First days are for fiascos

7/11/17

You know, I think almost every single trip I’ve ever left on has just been kind of junky on the first day. Back in 2014, Jane’s fuel pump wiring had gotten crossed with some alarm wiring and caused it to short out every quarter mile… three hours away from home, so limping back took a good six hours. In 2015, I outran a snowstorm and then had to check my timing every time I stopped for gas because the distributor was buggered. Last year, the lower radiator hose jumped off of the car and dumped all of the coolant out as soon as I got to my campground for the night.

Well, this year is no exception, and man was it a doozy. The difference is that this year, I was kind of equally involved in the fiasco!

Jane and I left our home in Austin, TX at around 2 PM, having just a quick six-hour jaunt up to Oklahoma City to accomplish for the day. I realize that six hours is a lot of driving for some people, but by now that seems like a nice short day to me.

I should have known better when I repeatedly knocked my head on random parts of the car (“I swear that wasn’t there a moment ago!”) as I packed her up.

I should have known better when she stalled out four times before I even got out of the driveway, for no readily visible reason.

I should have known better when the engine was behaving oddly.

But no, I was determined to leave, and so leave we did. I never listen to this car because I am a terrible person and I never learn.

Life was sunshine and butterflies right until I hit Robinson, a town just south of Waco. And then, suddenly, life was traffic and blistering heat and everything horrible. Apparently an hour before I arrived, four semi trucks and two cars were involved in a pretty fiery crash under an overpass a few miles up the interstate. The entire interstate was closed, and the only place to divert four lanes of traffic was the single-lane exit into the small town of Robinson. I ran into the slowdown about a mile and a half from the exit ramp.

It was 102*F out and was blisteringly hot. Traffic was completely gridlocked and a large number of semi trucks blocked any air movement and concentrated the heat immensely. Jane promptly did her best to overheat.

I’ve never seen this car get hot like this. Maybe there’s something wrong with my tune, or maybe it was just that hot out. I saw a few people pulled over on the side of the road with overheated vehicles, so at least it wasn’t just me. But I wasn’t about to pull over, because I had somewhere to be, traffic was only going to get worse, and there was no place to get relief from the sun. So instead I did my best to keep Jane cool.

In a vintage car (and many modern cars, actually), there are two or three things you can do to prevent overheating. The first is to turn the AC off, of course, to take the extra load off the engine. The second is to turn the heater on, which allows the engine to dispel some extra heat through the heater core. And the third is to rev the motor up above normal idle speed, which helps pull air through the radiator and move coolant through faster so it cools more quickly. All three of these things, of course, make it unbearably hot inside the car. So I sat there with my foot on the gas pedal, deliberately pumping air heated by 220*F coolant onto my feet, with the glass intensifying the sun and not a breeze in sight. I was quite literally cooking myself. Cabin temperatures were so high that getting out of the car felt like stepping into a nice air conditioned room – and remember, it was 102*F outside.

After about an hour of this I was not doing so hot (well, okay, I was totally as hot as a human being could probably be, but I was definitely not feeling great about it). I had used up my only accessible bottle of water, sweated all my sunscreen off twice, and was getting really tingly extremities. Not great. I started looking for any way out. Suddenly in my side mirror I saw a ’67 Chevy truck come flying up the shoulder, pursued by several other vehicles. I saw my chance to jump in behind them with a little less guilt. So it was kind of a bummer when that Chevy died about 200 feet up from where I had been and took up two lanes of traffic trying to get started again. I got back into a more left lane to get around it and sweated some more.

Eventually, I made it back onto the shoulder and cruised up a ways until it narrowed enough that I had to get back in line. I ended up next to a fellow in a beat-up F-150 that was also suffering from no AC, though his truck thankfully wasn’t overheating. We ended up driving (rolling) next to each other for the next two hours and got to know each other a little bit. His name was Daniel and he told me all about his job, some upcoming fishing that he was going to go do, and some really interesting stuff that he had done in the past. I think he saw that I was about done for and so chatted with me to try to keep my mind off of it a bit. I got out and walked alongside Jane periodically, trying to keep myself cool but really not succeeding. I knew that I was right on the brink of really being in trouble when I got cold getting out of the car (because 100*F+ air should never feel cold) and was losing feeling in my hands. A trucker thankfully offered me a bottle of water, which vanished in about three seconds flat but acted to stave off the impending heat stroke. I have to admit that I was more than a bit close to being in tears and was really working hard to try to keep myself together and to take care of my car. All I could do was to keep pushing through. Having someone to talk to and to look out for me (even though there was nothing either of us could really do about the situation) really helped.

Well, after THREE AND A HALF HOURS of this living hell, we finally got off that stupid exit ramp. Jane cooled down a bit once we were no longer blocked in by semi trucks, and so I got to cool down too as I got to turn the heater off. Life was looking up! And we had mostly survived, other than an odd rattling sound that had developed up front and some smoke coming from the driver’s side exhaust (ugh, again). I even had the time to take the only picture that I took that day:

Daniel lived in town and told me to follow him through a neighborhood shortcut so we could get around the rest of the traffic, which was backed up for another hour or so inside town. He took me to a gas station since both of us were running low on gas, and we chatted for a bit without the interference of Jane’s motor and the grumbling of semi trucks. Jane’s rattling sound was found to be the coolant overflow hose, which had somehow gotten too close to the fan and had been consumed as a result – no big deal. And she quit smoking once she cooled down some. So she got a clean bill of health. I, on the other hand, was pretty fried.

After a bit, Daniel said that he had to go to work, but that I was welcome to stay in his home for a few hours to get cooled down and wait for some of the traffic in town to clear. In his words, “Look I’m not trying to be WEIRD or anything, but if you want a place to stay for a bit, you can go to my place, I’ve got a pool and air conditioning”. So I took a chance on a stranger – because I believe in the kindness of people. And hey, he told me he wasn’t trying to be weird, so that has to count for something, right??

His home was five minutes away and he cranked the AC up and gave me some water while we chatted some more. Offered me anything in his fridge, full use of his pool and shower, whatever I needed. And then, after telling me how he used to never trust anyone for anything but had recently decided to let that go, he left to go back to work, leaving me – a stranger – alone in his house.

I sat there under the fans for a good hour and a half, contemplating that. We live in such a culture of fear and suspicion these days, with strangers being portrayed as shady characters to be avoided. And surely, some people are people to be avoided. But the thing is, most people are not. Most people are just people, and most people are far kinder than you could ever imagine. Over the past few years, I have really learned to put my faith in people. I use caution and try to be smart about it, but I have had some amazing experiences with people I’ve just met that I would never have had if I had been unwilling to make them my friends. You see, that’s all strangers are – just people that you haven’t become friends with yet.

And so, after eating some of Daniel’s food, taking a quick shower, and updating people on my whereabouts (ugh, how did it take me SIX HOURS to get to Waco from Austin?!), I hit the road again to get to Ft. Worth for the night. I'm so glad to have met a new friend and have every intention of paying his kindness forward somehow. The world is just a lot better when people are good to each other.

And hey, I survived another first day of a road trip! Bit close for comfort this time though. Until next time, Kelly signing out…