and no resolution to my car troubles.

338

My most memorable nightmarish road trip occurred in 1981, a year full of both adventure and anguish. I was a 21 year old, quite naive young lad from the backwoods of North Carolina and I decided to venture West, specifically to San Jose, California. After working there for about eight months or so, I decided that the traffic jams and lack of sweetened iced tea made the Golden State no place for a Southern boy, so I decided to head back to the land of Dixie. Just before my departure however, in need of a car, I purchased a 1977 Fiat Brava from a gentleman who assured me that he had treated this car like his own child and that it was in tip top shape. I loaded the car up with an unimaginable amount of junk and personal items that I had accumulated over the eight months and headed East. Everything went smoothly for the first day or so as I wound my way through the deserts of Southern California and into Arizona. However, shortly after crossing the border of Nex Mexico, the car began to overheat. I stopped at the first town I came to with a garage that actually appeared to be open and was greeted by a grizzly old man with a big smile on his face. After charging me sixty dollars to “inspect” the car, he grins and assures me the car is fine- that it’s probably a defective gauge and sends me on my way. Into the mountains of New Mexico the little Fiat ventures, climbing precariously up the hills as the temperature gauge continues to rise. You can guess what happened next- the entire block of the Fiat cracks. There I sat on the side of some mountain desert road, one overcooked Fiat and one steamed driver, wondering what in the heck I was going to do next. Luckily for me, a passing state trooper saw my dilemma and stopped. For some reason, as he stood there looking at the smoking Fiat on the side of the road, the same broad smile that I had seen on the garage geezer’s face now spread across his. Anyway, the trooper drove into the nearest town, where I spent a huge chunk of my travel funds to pay a tow driver to tow the car down the mountain into a garage. The estimated repair bill was more than I had paid for the car, so there it sat while I caught the first bus back East. I never saw the car again and I can only imagine that it ended up in some junk yard, where it truly belonged.

339

My middle son, Sam, was just a week old, strapped into his car-seat in the back when it happened. We had exited onto a small road in a Minneapolis suburb when the driver of an on-coming car started waving and motioning us to stop. I rolled down the window and he said “did you know your car is on fire?” I looked over to my wife in the passanger seat but she’d already jumped out, unbuckled our son’s seat and stood 10 feet away with him on the exit ramp. But I guess this was really the road trip from heaven; I glanced in the other direction to see our angel; a fire truck just happened to be there, saw us and the calm firemen casually put out the fire. It was the undercoating burning; loose wires caught in the clutch mechanism made the spark.

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My family bought an RV to make a cross country trip from Michigan to Oklahoma, then to Montana Glacier National Park, Yellowstone, The Grand Tetons, and then back to Michigan.

It started out, we got to Illinois, the axle broke. So we had to sit for the better part of a day on the side of the freeway. I finally went across a muddy field to a farmhouse, (who happened to be the county judge), to get help. We had to stay in a motel for 3 days while that was fixed. We had no sooner got back on the road when that night, we were hit from behind by a drunk driver. Totaled our motorhome. Had to spend 2 weeks in a motel, (with nothing but waffle house to eat). We make it to Oklahoma. Pick up my grandparents and take them with us to Glacier. Had the motorhome shook by a bear. On top of that, the temperatures were dropping in the low 40’s IN JULY…we were so worn out that the trip from Montana to Michigan seemed to drag on for days. (well it did drag on for days…7 more days to be exact)

I’m clearly understating the initial HELL that was our vacation, but it was one of the most memorable family vacations I’ve had.