Ever Had a Road Trip from Hell?

Maintenance/Repairs
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61

I?ll argue that my husband had been aptly warned when he married me in 2007. His bride is a somewhat nomadic woman who loves New York City more than any home town. I?ve been known to brave a Moscow March under the Soviet Regime ? and a Spanish-only retreat to Castro?s Cuba one January. My husband?s idea of summer vacation is of a cozy cottage on the Cape. I am happiest camping under the tall trees in Vermont mountains than those found in our own backyard.

Gerry, our grandson, Colin, and one of Colin?s best ten-year old buddies braved the Green Mountains with me last summer.  Sunset vistas from a mountainside campsite. Deer and squirrels nibbling as close to our toes as they dared.  Gusty and brief showers ending in sparkly sunlight. Campfire flames accompanied by perfectly melted S?mores. Mornings replete with birdsong, softened by whispery breezes through the poplars, pine and hemlock. What can compare? 

This past 4th of July weekend we planned to eagerly return to our mountainside campsite. We were not discouraged by dubious weather reports. Instead we armed ourselves with copious amounts of enthusiasm and valor. We packed the car to the gills.  Soft bags of clothing were stuffed in each available space.  Our sturdy Space Cadet car top carrier was perched on the roof holding the overflow.

We might have heeded the weather report and waited until morning. We might have turned around before we hit torrential downpours just 20 miles northeast.  Yet, we were hearty, hardy and determined travelers and we left on our three-hour trip mid afternoon on the 1st of July.

 Even in my vacation reverie, snatched from car ride slumber, I knew that Gerry?s words ?We?ve lost it? were extremely bad news. The not-quite-locked-down Space Cadet, buffeted by wind and rain, had finally rebelled against her load.  Her lid had burst upward and she had carelessly spilled her guts onto the slick, wet and crowded highway at the worst time of the day ? the evening commute.  

We braved a nerve jangling stop in the breakdown lane and then forlornly watched our brave driver ? husband and grandfather ? retreat backwards and disappear around the curve and to seek out what remained of our rooftop load. The three of us helplessly left behind held our breaths as large UPS and Wal-Mart trucks whipped by at breakneck speeds. Our hearts sunk as we imagined shreds of sleeping bags, tents and towels pummeled into the tarmac of the busy highway. We anticipated turning toward home, sheepishly admitting defeat after the very best of attitudes and intentions.  Worst of all, of course, we realized our champion was braving the speeding lanes of vehicles.

Craning our necks, dizzied by the speeding cars and pelting rain, we breathed sighs of relief while we welcomed a sight for sore eyes.  Heading towards us, like a soggy and misshapen Sasquatch, was our hero laden with the contents of our Space Cadet.  Some heavenly good Samaritans had helped stop traffic so that our possessions could be retrieved.  They were drenched and tire marked ? but miraculously intact and unharmed. We all gave words of thanks that the runaway linens and equipment had not wreaked havoc for the drivers on Route 2.

As camping lore goes, a good fire can effortlessly dry a sleeping bag or two.  A night in mountain air can cleanse all distress from your mind.  The fickle and coy weather held out that night in Vermont and we cozily slept with our heads on clean pillowcases in our tents that had somehow escaped the worst. 

My hardy family has more travelers? tales to tell of our camping bravery this Independence weekend ? of Luna moths bigger than baby bats. Of a raccoon who found our campsite the best around for Doritos and fresh bread. Of the daily rivers and lagoons springing up around our mountaintop refuge each night. But it was the road trip to Vermont that we will never forget.
62

Yes, it could have been a lot worseā€¦

Just like the songā€¦
We were traveling on the hot desert highway, but the cool wind was not in our hair.

It was the four of us gals, feeling pretty smug, up early, showered, the car packed, off for an early start returning from the Grand Canyon.
Our first error ā€¦although it sounded like a good idea at the time was to skip breakfast.
I was driving first shift in my friendā€™s SUV Lexus when the back tire blew out while I was going on a long straight stretch 75 MPH. We pulled off the road onto the shoulder and examined the damage. I said a few cuss words and my friend begins crying and then calls and wakes up her husband and everyone consoles her as the owner of the car. And by the way, if you were wonderingā€¦nobody asked how I was doing as the driver.
We call AAA, and of course, it will take some time for them to find us and it is heating up pretty good outside. At this point everyone has an idea on what to do including walking to town in 100 degrees heat, changing the tire ourselves-- which if any woman has ever tried to do is pretty tough. We also read the car manual to no availā€”and something none of us have ever done before even in our own car.

We figure we donā€™t have a real spare but a ā€˜donutā€™ I guess is what they call it and we wonder if that will make it on the long drive back. We also notice almost every car passing us is a Ford truck of some sort and no Lexus in sight like ours!

Now comes the story of how my friend got stuck in almost in the SAME spot with a blown valve or something pretty bad to her car 20 years agoā€¦ and it was repaired in town and costly and they didnā€™t fix it properly. So naturally, everyone is skeptical at this point, butā€¦
after 45 minutes of standing and some of us praying in the hot morning sun --our hero arrives. A nice guy in a truck stops and is a shriff from North Carolina on vacation with his wife and kids. He fixes the tire which by the way, if you were wondering a Lexus has a real tire as a spare.
Meanwhile, AAA never comes and we call back saying forget it.

And as the story ends, we are all safe but STARVING and while at brunch we reflect on the event before we climb back into the carā€¦ back down the long desert highway this time with the cool wind in our hair.

63

About 20 years ago, (long before the convenience of cell phones) my husband, Bill, and I had just left our home in Charlottesville, Virginia and were heading down I-64 on our way to a vacation at Nag?s Head for sunny beaches, seafood, and hang gliding. It was late and already dark when suddenly we blew a tire. Bill tried to change it, but was unsuccessful as the nuts and been machined on and wouldn?t budge. He then tried for several minutes to flag down some assistance, but to no avail. Finally, I decided it was my turn and told him to just wait in the van and I?d take care of things. So I stood in front of our van?s headlights where I would be both safe and seen, and assumed my very best image of a forlorn and forsaken Southern lady. It took less than a minute. The next 18-wheeler that came along pulled over on the shoulder in front of us. I thanked the driver and introduced him to my husband. The truck driver kindly gave us a ride to a full-service station at the next exit where we found someone to take us back to the van and change a tire.
Yes, chivalry was then, and still is, alive and well in Virginia!

64

1973

62 unairconditioned Corvette towing a mid sixties VW Beetle being used as a trailer

65

About 3 o?clock in the morning, I was driving my faithful 1965 Porsche SC Coupe on a red-eye from Carbondale, Colorado through Southern Utah on my way to the Prescott, Arizona.

The car was running strong, 8 track softly playing Motown, cruising fast on a dry winding two lane road, with a full moon and sky filled with stars.

It was about 25 degrees F and there hadn?t been a car on the road going in either direction for at least an hour, so on a long straight away, I decide to stop the car in the middle of the road to take a leak. I knew I had to be quick, so I stepped out in my stocking feet and left the engine running with lights on and music playing.

With the soothing rumble of the engine and the night sounds of the winter desert, I was amazed at the display of stars in the desert sky. I lingered a little longer than I should have without a jacket and hurriedly returned to the car only to find the driver?s door was locked.

Starting to feel even colder, I walked around to the passenger door, also locked. I knew I was in (as you say) deep do-do ā€“ freezing temps, deserted road, locked car, windows shut tight, and engine running in the middle of the road. I had nothing in my pockets except loose change and a pack of gum. I couldn?t get to my tools in the front luggage compartment and it was years before cell phones were invented.

So began my road trip from hell?what a night.

/Dennis in Archer FL

66

Mosquitoes and Monoxide

Back in the late 50ā€™s in south Georgia, not many teens had cars, so, Gerry having his own 40 Ford pickup to restore was something special, even though the truck was a basket case and neither he nor the rest of us had the skills or money to fix even itā€™s more serious problems.

Two of the most serious problems with this truck were the lack of most of the floorboards coupled with a seriously compromised exhaust system, but we didnā€™t let details such as those didnā€™t stop plans for a 125 mile camping road trip from Moultrie, Ga to Dog Island, Florida.

Gerry had addressed the leaking exhaust problem with ingenuity (rather than reason or skill) using the then relatively new material, fiberglass, so, as we headed south through Tallahassee to the coast to catch the last ferry of the day to the island, the cab filled first with the fumes of burning fiberglass epoxy, then epoxy fumes mixed with carbon monoxide, so, we were dazed when we reached the ferry and enjoyed almost an hour of fresh air before we left the ferry dock on Dog Island and headed for the uninhabited end of the island to set up camp.

Today, Dog Island has less than 100 permanent human residents and my guess would be that there were less than half that back in the 50ā€™s. There were, however, billions of insects thankful for any chance to partake of human blood, and the mosquitoes in particular were determined to get as much blood as possible before we could set up camp. We had brought Army surplus ā€œJungle Hammocksā€ to camp in. These were regular hammocks with the addition of a canvas roof and netting sides. Unfortunately, Dog Island didnā€™t have one critical componentā€¦ trees!

This required us to set them up on the ground as mini tents while the mosquitoes continued their unrelenting attack until we were able to finally crawl in, zipper the net closed, kill those mosquitoes who had followed us in, and lick our welts with the hope of sleeping.

Inside the hammocks, the pain of the mosquito bites slowly began to morph into a different kind of pain which steadily increased. The mosquitoes were still very evident as they massed on the other side of the netting, but it was clear that there were none inside with us despite the obviously increasing number of bites all over out bodies.

I turned on the flashlight to see what was going on and happened to point it at the roof of the hammockā€¦ thousands upon thousands of tiny white insects small enough to get through the netting covered the roofā€¦ sand fleas? I have no idea, but they did appreciate the blood we offered.

Gerry and I abandoned the campsite and ran to the beach. There was a slight breeze coming in from the water and after we managed to kill the mosquitoes that stuck with us to the beach, that breeze kept them at bay as we tried to rest on the wet sand.

A little after midnight every trace of wind disappeared allowing the mosquitoes to again find us and restart their feast. Looking back toward the center of the island, we could see the dim silhouette of the large screened pavilion we had passed coming in, so, we took off toward it with hopes of a better refuge. For the rest of the night, we lay on tables inside the pavilion but found ourselves still doing battle swatting swarms of mosquitoes until dawn. As the sun rose, we had our answer. The sun framed itself in the middle of a ten foot diameter hole in one of the rotting screen panels.

The ferry only ran twice a dayā€¦ the first departure back to the mainland was at 10:30, and, while we did not want to miss it, neither of us was looking forward to returning to the campsite, so, we waited as long as possible before returning to give us about 45 minutes to get back to the ferry dock. Approaching from the beach, running, uprooting and literally throwing all of our camping gear into the bed and diving into the cab. If anything, there were more mosquitoes than the evening before.

There were no paved roads on the island, but it had been gridded into standard developer city blocks of graded sand roads. The sand road parallel to the beach was fairly well packed, but the ā€œcross streetā€ we attempted to use to turn around on was packed roughly equivalent to a sand dune so the truck was hopelessly stuck within a millisecond.

The mosquitoes took their advantage. Gerry and I made futile attempts to push, rock, pry, whatever, all the while the clock ticked down the ferry deadline that would keep us on the island for the rest of the day. We wanted to be anywhere than this dog of an island. Gerry finally went over the edge and gave what little he had left in him to the sands. I ran back to the center of the island to see what was available to get us unstuck, if possible, before the ferry departed, and found it in the form of a good Samaritan who had an Army surplus ā€œDuce and a Halfā€ truckā€¦ we made the 10:30 ferry with only seconds to spareā€¦ the absolute highlight of the trip.

We stood at the rail, savoring the fresh, mosquito free air for almost half the crossing, then returned to the truck to deal with the loose pile of camping debris before we hit the highway. Pulling the hammocks out of the bed freed hundreds of trapped mosquitoes to resume their blood quest and to assure that we would not forget this trip.

Back on the road northward, the last vestiges of fiberglass had fallen away from the exhaust system so the cab was converted into a very effective gas chamber even with both windows wide open. We had to switch off driving, the current driver with his head out of the window and the other in the pickup bed recovering from monoxide poisoning but we still were severely dosed for the three hours it took to get homeā€¦ I assume we got home, but donā€™t remember any of the details past Tallahasseeā€¦ a great road tripā€¦ one to remember.

67

My grandparents whispered this story only in the privacy of their home, and then only decades after their road trip from hell.

My grandfather owned one of the newly developed car dealerships in the 1930s. He thought that a summer road trip would be good advertising for selling cars. He decided that the couple would travel from Tucson Arizona to San Diego California enjoying the drive and ending up at the beach. About half way between Tucson and San Diego, they came to the infamous sand dunes. Now a modern freeway, that section in the 1930s was a very narrow one lane road made of wooden planks laid over the dunes, with an occasional spur to allow briefly for two way traffic.

A few miles on to the plank road the car started to sound ?funny? and my grandfather pulled off on to one of the spurs. As the summer temperature soared to well over 100 degrees, the car was not yet fixed. They were alone in the middle of a sand dune desert and both started to fear for their lives. Grandfather pulled away a few of the planks directly under the car and dug a deep pit 4 to 6 feet deep. Grandmother took out their vacation clothes and fashioned a tent. Together they lined the pit with the wooden planks and car seats, topping the pit with grandmother?s tent. Down they went with some food and the 3 radiator bags full of foul tasting water. It was now too late in the day for anyone to risk the Old Plank Road, so they knew that no one would come along to help them. But the critters found their pit, scorpions and biting flies descended. All day they waited, alternately drinking and pouring the precious water over their heads, swatting the critters, and trying not to think of their plight. My grandmother described the conditions as stiflingly hot, with sand constantly whirling around their small haven under the car. But she no longer feared for their lives.

At twilight grandfather ventured out of the pit and finished fixing the car. Then together they dismantled the pit and began filling it in. At one point grandmother slid back into the pit, the sand beginning to cover her. Grandfather hauled her out, sans her ankle-length skirt. My New York City grandmother was not amused, but grandfather found it easier to laugh than cry at the sight of his wife in her bloomers covered with sand.

The planks replaced, the couple went on their way to San Diego in the dark, grandmother walking ahead of the car pointing the way and grandfather driving. They arrived at their beach house with people looking very strangely at the young couple, dressed nicely but filthy dirty, their car seats in the car but not quite facing front. They didn?t say a thing.

68

Over ten years ago, I did postdoctoral research in the Los Angeles area studying smog. A friend of mine that was doing his Ph.D. work at that time was a paleontologist. He would often go out on road trips to Utah to find and collect fossils. I joined him on one of these trips. They were long in driving and destinations were in the middle of nowhere. I don?t know exactly where we were on this one specific occasion, but it was fairly arid and we were camping out with little civilian luxury. Of course, as nature called, I needed to do a number ?two.? Problem was, there were no trees; just rocks. I thought, ?Oh crap, what do I do now.? So I asked my friend what can I use for T.P. and he thought for a second and quickly replied, ?Oh, I have this thesis by someone I have been reading but don?t need anymore in the truck.? I thought, what the heck, so he gave me this stack of paper and I went off to business. I ended up using 2 pages that I thought would remove the least amount of meaning from the work: the committee signature approval page and the conclusions page. It ended up being useful; however, a bit problematic due to the glossy-ness of the ?double-weight thesis-quality paper.?

69

My young bride had never been camping. She was a city girl. Bright and witty, bouncy and easy on the eyes. The big AAHHHH in my life. I had a lot of experience camping and back packing. This particular vacation she was adamant to learn the ways of the woods. We, she and I and the two dogs, started from New York City early one sunny late September morning. I had a blow out in the Bronx, but chose to ignore the omen! Fixed the tire and off we went for parts North. The drive was relatively uneventful after the flat. We made good time getting to our campsite in southern New Hampshire. No sooner had I set the last tent peg than the wind started to whip, and whip, and whip, AND WHIP! We did not get blown away, but some of our gear disappeared. The dogs just thought all was right with the world. We can learn a lot from the so called lower animals!

During the calm of the following morning my sweetheart made coffee and a small tasty breakfast as I broke down the camp. While eating we had a yuk regarding the sound of the gusty night. She detailing some of the imageries in her head, me simply scoffing. Off we went again to parts further North. No more freeways, thank you. We slowly meandered up through the middle of New Hampshire to one of my favorite camp sites - Dolly Copp in the White Mountains. Being several weeks after Labor Day we had the place to ourselves. It was delightfully empty and absolutely gorgeous.

As I started to set camp mid afternoon, I sensed an untimely darkening of the skies. UH-OH! I got the tent up only moments before the rain. HA - I am being polite. Torrential downpour was more like it! I dug moats around the tent. Deep moats and wide. I felt kind of foolish, but was vindicated in the morning. There was a lot of flooding. It was a grand morning though. Sunny and warm. Unfortunately, there really was not enough time for everything to dry. I figured we would get to Moosehead Lake in Maine, our ultimate destination, early enough to set up a line to hang everything. In fact, the scrumptious drive went well and we made good time.

Again, the campground was empty and ours. Now, the first of October, we cherished a magnificent sunset over the lake and spectacular sky show as the sky blackened to a deep moon lit New England night. There was a full moon. AND - un noticed or not acknowledged by my honey - a huge ring around this beautiful bright orb. I knew I had only one night left. Something in my heart told me that this week in G-D?s country will not be fulfilled. As the fire dwindled to embers we retired.

I awoke a tad before my bride to the sound of tapping on the top of the tent. Tap ? tap ? tap/tap ? tap/tap/tap ? and faster and thicker. Gently I slipped out of our sleeping bag and peaked outside. I was both enlivened and disappointed. Enlivened because I knew how much fun we could have in the ? snow! Disappointed because I knew that no matter what I did, she (now my sweetie becomes ?she?) would more than likely have had enough. I primed the hot water in the shower house and built a fire to get the coffee and breakfast started.

Suddenly I felt a presence behind me. I slowly turned and saw my bride standing in the entry to the tent in all her naked glory. Arms crossed and intense fire in her eyes she stuttered through her delightful shivering frame. ?Wawawwwee aarrre gggoining hhhhhooommmee!? I tried not to laugh and, despite much hugging and attempts to comfort, accepted the inevitable.

We used this as an excuse to visit old friends from HS that migrated to Lewiston, Me. several years before. After driving the few hours and while our wears were in the dryer, we sipped wine and waited for the snow to stop so we could graciously make our departure. Said departure came four days later, being that we were involved in one of earliest most brutal snow storms in history.

Suffice it to say, now 35 years later, I do not believe that my then bride, now best friend has not been camping since.

70

Sadly, we had to leave California when my husband was transferred to Delaware, so I decided to make the best of it and drive cross country. Part of the decision to drive was made because we werenā€™t sure how to move our tarantula collection (the airlines didnā€™t have much advice about this). My husband had flown ahead and I took the three spiders, which are temperature sensitive, and my 6-year old in the RAV 4. This was in early December and we had a great time. We had to bring the spiders indoors surreptitiously at the El Tovar Hotel on the south rim of the Grand Canyon because it was 20 degrees. On down the road on Route 40 in Oklahoma, there was a shriek from my son in the back seat, and there was Mary, the Mexican Red Knee tarantula climbing over the head rest of the passenger seat. I pulled over and scooped her back into the cage. After that episode, we remembered to latch the lid in addition to shutting it. We made the trip in a week and our collection has grown to six spiders.

71

My road trip from hell happened many years ago on a trip to Grandmaā€™s house when I was about eight years old. Road trips were never particularly fun for me to begin with since, as the youngest, I was inevitably stuck sitting in the middle where that hump sticks up from the floor, preventing the unfortunate person sitting there from resting their feet comfortably. My sisters, on either side of me, each had their own window plus oodles of room to stretch their legs, yet if I moved so much as a millimeter onto their side, Iā€™d get rewarded with a sharp pinch, the kind with fingernails that leaves two painful little crescent moons behind on the skin.
This particular road trip took place in the middle of July, a time when the Iowa hog lots we had to drive past were at their most pungent. It was for this reason that we had the rather feeble air conditioner going, which did little more than push the sticky air around a little. I was hot, even hotter than usual with my bored and sweaty sisters on either side, because for some reason, the seat beneath me had begun to heat up.
I fidgeted restlessly, trying to scoot away from the hot seat, and slid over onto my sisterā€™s side, which earned me a pinch.ā€œMoooomā€, I whined, ā€œthe seat is hot, and Sarah pinched me.ā€ ā€œWeā€™re almost thereā€, she answered wearily, ā€œjust sit on your pillow or somethingā€. ā€œBut itā€™s really hotā€, I moaned. ā€œCanā€™t we open the windows?ā€ This suggestion was immediately shouted down by my sisters, who were tired of the stench of hog manure.
And, in retrospect, thank god we didnā€™t. After 30 more minutes of having a hot butt and mean sisters, we finally got to the hotel. When we came back out to the car after lugging our suitcases in, it was full of white smoke. My dad yanked the door open at which point, the back seat burst into flames. Somehow, my dad wrenched the flaming seat off its bolts and threw it in to the parking lot, where we stood around it stunned, watching the flames lick the vinyl which bubbled like microwaved velveeta. I turned to my mom and wailed,ā€œI told you the seat was hot!ā€

72

Our driveshaft fell out on the Great Divide. It was 1982 and we were driving a '65 Dodge 318 pickup from FL to Washington, with 3 small children. The universal joint came apart and the driveshaft fell onto the road --just short of the great divide. Obviously we stopped rather suddenly. My husband Don searched around on the pavement and found as many of the needle bearings as he could. He put it back together but they werenā€™t all there. We drove VERY SLOWLY on the shoulder the 5 miles to the top. As we crept along, dozens of prairie dogs popped up watching us, curious as to our slow speed. We COASTED on the shoulder the 15 miles or so to the nearest town, where there just happened to be a gas station/auto parts store. They ordered our universal for the next day. We slept behind the store, in the back of the truck, overlooking a river. The kids thought it was fantastic. The next day, they had our part and installed it and we were on our way. Don and Sue Thompson

73

Iā€™m not sure my story is a ā€œFrom hellā€ one, but it certainly was a surprise trip for me! Iā€™m a grandmother now, so this dates back to the 70ā€™s at which time I was a young mother of two toddlers, going thru a nasty divorce and trying to learn to live as a single Mom! My Grandfather had died recently, and my Grandmother (also my BEST friend in the world!) had decided to move from Arizona back to Minnesota to be closer to her two children and all the grandchildren. So, I flew to Arizona to help her pack and then the two of us were going to drive her car back to Minnesota.

The trip was going very well until we got to I think Nebraska. Or whichever state is nothing but empty expansive NOTHING but roads! then her big old car just up and died on us. We managed to get it to the side of the road (like anything would have hit it anyway!). We probably waited an hour or so, and finally a big old cadillac drove up and stopped and there was this older gentlemen driving and he offered us a ride to the next town. May 75 year old grandmother and me, a 25 year old single Mom looked at each other and decided to ride with him! Because really, what choice did we have?

So, we are in the back seat of his car- me on the passenger side, my Grandmother on the driver side, and her purse in between us. Not long after we started up, my Grandmother tapped me on the arm, and motioned for me to look down. She had her purse open and wanted me to look in it. I did and low and behold, there was a huge pistol in there! She winked at me and said not to worry, she would take care of us!!!

I have never forgotten that moment! Here we were, helpless women stranded in no where and my Grandmother had her trusty gun in her purse to make sure we were safe!!!

She and I laughed about that for years! She died almost 25 years ago, but I still remember that story and laugh!

74

It all started innocently enough, three brand new college juniors decide to take a road trip. There was my college dorm mate Jeffrey, a jock, an intellectual and a sucker for anyone with a sob story. Martha, Jeffrey?s regular girlfriend, she had long flowing red hair, an intuitive flair for creating impromptu poetry and a great capacity for patience with Gary?s irregular girlfriends and me. I was just an average student who attended classes most of the time and worked for the college in the library Monday through Friday. We all worked in local neighborhood bar just off campus on the weekends. We wanted the road trip right now, we were all confident that next summer when we graduated we would be off to the world of work and careers. For us two guys, if the war in Viet Nam continued to expand, we would be off to boot camp. We were all nature conservation majors. The smallest department at our New Orleans College. Seeing how the department was so small we students were very close to our professors, both as students and friends. We had a very best favorite ?prof? who lived in New Mexico, when not teaching, with his family, his wife and her sister with her live in totally unemployable boyfriend. I had recently purchased a very used 1963 Volkswagen van for the outrages price of $150.00, but it was a nice two tone dark red and white, nicely peppered with rust it had good tires and it ran. We even named it Lucy. Around campus and around the city of New Orleans, Lucy had proven to be quite reliable, quite an education in love and lust and quite a part time job of constant maintenance. It made perfect sense to take Lucy out on a nice leisurely drive to New Mexico to visit our favorite prof. Leisurely was not a choice. As good as Lucy was on city side streets at 25 mph she was equally bad on highways, 50 or 55 mph seemed to be all she had. There was no GPS in those days, we relied on road maps to stay on country roads. The maps were out of date the day they were printed, and sometimes cost as much as 60 cents (that was two gallons of gas, in those days we earned $1.15 an hour at our college library jobs or as a waiter or waitress or our clean-up jobs. We traveled on as cheaply as possible, we bought food at supermarkets we?d pass, food that required no cooking. We slept in the van or in our pup tent, depending on the weather. We were flat broke, road ripe from lack of a proper shower and Lucy in desperate need of TLC when we arrived in Gallup. Prof welcomed us with open arms and we had a party the whole time. We needed money to restore Lucy to good health, we needed money to eventually drive back to school and we needed money for a new semesters textbooks. Profs wife made genuine native American pottery, well as genuinely native American as a blond haired blue eyed, big busted, 6 foot tall Norwegian women could get. She was actually the antitheses of Prof, he was maybe 5 foot tall, short dark hair, thick glasses and his facial features as pure Inca as the south American mountains he was born in. Mrs. Prof had a need for Lucy, she needed the van to transport her handmade, genuine native American pots to her roadside stand. She financed Lucy?s rehabilitation. When boyfriend-in-law saw how much Lucy could carry, and how carefully she carried it, he was impressed, and knew just how we could earn money. It turned out boyfriend-in-law knew a guy who knew a guy who home-brewed genuine Mexican tequila, worm and all. The home brewer did it for about 3 cents a gallon, but anyone could get home brewed tequila in New Mexico. Boyfriend-in-laws plan was to sell it for a huge profit up north. We loaded Lucy with as much as we could with only a second thought for 3 passengers. Boyfriend-in-law was afraid to consign his illegal booze to us and insisted on coming along to supervise, so we had to squeeze him in too. As it turned out he was getting board living with prof?s daughter and oh, by-the-way did he mention he was two steps ahead of the sherif for burning his draft card and was in a hurry to get to Canada? More 60 cent road maps and we headed north. Throughout the entire trip north boyfriend-in-law constantly sampled his wares, to assure freshness he?d say. Before you knew it we were all checking the quality of our cargo. This proved to be an unwise decision, as we would become sleepy and have to pull over to rest more often them you would think 4 young people would need too. We made it to Brookings South Dakota when Lucy broke our collective heart. I guess the stress and strain was just too much for her, even though her load was getting lighter everyday. Lucy did not go quietly and did so during one of our many rest stops, when we least expected it. There we were sprawled out in some farmers field, lying on the ground in Lucy?s shade off the side of the road with the winter wheat, just minding our own business, when Lucy?s angel of death came. The exact details are rather fuzzy as you can imagine, but we all recall the same chain of events. We were first aroused by the overpowering smell of gasoline, there were bubbling and rumbling sounds, loud moans and groans. Suddenly, with no one in the van Lucy started her motor, she rattled and shook then lurched forward about 20 feet. That?s when the smoke started, small wisps of white smoke at first as we ran toward her then thick black plumes which stopped us in our tracks. Lucy swayed side to side like she was in a strong wind, even though there wasn?t even the slightest breeze. We all saw the flames at the same time. Boyfriend-in-law recalled it was like the stories Prof?s wife told about a great Norsemen off to Valhalla. Everything we had was in that van. I was the only one with my wallet in my pocket. The fire was complete and mostly burned out when the local police arrived, we could not explain the burned tequila smell in the air or all the broken glass gallon jugs, or why the fire was so fast and furious as to consume the whole van and it contents in mere minuets. Our lone policeman wrote us a few citations for one thing or another and called his girlfriend to come with a pickup truck and give us a ride into town. Then sped off in a cloud of dust and gravel. He said nothing about removing Lucy?s remains. I believe they are there still, along side the road and the winter wheat. We waited about an hour for cops girlfriend to arrive, with very little conversation she dropped us off at a Holiday Inn. The motel was open but still under construction. We explained our sad situation to the Innkeeper who offered us food and lodging for work, which we readily accepted. Lodging was what ever room was not yet finished and sometimes had running water and glass in the windows, but not both. Food was whatever had passed the expiration date in the restaurant refrigerator. We pooled whatever money and tips we earned. Boyfriend-in-law fell in love with a long-haul trucker headed to Winnipeg and ran off one afternoon. Jeffery and Martha decided not to return to college, but to get married instead. They had a civil ceremony in the town hall, the same policeman who came out to the fire was also justice of the peace. I doubt he remembered us.
The Innkeeper gave them a very generous cash gift as a wedding present. We were very surprised until Martha let it slip that she promised not to tell Innkeepers wife about his fast hands in the storage room one afternoon. We split our savings, which was enough for me to get a 1967 Chevy Bel Aire which took me back to school a year late, but we both carried on for the remainder and parted friends.

75

Dear Tom and Ray,
My new boyfriend had told me that he would help me move from Hoboken NJ to Dayton Oh, where I had taken a job as a dancer in a ballet company. He is allergic to cats, of which I had three. We had been house sitting in Brooklyn, but I had an apartment in Hoboken which we cleaned out into a rented truck. We, like all young and impatient people, decided to drive straight thru overnight, a trip of about 15 hours. We also decided to leave at about 4pm. the three cats were in the front portion of the truck. It was August.
In the middle of the night, of course, the truck broke down. Specifically, a brace underneath holding the truck together broke. So there we are in the middle of Pennsylvania, in the middle of the night with 3 pissed off cats. How do we get home? this is when I knew I was going to marry this man, he held the bottom of the truck together with a pair of my pointe shoe ribbons and a piece of wire he found by the side of the highway. We arrived safely home the next day and were married 3 years later and have been married now for 24 years.
Barbara

76

after driving north on hwy 666 in new mexico on my birthday for a look at chaco canyon we went east on the worst road everā€¦bumping and bouncing with my wife, drunken best friend and our 3 kids.my daughter was shrieking and crying thinking she was gonna die, and our rapidly drying friend was shrieking and crying for a drink. we got to chaco around 230 pm and noticed a sign stating the place closes @ dusk and no one without reservations at the campground was allowed to stay.
well, we piled outta the rental van and dried baby girlā€™s tears and hosed gregā€™s liver down real good then strolled the ruins. another sign was spotted. this one asking us to please respect the ruins and not take anything. but, you know the flat stones with which the anastazi built their dwellings fit perfectly into my cargo shorts pocket, and hey, what evil could possibly come from harvesting a single flat rock as a souvenir? anyway, dusk approached and we piled back into the van, with baby girl feeling more secure since we were leaving via paved road and my friendā€™s demons at bay (thanks to his special spirits) and headed to farmington to celebrate my birthday.
ā€œthis van is handling weirdā€ i said and got out to discover the driverā€™s side front tire was well below the appropriate pressure. did i mention there AIN"T NOTHINā€™ for services at the chaco canyon historical ruins. so everybody gets outta the van and we use the crappy jack that comes with the van and get the offending tire up and prepare to put on the spare. a park ranger stops and we tell him ā€˜no prob we got this, thanks for checkingā€™ and poof-heā€™s gone.
now the fun really starts! we canā€™t figure out how to remove the spare from itā€™s storage at the underside of the rear of the dodge van. we drive imports and wellā€¦theyā€™re easier to get to. after at least an hour of greasy, grimy and fruitless thrashing under the van and rapidly descending darkness, iā€™m thinkin ā€˜yeah- probā€¦we ainā€™t got thisā€™ā€¦and spewing expletives, now I NEEDED a DRINK!happy @#$%^! birthday indeed!
thanks to some deity more powerful than those rock guarding spirits of chaco canyon another car pulled over and we described our situationā€¦we were seriously considering doing damage to the rental van, since we had purchased the ā€œwalk-awayā€ insurance option, to get that f@#%&$ spare from itā€™s storage placeā€¦the nice people who stopped saidā€™oh just use the jack handle and unscrew the spare tire mount like this". boom! out comes the spare and weā€™re on our way! sensing my seething anger greg says ā€œiā€™ll buy the wine at dinner toniteā€ā€¦got to farmington late had dinner, soaked greg for 4 bottles of wine and when we got up the next morningā€¦ā€œroad tripā€™s over!ā€ i proclaimedā€¦weā€™re going back to cali lickety splitā€¦no stopping except to sleep and eat and pee. well, the spirits got me a speeding ticket in utah to boot. they move fast and can get ahead of you and set up the lawmen for you!
anyway, iā€™m going to new mexico again this month and am thinking i should maybe take the rock back, too.

77

Hello,

Our adventure began on July 4th, ā€˜76. Our family was attending the bicenntenial fireworks display in DC on board a puke green, 1974 Aspen station (You know just the one Iā€™m talkinā€™ about.) Myself, parents and 3 sisters made the journey to the fireworks in 2 hours. We finally found a place to park and proceeded to wait for the next 6 hrs. for darkness to fall. The fireworks were great! But thatā€™s where the fun endsā€¦ Somehow an entire quart of Cygon, was spilled causing the entire car to fill with an ungodly stench. For those of you who donā€™t know, Cygon was an inseticide banned by the EPA in the late 70ā€™s due to serious health concerns. The stench was so bad all 6 of us had throbbing headaches. We were in a traffic jam for 5-6 hrs on the DC beltway which had turned into a parking lot. My 2 little sisters were screaming their heads off incessantly. As my Dad, the driver, was intermittently falling asleep. We made it as far as Leesburg, Va when the car ran out of gas. We had to go to the police station to get gas b/c by this time it was 4am. When by the officer why we ran out of gas my father replied he hadnā€™t planned on sitting in traffic for 6 hrs. Our family has never recovered physically and mentally from the trip and the toxic fumes we inhaled.

Sincerely,

John McAllister

78

It was on a family vacation from the San Francisco area to Legoland. We started off on a hot summer day driving down the Central Valley in our 1991 Ford Taurus wagon. About three hours out, at a balmy 106 degrees, our air conditioning quit, adjacent to miles of feeder lots. We pulled over, but couldnā€™t find anything we could repair, and decided to forge on to Los Angeles. Approaching the Los Angeles area, we had to pass over the Grapevine: a steep, many mile climb. Three quarters of the way up, the thermostat failed. The car overheated and ruptured a seam in the radiator. We limped up to a pull-out where we could get water. We were soon joined by a school bus in a similar state. The bus was full of accordion players. We let the car cool off, refilled the radiator, and drove into Los Angeles, stopping every ten miles to refill the radiator.
We pulled into our discount hotel right next to Los Angeles International Airport, relaxed in the pool for a few hours to the roar of landing jet aircraft, and after dinner discovered that our hotel was fully occupied by a National Accordion Convention. We were lulled to sleep that night by the sounds of accordion music wafting through the ventilation.
The next morning, with the minor supplies and tools on hand, I removed the failed thermostat, refilled the radiator, and continued on our journey to San Diego, stopping every 20 miles to refill the radiator. Our first morning in San Diego, we went out in search of a radiator shop that could repair our Taurus. While we enjoyed a wonderful day at Legoland, the shop was able to find a replacement radiator but needed an additional three to four days to obtain the replacement parts for the air conditioning compressor. We opted to continue our vacation in the fine family tradition of decade past - driving with the windows down.
We spent several more days in the San Diego and Los Angeles areas before setting out for home. We scheduled our departure so that we would hit the Central Valley at dusk, when it would be only about 102 degrees. We returned home late that night, with no further maladies except a case of windburn. The air conditioning remained non-functional until the carā€™s eventual demise when it cracked a cylinder head a few years later.

79

On my first honeymoon in 1974 (many others to follow) we decided to drive in our blue 1969 Sunbeam Arrow (similar to the attached file) from Nova Scotia to Alberta via what was left of Route 66 with the required long detours at both the start and end of Route 66. The Sunbeam stopped accelerating above about 20 miles per hour just west of Albuquerque. The little British car finally broke down in Grants, NM. We were stranded at a Texaco station owned by Bob Barker (not the famous one) for 5 days while Bob and his mechanics tried to find out what was wrong. Being more familiar with American cars, their diagnostic efforts were unsuccessful. I finally dissembled the carburetor and found a small hole in the diaphragm. After considerable effort to find a replacement part, including public service announcements from Albuquerque radio stations, I folded a plastic bread bag to 4 layers and cut out a new diaphragm. The bread bag took us all the way to Los Angeles where foreign car parts were readily available. We then traveled all the way back east to Yorkton, SK before returning, after some 7,000 miles, to our final destination, Calgary, Alberta.

80

It was Feb 7, 1971, our wedding day in Baltimore, MD. We left the wonderful wedding and reception with our clothing, a few special items and a few of our wedding gifts to drive to Colorado Springs, CO in my 1968 VW bug. We spent our wedding night in a hotel on the west side of town. During the night, my husband heard a noise and rushed out to interrupt thieves taking stuff out of our car. He made the thieves put the stuff back. He had run out barefoot and cut his heel very badly and we had to get first aid supplies from the hotel staff. We were awake by then, so headed out early for the first leg of our trip when we were pulled over by a cop for going 40 in a 30 mile zone. After my husband limped back to the police car and explained the situation, the officer agreed to let us go with just a warning. During the day, we ran into snow on Hwy 70 west and made it as far as western PA. Next morning it was still snowing but we made it to St Louis. That night, we DID NOT WAKE UP when the thieves came and stole all the stuff except for my one suitcase in the hotel room. After we filed the police report and got the broken wing window repaired, we vowed to drive straight thru to Colo Spgs. We were on a state road in the middle of nowhere on a narrow two lane road between Hwy 70 and Colo Spgs when we blew a tire. After getting that fixed (in the old days when cars had spare tires), we finally ended our wedding road trip at 4 am when we arrived. I have had other people tell me of horror stories from honeymoons and I have formed a theory that a bad honeymoon is a good indicator of a good marriage. Don and I are on year 38 and we still do take car trips together. We still have adventures but not as good as the first one. Linda and Don G, St Charles, MO