Volcanic Vibes

8/3/2017

I woke feeling distinctly uneasy – it’s very odd to be in a hotel room, and even odder to not have Jane nearby. Fortunately, Don at the Mustang Ranch called up at 9:30 AM to tell me that he had already replaced Jane’s starter! I had planned on going over there to help out if needed but a starter’s a fairly simple thing and he had just taken care of it.

He sent his “other guy” – I believe his son? – to pick me up at the motel, which was really nice. We pulled up at the Mustang Ranch and there was Jane, sitting there innocuously in the parking lot like she hadn’t been a major pain in my rear the day prior. Jane is Jane, I guess.

Don and I took the opportunity to chat for another hour or so before it was time to take off again. He warned me that he thought that my starter hadn’t been engaging all the way properly, which had resulted in accelerated wear on the ring gear on the flywheel. For those of you reading who aren’t car people – basically, imagine that the back of the engine has a giant gear on it (this is the flywheel ring gear). The starter is effectively a small, powerful electric motor with a gear attached to it that engages with the big gear on the backside of the engine to turn it until it starts. So, if the starter gear doesn’t fully engage with the ring gear, instead just catching it by a little bit, you get a lot of wear because the teeth aren’t meshing right. And eventually, they won’t mesh at all, so the starter gear will spin without contacting the engine at all. That’s probably what happened to me.

Anyways, Don said that the new starter would probably do me to get home, but that I should really be careful and replace the flywheel ring gear as soon as I could. Even the new starter would make grinding noises every once in a while, indicating that there was a spot on the ring gear that was more worn than the rest. But hey, life goes on, and I now knew the cause of the problem and how to fix it. If I was to encounter the horrible grind again, I knew that I just had to push Jane forward a couple feet until the ring gear turned over to a good spot. Annoying, but livable.

Really can’t thank Don enough for his help in getting Jane and I back on the road and ready for more adventures. The best I could do was thank him for his help profusely, and then leave him alone to do his other work. And so Jane and I regretfully left that lovely shop, soldiering on to the day’s destination: Mount St. Helens!

I was really excited to see St. Helens, actually – I have to admit that even though I’m a geologist, I really haven’t seen that many volcanoes in my life, and I definitely haven’t seen any that have been active in the past few decades. Though this volcano is best known for the May 1980 eruption that blew its top off and caused the largest debris avalanche in modern recorded history, it has seen several smaller-scale eruptions since then and is still active today. Helicopter tours give tourists an exceptional view down into the top of the crater, where they can observe the new lava dome building inside it. And for those of us who can’t afford to go gallivanting about in the sky like that, you can still see a good portion of the interior of the crater through the collapsed wall of the volcano from the visitor center. Most excellent!

Alas, it was not to be. As I made my way south, the roads got hazier and hazier, smoke hanging heavy in the air and smothering the landscape. Upon reaching the visitor center, I found that the volcano – close as it was – was almost completely invisible! All I could distinguish was a bit of snow fringing the top.

Believe it or not, this is actually a picture of Mount St. Helens. Technically. If you strain your eyes real hard you might be able to see the lighter color in the sky where the little bit of snow on the top of the volcano is...

The visitor center exhibits were closed for cleaning, adding to the disappointment. I tried to make the best of things, eventually arriving at the conclusion that I had just visited Mt. St. Helens on a day that probably looked very much like it did a few days after the 1980 eruption. When there’s already ash falling from the sky and smoke blanketing everything, it’s easy to imagine yourself in the aftermath of an eruption.

Of course, it then occurred to me that if there was actually to be an eruption that day, I would have no way of seeing the warning signs and would instead probably just get deafened by the eruption and then subsequently buried in a lahar (a thick slurry-like debris flow of volcanic ash, organic matter, and water), which would be terrible.

So I cleared out of there pretty quick.

Jane and I scooted south, making our way through Portland and on to Salem. Now, someone told me that Portland is always cool and rainy. Well, that is patently untrue. As I passed through it was an absolutely awful 102*F. It was hazy, it was smoky, and the sun seemed hellbent on cooking whatever was in my backseat through that cursed fastback rear glass. I turned the AC on, for once, resulting in a cool frontside and a still-sweltering backside. Not terribly helpful.

I scrapped the idea of camping in a nice cool refreshing Oregonian campground, as it became apparent that the entire state was giving Nevada a run for its money in the temperatures department. My day thus ended in further disappointment with me bedded down in a hotel room. Crossing my fingers for an improvement in the weather tomorrow!

Until then… Kelly signing out.