Resurrection

This is it! The moment you’ve all been waiting for (I’d like to think)! Jane and I are FINALLY back on the road. 

It’s been a rough year. COVID has completely reorganized the world and for a while, it seemed like things would never return to how they were. It still seems that way, in many ways. We’re all tired of hearing how covid has changed the world, though – every ad, news piece, and conversation seems inundated with it – so I’ll refrain from doing so here. All I’ll say is that I have been careful, and I have been lucky to have kept my health.

But there is a more subtle, more insidious side effect of our new covid world that I think is worth discussing: the problem of inertia (or rather, lack thereof).

To paraphrase Newton, the law of inertia means that a body in motion, will stay in motion, and that a body at rest, will stay at rest – barring any force acting upon the body to change its motion. This principle can be roughly applied to people in general: people who are used go moving and doing things find it easy to continue to do so, whereas people who are used to being at rest find it difficult to begin doing things without significant external force, and would find it easier to continue being at rest instead. And it is very hard not to have become a victim of inertia with the full force of covid bearing down on you, pushing you to slow down and stay at rest. And once you’re at rest, it is damn hard to get back into motion. I think that many of us are feeling the power of inertia now, especially as the world seems to be bouncing back into some semblance of normalcy.

I myself am very prone to this type of problem anyways, even without a global pandemic. I really dislike change, and I prefer to have my feet underneath me and to work within my comfort zone, which means I am much more likely to remain cautiously in one place and it can be hard to push me into action. This may puzzle some of my more familiar readers, who have seen me travel all over the country every summer, haring off on adventures that some would only dream of. Surely, the kind of person who does these kinds of trips can’t be the person self-described as cautious and inactive. But, it’s true.

Part of the reason that I built Jane was specifically BECAUSE I recognized this problem in myself. And I didn’t really know how to fix it, but I knew that I wanted to fix it. So for some reason my solution was, more or less, to build a car far bolder and far more exciting than I, and then I fit myself to it to match the mold I had made. Don’t get me wrong, the adventurous spirit has always been there. But it’s easily overwhelmed by the need to be cautious, so I found a way to help give it a boost. Jane is my own personal reminder that there are interesting, wonderful things in the world to see and do.

What I didn’t realize, until last year, was how much I had come to rely on my road trips with Jane as a true recalibration, a reminder that this is the person I’d rather be. It is easy to slip into old, bad habits. Getting out on the road acted as my yearly refresher, a nice little reset button to kick me back into action. Last year, without such a trip… well, I stagnated. Badly. I found ways to keep active, but still didn’t feel like myself. Given the extenuating circumstances, I think that’s alright, but I really missed the road.

So this year, I was especially excited to get to plan a new trip, finally!! But the closer I got to the departure date, the more inertia reared its ugly head… what I’m telling you is that it is really, really hard for me to make myself get off my couch, ESPECIALLY for another nine- to ten-hour drive through stupid west Texas!

But, this morning, I did it anyways. Jane was packed, and my usual first-day sense of impending doom had well and truly set in. I absolutely hate that drive, and something ridiculous always happens with Jane on the first day, and I would just rather sit on my couch. But I did it anyways.

There’s really not much to say about the drive from Austin to New Mexico. I guess there’s some bushes and trees, and occasionally some hills or interesting rocks. But mostly… none of those things. After Abilene, it gets really flat and depressing and boring. But the good news is that the State of Texas recognizes that that drive is terrible, so they make the speed limit 75-80 MPH so you can get through it as quickly as possible! So that’s good.

Jane and I flew along at a brisk clip, eating up the miles and counting every minute. The drive from Austin to Santa Rosa is 600 miles – 9.5ish hours – so there’s a lot of time to settle in and get back into the usual rhythm. Jane was running exceptionally well, everything was going great, and I still had a vague but manageable case of impending doom quickly masked by enjoyment of the (100-degree) wind in my face and new (occasionally not boring) sights to see.

At least there are nice clouds

Yay! Wind farm!

Just outside of Lubbock, I was abruptly reminded of why I always seem to have a case of impending doom-itis on the first day of every road trip… the classic “First-day Jane Revenge”. Every single year since 2014 – barring one exceptional year – something ridiculous has happened on the first day of every road trip. I chalk it up to Jane taking the opportunity to boot me in the ass for everything I’ve done wrong over the past year, in an extremely inconvenient but easily repairable way. In 2014, the fuel pump died in Kentucky. In 2016, the radiator hose randomly popped off in Carlsbad. In 2017, the radiator cap quit around Waco when I really needed it. In 2019, the coil died outside Santa Rosa. All things that could be fixed in an hour or less, but still inconvenient.

And now, on the first big trip in two years… I began to think that Jane had a double dose to throw my way.

So there I was, puttering along at 75 MPH with my impending sense of doom looming, trying my best to ignore it, when there was a loud POP! This noise was immediately followed by a plume of boiling coolant which conveniently directed itself straight onto my right foot. I went, “I KNEW IT!!!!!”, killed the engine, and pulled over to the shoulder of the highway, attempting to avoid the spouts of 200-degree coolant that still strove to reach my exposed skin.

The impending sense of doom went away. This – this is what I know. This is my affirmation that everything is still the same, no matter what the past year has wrought. Even if I struggle a bit sometimes, Jane is always the same. Here I am, 6 hours away from home, and true to form, Jane has given me an easily solvable but extremely inconvenient problem. And I felt better because of it.

So, I had a good laugh, and called my buddy Alan to see if he knew anyone in town who could maybe lend me a hand. The nice thing about a heater core exploding – if there is anything nice about it – is that you can just bypass it entirely, thus avoiding fixing it at all. All you have to do is cut one of the heater hoses, unhook the other one, and wrap the cut hose to the other hose’s port to connect the intake and the water pump and you’re good to go. Takes 5 minutes, tops.

Now what doesn’t take 5 minutes is the part where you should probably clean a couple gallons of coolant out of your interior, so you avoid standing in coolant for the rest of the trip. So it would have been nice to have a shop to go sit at – rather than the side of the road – to effect the repairs and mop up the mess. But Alan didn’t have anyone handy, unfortunately. Bummer.

No matter – this is the part where I get to talk about my other favorite part of road trips! As much good as Jane does setting me straight, road trips are also wonderful for reminding me that there are good people everywhere in this world. As I was on the phone with Alann, I heard a polite, “Ma’am?” from a ways out of the car. I stepped out to greet a fellow who had pulled up behind me to see if he had a way to assist. Truthfully, it was a huge assistance just having him there, as he was driving a big ole truck with service lights on the top, which he had flipped on. It’s nice to have some protection from someone accidentally smashing you right off the shoulder of the road, you know.

Adam – that was his name – asked if he could do anything to help, and I said, “well, my heater core is busted, it’s an easy fix, but I could use a shop to sit at so I can at least eyeball everything to make sure it wasn’t caused by an actual problem”. And lo and behold, he had a guy! Apparently, one of his old friends runs one of the biggest speed shops in Lubbock – 13 Sins Racecraft. So he gave him a ring while I called AAA to get them to give me a tow over to the shop.

AAA took 30 minutes to show up, during which time I had already finished the hose bypass (truly, it was a 5-minute repair, including the time it took for me to swear after sticking the knife blade right into the meat of my palm). We hustled right over to the shop, the tow truck following Adam’s truck. Two guys met us there – Darin, one of the owners/partners of 13 Sins Racecraft, and Bubba, also a member of the team. Neither one of them had met Adam before, but that didn’t seem to matter – all gearheads get pretty laser-focused when a car needs fixing!

Shame!!

At that point all I needed was some coolant (or just water, really) and some rags to mop up the displaced coolant that had taken up residence in my carpet, so there really wasn’t much to do. But damn if those wonderful dudes didn’t immediately start working! Not even a second thought – before I could even finish telling them what I needed to do, two of them were already in the interior sopping up coolant, and another had taken it upon himself to rinse coolant out of the floor mats. It turned out that I was the one with nothing to do! I finished tightening up the hoses in the bypass and then “fixed” a brake light – which turned out to not need fixing anyways – and before I knew it, Jane was all topped up with coolant and sorted out. I ran her up to temp, took her for an aggressive spin around the block, and we were good to go. Easy as that.

 

I'm actually really sad that this photo ended up blurry, but hopefully I can fix it a bit when I get home.

We spent some more time just hanging out shooting the shit – like you do when you meet new gearheads – but eventually I did have to get on the road so I could get on to Santa Rosa. It was tempting to stay in Lubbock to hang with my new friends (and there was a Great White concert in town to see!) but I knew I needed to make New Mexico today so I could make Colorado tomorrow. So, regretfully, I said my goodbyes.

But this is a good time to wrap back around to my point about road trips being good for one’s perception of humanity. Here’s the thing: no one is required to help you when you’re in trouble. No one has to stop. But someone always, always will. Granted, I’m a chick in a muscle car so probably my glasses are a little rose-tinted. Nevertheless, a big part of why I am comfortable going on trips to such distant destinations is because I know that if I get in trouble, someone will be there to help. And maybe I’ll end up with new friends! But really, I relish it more than you all could imagine, every time I meet someone who is just… good.

Good people are pervasive throughout this world, though it seems that many don’t believe that is true. They’re the people who stop to check on you on the side of the road, and offer you assistance. They’re the people who stop to keep you company while you’re waiting for AAA, because they don’t want to see you alone. They’re the people who run off creeps. The people who bring you cookies after running off said creep. The people who offer to put you up at their house for the night when you don’t have a place to stay. The people who feed you, or make sure you have enough water. The people who talk to you to keep your mind off a bad situation. The people who invite you on cruises with their friends, so you can meet new friends. The people who take you under their wing to teach you when you know nothing. And, yes, the people who stuff themselves into your car’s footwells to sop up coolant out of the carpet, unasked.

I tried to pay them for their help – or at least the new coolant – but they refused. I caught Adam trying to pay them too, which I thought even more touching. This guy had taken hours out of his day to make sure I was safe, pulled strings with his friend to get a shop opened up on a Saturday evening, and somehow he thought that still wasn’t enough. These people helped a stranger for no reason other than because they could, and didn’t want anything for it. And if that’s not good, I don’t know what is.

So I left Lubbock with an unexpected spring in my step, and Jane and I roared down another couple hundred miles of blacktop to get to Santa Rosa for the night as originally planned. No weird business now – just us, doing what we do best.

 

It's good to be back.

Kelly signing out.