Tales from the Christensen Cruiser

I went in the front door to find doctor Schwyzer and he helped me back the truck into the driveway. I hadn’t been there since he did a big remodel and the house looked great. There is a whole new section and the kitchen is in a totally different place. Robbie had gotten a new puppy a few months back, so this was the first time I had met him. Carl is a handsome boy, but a bit wound up. He is an Australian Shepard after all. Evelyn, his other dog, is an older gal and moving a bit slower these days. There was evidence of destroyed items all over the place – Carl is a working dog, and I think he is convinced that his job is to eat stuff. Almost anything is fair game, but he likes to eat a good book on a regular basis. The glasses and the hearing aids are more of an appetizer, saved for special occasions. More on Carl later. I hadn’t been there for more than a few minutes when Eric showed up – great to see him as well. Two guys I have known for forty years – pretty sweet. The next morning Eric came and took me up to his house where he helped me fax the last of my legal stuff, once again with some good old pals. Finally my divorce was finished. Nothing to celebrate, but it was good to have it done.

I started finding stuff that needed fixing at Robbie’s house and got to work – fun projects. We started making a list as we went. I hooked up outdoor speakers, unearthed and resurrected a bicycle that had been in one place for long enough for an inch wide tree to grow through it, Taken in trade and relegated to being locked with the doctor’s seventh grade Schwinn three speed bike, it was to become my secondary transportation around Santa Fe. A nice ride.

Meanwhile, the truck was in dry-dock in a safe harbor. I needed to replace a heater motor so I would have a defroster and heater as I head away from summer and beaches and into fall and the mountains. There were several projects to do on the rig, but the first thing I wanted to do was to address the oil leaks and just take a look underneath. I got under and started to test out the bolts on the oil pan and they were all about three quarters of a turn loose – just about forty years of loose. I got to have my Robert Persig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance moment and go around the whole oil pan and transmission and snug up every bolt I could see. All needing the same bit of tightening. Very cool, and very meditative. It’s one of those things where you are putting some energy and some good vibes into a machine; just the sort of thing Robert was talking about in “Zen”.  I do believe that putting that time and energy into a machine reaps rewards down the road, or up a brutal mountain pass or some such.

When I got to town, I got to re-connect with an old pal from high school. Toby and I were really close for a few years and had drifted apart long ago due to geography mainly. We had been in touch recently but hadn’t spoken much and hadn’t seen each other in forty years or so. It was just fabulous. He took me to an open studio tour in the neighboring town of Galisteo, where we just got to hang out and go to a bunch of studios. Really great work of all kinds. The high point was going to a studio that was not on the tour. Toby knew the guy so we got to go for a visit. His name is Woody Gwyn, and in his studio he was working on a just mind-blowingly amazing tempera painting, about four by eight foot wide landscape painting. It is a photo real scene that is so amazing I had to sit down and stare at it for a while. He is an incredible artist who I didn’t know anything about. Really nice guy, and he had a cool truck too! He had this rig that was a big box truck with panels that opened up to see out of – a mobile studio! It was so cool – he can drive to a spot that interests him and work plein air from the comfort of the back of the truck. Woody is a tall guy like me, and I could stand up in this truck. I have thought of such a rig, but hadn’t seen one on the hoof. I want to build one. A couple of days later he took me on a mini-road trip way out in the sticks on dirt roads for miles and miles. It was just great. We drove through this town that was in this totally isolated hidden little valley with a bend in the Pecos river running through it – just a beautiful place with a few nice fields to farm right on the river. It’s miles of dirt roads to get to this place, and is a place not too many people ever get to see. Again, it showed me that people don’t tend to change all that much. Toby was a great guy when we were young, and he’s still a great guy – just more so.

I also got to work on replacing the blower motor for the heater and defroster, something that hadn’t worked since I left Tacoma in 2011.  A major job compared to my other Ford trucks, which are just five years older than the Cruiser. On all of those trucks, it’s three bolts and an electrical connection and the motor is out; on this truck, it was four hours to even get to it, and that is with a factory manual to guide me. (I usually don’t resort to the manual on anything until I am totally frustrated, if at all, but by 1973, Detroit was building these monstrously complicated vehicles, and the manual was a big help on this job.) Figuring I was heading into winter, possible snow and general cold, this project seemed like a good idea for the safety and comfort of the rest of the trip.

About then, I started getting calls from the ranch that the water system was once again on the fritz, and they couldn’t get it working again. Though not pleased that this was happening again just four months since it was broken last, it seemed that the universe wanted me to go to the memorial for my friend. So I bought the bend over ticket and flew the next day to California to fix water and go to the gathering. I brought an ill-fitting wetsuit that I bought really cheap at some thrift store on the trip east in a plastic bag and got on the plane.