It could have been an even longer letter…
It was a hot August day and we were driving home from St. Louis to Las Vegas on Interstate 70 in our 2007 GMC Savana Conversion van with 23,000 miles. In the van were my wife, 11 year old daughter, 10 year old white shepherd (Martha) and our 6 year old Boston Terrier (Kelly). My wife was raised in the Midwest and always hated coming back to Vegas and the searing heat so you can readily see that her attitude was already unpleasant.
We left Denver early that morning and enjoyed the greenery of the beautiful Rockies before descending into western Colorado and the “browness” of eastern Utah. There is a part of I-70 that is totally desolate. In fact, there is signage in Green River, UT that warns motorists that the next automobile services were 129 miles down the road. In terms of finding help, this is much like the Apollo 13 flight to the moon.
I reckon we were 30 miles past Green River when it happened. Going up a grade on the divided interstate, the van simply lost power and stalled. I pulled over to the side of the road and tried to restart the van. It was 96 degrees (cool by Las Vegas standards), but I could already hear the impatience in my wife’s voice and saw the worry in Martha’s eyes. Thankfully, the van restarted, but as I tried to pull forward, it didn’t have enough power to make it up the hill and then stalled a second time. It sounded as if it were either starved for fuel (which was almost full) or perhaps the air cleaner was clogged. I pulled over to the shoulder again and got it restarted so the a/c could keep running.
In between my wife hollering that we were all going to die, I confidently raised the hood and looked for the problem. It was then that I realized that I don’t know a darn thing about cars, engines or how they work! Meanwhile, my wife had exited the van and was trying to call AAA. She soon realized that our cell phone coverage was in the area where both of the two major companies have no color charts, no service, nada.
I climbed to the top of the small hill we were on and did get “one bar” that faded in and out. I got AAA, but they put me on hold and then I lost them. I then tried a friend and told him I was stuck, but then lost him before I could tell him where. Finally, the phone gave out and I began to think that for once in her life, maybe my wife was right: she never should have married me!
Martha was outside the van now, panting heavily with a very disappointed look on her face. Kelly was chasing lizards and my wife was jumping up and down like Yosemite Sam. After about an hour a trucker came by and saw the hood of the van open. One of the “knights of the road” took pity on our plight and let us use his truck phone with the big antenna, which did make the connection to AAA.
About an hour and a half later, the tow truck arrived. He had come 75 miles to find us. He loaded the van on the back of his truck and then we lifted Martha (who weighs 120 lbs) and Kelly into the back seat scrunched there with my wife and daughter. He drove us 100 miles to Richfield, Utah. When he dropped us off, the van started right up! We spent the night there and drove home to Las Vegas the next day without incident.
Epilogue: When I took the van into the dealership that next week, the tech said that the battery cable was loose and that was probably what caused the van to lose power. I guess the AAA guy must have tightened it enough when he was rummaging around under the hood. Needless to say this was a “road trip from hell.” Sadly, Martha is gone now and the ex-wife is now living back in the Midwest…but still, life is good!
In 1988 at 20 years old, I accepted a summer job in the Rocky Mountains. At the time, I lived in my Dad’s rural farm house outside of Stillwater, Oklahoma and drove a 1967 Volkswagen Karmann-Ghia. I figured that with mountain driving coming up, it would be wise to start the trip with a little equipment upgrade to get me safely to my job on Monday.
The Saturday before the trip, I had 4 new tires installed and bought a set of brake pads, planning to do the brakes myself Sunday morning before hitting the road. To get to the brake pads, you must remove the tires and brake drums, so I fished out a lug wrench and got to work… except I couldn’t begin to budge the lug nuts. None of them! The grease monkeys who’d installed my new tires had apparently gone crazy with the pneumatic impact wrench and had severely over-tightened all the lug nuts! And since this was a Sunday, the shop that screwed it up was closed.
Well, I was on a sort of a farm, so I hunted around until I found an 8 foot length of pipe to use as a cheater bar and slipped it over the lug wrench handle. When I stood on the end of the cheater, the socket end of the lug wrench broke… just split open. I tried the same with with my Dad’s “star” lug wrench and broke it too. Then I ruined a 3/4" drive ratchet wrench. I’m not sure just how many tools I broke and how many hours I spent trying to find another one to break, but it was getting well into the afternoon before I found my solution. Any old VW owners out there remember the really cheap and cheesy looking tire tools that VW supplied with their cars back then? They consist of a tubular socket stamped out of a piece of steel tubing and about 2 feet of steel rod for a handle that you slip in a hole drilled in the middle of the socket. Well, I didn’t have one of those in my car, but after a long frustrated search for ANYTHING that might help, I found the VW tool up in the barn! I was sure there was no way it would work, but it did! It still required the cheater bar, but every damned nut came off, screeching horrible as they did. I did finally get the brake job done at about 7pm.
By now you’re thinking, “that sure sounds like Hell, but he ain’t even on a trip!” Well, though I was tired, I did set out on the journey that night. Aside from stopping every 100 miles or so to check my aging car, stretch my legs or nap, I did make it to the mountains and had a pretty decent time over the rest of the summer. Except for a little heavy breathing on account of the thin mountain air, the car did OK too. OK, that is, until it was time to head back home.
On the return trip, I headed down from Estes Park, Boulder and through Denver. When I reached the east side of Denver and out on the open road of I-70, the car was breathing better and I ramped her right on up to speed, then eased back on the throttle to settle in to some steady driving. What’s that!? All of a sudden, the engine is racing and the car is slowing down! It took me a heart-sinking moment to figure it out, but the transmission had popped out of 4th gear. Turns out, it would stay in 4th as long as the car was accelerating or working against an uphill grade. Well, there’s a practical limit to how long you can keep accelerating and precious little grade on I-70 from Denver, CO to Salina, KS. I wound up having to keep my hand on the shift lever and hold that sucker in 4th the whole way. That wasn’t too bad for the first few miles, but it got mighty tiresome thereafter. By the time I got home, my right hand was sore and my arm ached something fierce. At least I was home.
In spite of all that “fun,” I kept that car for a long time after that trip. I planned to restore it some day when I had some free time. I even turned down a $1500 offer on it in it’s semi-running condition (it’d run if you put it on a trailer towed by a semi). Last summer there was a grass fire out at my Dad’s place where I’d had it parked. Now it’s just a rapidly rusting skeleton. Sniff
Our family of 6 were heading to Colorada from Houston, Texas. We had borrowed a Chevy Suburban to make the trip and goT as far as a desolate area of New Mexico when the vehicle suddenly stopped running. All of us were standing on the side of the road wondering what to do as this was way before cell phones. All of a sudden our 4 kids started yelling because theY saw their grandparents speeding toward us and we thought that help had arrived. The idea was that we left Houston at different times and would meet up at a specified location at the end of the first day, then proceed together to the final destination. Well as the grandparents got closer and closer our kids got onto the edge of the road and began to jump up and down and yell at the approaching car. It never slowed down but sailed right on by. In hindsight my wife’s mother can be excused because she was asleep in the passenger seat however Grandad was driving. Was he alos asleep??? How can you excuse him who did not recognize his own family and 4 grandchildren on the side of the road yelling and jumping up and down. SOME PEOPLE SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED TO DRIVE.
I finally had enough of New England winters and decided I needed the warmer weather of AZ. So I went to pick up the trailer I had given to my ex that he had left behind in IN when he moved to CA and that’s when the best laid plans had “Murphy’s Law” written all over them. “Khemosabi”, my 1999 Ford Ranger has proven to be my faithful friend.
First, I locked my keys in my truck at my aunt’s driveway at the half-way point between my house and the trailer. Then, when I went to bring the trailer home, I ran out of gas about 10 miles from my aunt’s house. I think my uncle still hates me.
Loading up the trailer, my son packed the spare for it behind a trunk, despite being told that it needed to be at the back “just in case”. My son had to be on a plane to fly to my ex’s so he could get ready for college, but he hadn’t finished helping me pack or clean. Did I forget to mention that I’m disabled and walk with a cane and we lived on the 2nd floor? That meant I had to carry everything one-handed down the stairs either to the trailer or to the dumpster to be taken care of. I was a day and a half late leaving.
On my way back out towards my aunt’s, that tire that I had SO carefully tried to make sure was at the back was sorely needed when… you guessed it! The trailer tire blew! Now, I had debated signing up for the RV policy on my auto club, but I didn’t have enough money in my checking account at the time, so I just went with the better policy. BAD MOVE. By the time I paid for emergency road service and two new tires (the other one was dry-rotted too), I was out all of my $400 in cash, and my landlord had given me my security deposit back in a check on a HOLIDAY WEEKEND. All I had to eat with was the hand full of change I kept in my ash tray until the holiday was over.
Once I got to my aunt’s house and got all settled in (I ended up sleeping in a rest area), my uncle woke me up in the middle of the night because the puppy I was training as a service dog was barking. So I got up, brought her cage in, and settled down again. The next morning I saw the devastation my puppy had wrought upon my aunt’s garden! I was so upset! I offered to stay longer and try to fix some of it, but they were expecting more company and had to hustle me out the door for their next expected guest. I felt SOOOOO bad.
As I got to Columbus, OH the “check engine” light came on in the truck. Uh oh. I pulled over at the next exit and waited for it to cool down, checked all the fluid levels, etc., but everything seemed okay. I continued on but watched my gauges closely.
Never follow a GPS without an atlas to back it up. It might work in the city, but traveling across the country, you have no idea where you are going to end up… especially in the middle of the night! I ended up in some beautiful country, I’m sure, but as I watched my gas gauge creep lower and lower with no hint of civilization around, not even a security light, I got really nervous. Its hard to call your auto club with no cell phone signal. In the end, I found a gas station in a little town out in the middle of nowhere and I had just enough left on my debit card to get me going again, or I would have been parked there till morning.
I thought I had everything licked until about 10 miles from the AZ border when my truck finally let me know that it was tired of being treated like a pack mule. Instead of just glowing"check engine", it was now FLASHING! It was also making some nasty hiccuping and occasional back-firing noises and couldn’t go over 35mph on a hill.
He desperately needs some engine work done now, but he still starts and he can still get me to the grocery store. I just won’t ask him to do any hills for awhile.
I have a horror story for you I was driving form limestone Maine to Ellsworth Maine a 200 plus mile trip in my trusty 1982 Pontiac T-1000. a lot of the trip is just country no rest stops no exits nothing. it was about -5 f outside. the first thing that happened was the starter was acting up ( had to whack it with a broom stick that morning) so i just left it running every where i went that day. about i quarter of the way home the back wheel on the drivers side started vibrating so i pulled over and found all the lug nuts where almost off oops. and i left the four way in the driveway with the rest of my tools so i hand tightened them and got on my way stopping every 5 miles or so and re tightening them.
it started pouring slush and ice. then my wind shield wipers stopped working with a loud pop I later found out the arm from the motor snapped. well it was impossible to see ice was building up so i pulled over and rigged the wipers with a rope and an bungee cord and got moving again now with manual wipers. drove for a while like this fine then it started getting cold in the car and the oil lite came on so i pulled over again tightened the rear wheel. and opened the hood my oil cap was gone So after some cursing I added some oil stuffed some MC Donalds napkins in the oil hole and got in the car. it was freezing in there but i just kept driving until the transmission started slipping so i pulled over again tightened the lug nuts open the hood. started looking and found the transmission cooling line had rubed against the engine and chafed a hole in the line while at the same thme chafed the upper rad hose just a pin hole but that explains no heat so i tried tape that did not work at all would not stick to the hose with oil antifreeze atf and ice.
i figured out to wrap the hose with tape then wrap rope around that barely worked.
i added some atf and anti freeze i was glad i had with me. I now had heat once i got feeling back in my legs and hands I drove for over 100 miles like this only stopping to
check the rear wheel when i finally pulled in to a gas station they where closing but the guy working there gave me some hose clamps piece of brake line and a piece of rad hose. he also tightened my back wheel (once he was done laughing at my wiper setup) at this point i did not care it was about -10 f now and i just wanted to get home i re-patched the hose and line the best i could got in turned the key and the starter was not engaging so i searched around the closed gas station for some thing to whack the starter with. now a cop sees me sneaking around the outside of this station and comes flying in blues blazing and calls me over. well i talk to him explain about the starter. he lets me warm up in his cruiser and he pulls a mini pry bar out of his truck and watches me get the car started
finally I’m moving again.I left at about 10:00 am it was now 1:00 am I’m cold and hungry i was all most home about 20 miles left oil light came back on i opened the hood and she stalled it had sucked the napkins in the oil full hole and blew out most of the oil
i found more napkins. but no more oil. looked around in the car atf wtf? i dumped in two
quarts of atf and drove it home. finally amazingly i fixed the problems and drove the car for another 5 years after this it had no permanent damage.
My husband and I were attending a wedding in March 2010, in Southeast Kansas. Now normally in March the weather is pretty nice. I remember when my son was married in 1997 and it was beautiful weather. We are from Wichita and you just do not see snow get that bad. But in southeast Kansas the snow got about 4 feet deep. My husband was telling everyone how we were in an all wheel drive and how we would not be getting stuck. But that was before we ventured out in the country on gravel roads to attend the reception and on the way back we got high centered with no utensil to dig us out. Fortunately, a good Samaritan from the same wedding, drove by in the form of a Chevy ? ton four-wheel-drive and was able to pull us out. Since then my husband has purchased a small shovel that will live in our Suzuki SUV for the rest of its life.
While in the Air Force, and newly re-arrived in the States aftermy European Long Tour, I needed to buy a car to get myself from St. Louis to Charleston, SC. Foolishly choosing style over substance, I bought a '76 Lincoln Continental Mark IV. I was all fluffed up, cruising my DDG Linc while looking out over that acre of hood! I was King of the World 'til I hit Nashville. The Linc, previously all right for the most part, had anannoying habit of stalling at stop lights but always started right up again. Except for the last time. A light turned yellow, I decided not to shoot it, and that 460 interference engine swallowed its own guts right then & there. Long story short, Stately Allfarms insurance didn’t cover that contingency. I towed that non-running crate to Charleston, futzed around trying to get it running again, but to no avail. Not long after, someone severely smashed a rear fender & folded the back bumper in a nasty parking-lot accident. As the Linc no longer ran, I called Stately Allfarms to send out a rep. They refused, telling me I had to have it towed to their shop. Figuring they’d deny the claim, and increase my rates though I had nothing to do with the wreck, I told Stately Allfarms to do something anatomically impossible & sold the Linc for parts.
We planned a trip to Disney World from Texas with my wife, 3 children and my recently widowed mother. Before we got out of town we had a flat, that should have told us what type of trip we were going to have. We arrived at a KOA campground pulling a pop-up tent trailer. One of the campground owners teenage sons guided us to our campsite. He helped me back into our site. We all got out and I started getting our trailer tent ready. I thought the teenage boy had unclamped both of the clamps that keep the top latched to the body of the trailer. I thought wrong, he only unclamped one. I started raising up the top and I heard I “pop.” We had broken a cable. I had a 2x4 in the trailer that I used to prop up the top. No worries, we were ready to see Micky!!!
As we drove across the panhandle of Florida, we stopped for a bathroom break. I noticed that the rubber on one of the trailer tires was seperating. No worries, when we got to Talahassee, we looked for a tire store. Well, they had to send to another store to find one but we got it installed and we were off to see Micky!!!
We arrived at Disney World and it was late and raining cats and dogs. I am not that good at backing a trailer and to do it in the dark without backup lights in a monsoon was not easy. We got in and got to bed!! Off to see Micky!!!
After a couple of fun filled days we returned to out campsite to find a note. We needed to call home imediately. We called my mother-in-law only to find out that my Dad’s mom had a heart attack. Since my dad had passed away, it was necessary that my mother return home immediately. She arranged to take a flight back to Texas the next morning. During the night, we kept hearing the automatic door locks on our van locking and then unlocking. When I got up the next morning to take my mom to the airport our battery was dead. We called one of the wonderful people from Disney and someone came out to give us a jump start. I got my mother to the airport in time and someone helped us fix the van. Myself and the rest of my family stayed at Disney World.
The next day we got back to our trailer only to find another note to call home. My grandmother had passed away and we would have to leave to go to the funeral. We got up and had two days of hard driving to get back to Texas. The next day we had to drive for 6 hours to go to my grandmothers funeral which was on a Saturday. On Monday I went back to work, ready for a chance to relax back in my rut!
I bump my car because of the rocky road! It is hell. My tires have been flat. And I don’t know what to do. It is a dark road. 