A Hot Rodder's Call

7/30 

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Hello friends. It’s been a while! It is now 2023. Jane and I have been taking road trips for nine years now. Mostly in the summer, although last year I did deviate from the norm and go somewhere when it wasn’t a billion degrees outside.

Nine years is a long time to be doing these trips. In fact, when I did my first trip in 2014, many called it a “trip of a lifetime”. The problem with a “trip of a lifetime” is that it indicates that you only do it once. Alas, I missed that connotation, and I’ve just kind of kept doing them. And I’ve kept dragging you all along with me via this little blog, which now houses many years of memories.

So here we are. Nine years down the road. This year, I was hoping to take Jane out on an in-depth loop around Arizona sometime in October. But sometime back in March, my Californian hot rodder friends sent out the call: all of us, Hot August Nights, August 1^st to 5^th, Reno, Nevada, one last time. Why one last time? Well, we’re all getting older (not so much a concern for me, but certainly for others), attending the show is getting more expensive (WAYYY more expensive), people are moving, family obligations are increasing. The usual "life” things.

Well, I’m a sucker for “one last times” and always a sucker for my friends, so I abandoned my ideas of a nice leisurely Arizona cruise in favor of one last screaming long-haul up the axis of the hottest parts of America in a bid to spend a few days with my friends at the coolest hot rod show west of the Mississippi. 

I immediately found a bit of a problem though: I had already planned a nice Canadian vacation with my parents to occur in the latter part of July. I was coming back the 27^th. Hot August Nights starts on the 1^st. That’s a pretty quick turnaround time for me to get home and then immediately have to drive 1800 miles in the opposite direction. And being a real person with a real job, I also was looking at a pretty huge chunk of vacation to spend all in one go… a dicey proposition.

But I am the master of “turn and burn”, and Jane is the master of getting me where I need to be, when I need to be there. So, I began to plan.

Ultimately, I decided that I would make this trip all about Hot August Nights, with only a few side forays into parks for hiking and camping. Instead, I would take a winding route up through Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and Nevada, doing my best to stick to mountain ranges wherever possible. This summer has been extraordinarily brutal – our hottest one yet, although probably not the hottest one to come – and long driving days through the blistering sun wear me down like nothing else. Better to do less driving, and do it in cooler climates. Knowing I would have just spent two weeks hiking around the Canadian Rockies, I was not too sad to miss out on all of my usual park stops – I figure I’ll hit them next year, or whenever I finally do succeed in my autumn tour of the Southwest!

I planned to take four days to drive the 1800 miles to Reno, including a day stop in Flagstaff to see a park. Then I would be in Reno for three days, and then do the drive in reverse, including a day stop in Flagstaff and a two-day stop in Chiricahua National Monument, landing me back at home only twelve days after initial departure. A quick sprint, with little to no margin for error. My specialty!

The plan sketched together, and hinging on a perfectly operational car and a perfectly operational me, I proceeded to… dink around like usual, obviously. I went to the Canadian Rockies. I came home on the 27^th. I laid on the couch for a day. And then I went into the garage and took stock of my darling Jane, who was 0% packed and had had a grand total of fifteen miles put on her in the past two months due to the excessive Texas temps. Does this sound stressful? Because it was, but not stressful enough for me to resolve to do anything about it beforehand, apparently. Hmm, this should be a familiar tale by now.

Fortunately I’ve done this so many times that I’ve got the packing list all but memorized. And Jane has done this so many times by now that I think we’ve just kind of got an understanding. So, I packed her up on the 29^th, made some minor tweaks, made my peace with the rest that I should have fixed months ago (hello, world’s squeakiest brake pedal), and went to bed.

On the 30^th, I got up, had some eggs for breakfast, then plopped in Jane. We swanned out of the garage around 10AM to already-scorching temperatures in the high 90’s, scraping a muffler on a high spot on my driveway and departing somewhat ignobly with a few sparks and a grumpy clatter of the sleepy motor. We were ready to make our first sprint of the trip. Hopefully.

I opted to take a route along a couple of smaller highways to start. It’s always nice to get to putter along on empty roads and through small towns to get warmed up, you know? So, Jane and I cruised westward through the Hill Country along a series of two-lane blacktops, enjoying the chance to get reacquainted with each other.

I always love this part. These old motors weren’t really made to do heavy city traffic. Over time they get kind of boogered up, a little lumpy feeling, weighed down by excess carbon deposits sitting around where they shouldn’t. But when you hit the open road, all those deposits get cleared out, all the lumps get leveled, and over time the engine just begins to sing. A practiced ear – such as that possessed by someone who’s been daily driving a vintage Mustang and periodically dragging it out on wild road trips for many years – can hear the difference clear as day. It’s a shift in the tone, a new depth to the power, a smoothing of the exhaust note into a perfectly regular rhythm. Oh, but it is satisfying.

Unfortunately, as you all know, on the first day of any trip I tend to be plagued by issues that Jane feels suddenly worthy of attention. And yes, they are almost always related to something I’ve been neglecting, so that’s on me. I’m mentioning this because you all should appreciate exactly how much practice it takes to enjoy this part, not a care in the world, head fully embedded in the sand with a complete lack of acknowledgement that things are very likely to go south at any point in time.

But here’s the thing, I am real real good at doing that. Partly because the song of a perfectly-tuned Ford 289 is enough to cause me to forget my worries. And partly because there’s not really a point in trying to anticipate what will be thrown at me, or when, because Jane is nothing if not inventive. But mostly because I have been scared to death of driving this car every minute of every hour since the wreck back in 2013 – more than ten years ago now - and at some point you just learn to get over the fear and get on with things. So here I am. Driving my rapidly-aging, rapidly-appreciating, completely irreplaceable hot rod halfway across the country, again.

Anyways, I can’t tell if Jane is mellowing in her old (older??) age, or if she was feeling merciful due to my own increasing age and impending frailty (I’m 32 now! 32! Positively ancient!), but that 289 kept running like a sewing machine all day.

We puttered through interesting little towns with distinctly European architecture.

 

 

We rumbled past sprawling ranches, ranchhouses snugged up against hills to avoid the winds of the prairies.

 

We roared up through a myriad of roadcuts, each appearing an odd slit shaved out of the landscape.

 

We howled through vast open scrubby plains cut only by the interstate, fencepoles and telephone poles whipping past impossibly quickly.

 

We raced under the wide blue sky, pursuing the clouds towards the distant blue mountains.

 

And by the end of the day those mountains had grown near, resolving into the numerous low ranges hidden in the depths of West Texas.

 

Our 470-mile run completed, we pulled into Van Horn, Texas, with plenty of time to spare. I half expected Jane to chuck some parts out the side of the engine a block away from the hotel. But miraculously, for what may be the first time ever, we made it to our destination on the first day completely without incident, all in one piece, Jane arguably in better condition than she had been when we left Austin. A visit to the local steakhouse and four glasses of water later, I was feeling pretty good about things. Could it be that we’ve finally made peace with each other? Or have I just discovered a route that Jane likes more than the awful haul through Lubbock and the worst of West Texas? Who knows! But I know better than to look a gift horse in the mouth.

And so, we’ve finished Day 1 of our long haul up to Reno. Pretty peaceful. I guess that doesn’t make for much of a story, but I’m happy for it. We’ve got enough stories around here anyways.

Tomorrow, we’ll get up and do it again.

Kelly signing out.