Tales from the Christensen Cruiser

I headed out from Santa Fe towards Taos, as I’d never been. Another very cool New Mexico town, and headed towards Colorado Springs, taking Highway 64. Leaving Taos, I crossed over the Rio Grande Gorge bridge. Shortly after that I passed by a whole community of houses straight out of The Mother Earth News in the Seventies. Turns out it is called The Greater World Earthship Community. There were tons of passive solar homes built out of recycled materials and totally wild in form. I didn’t stop, but have looked the community up and it’s way cool. Houses are built out of old tires filled with earth and a bunch of other innovative materials. They are off the grid and passive solar among other things. They are totally wild looking and did this old hippie’s heart good to see them.

I then connected back with Highway 285, a road I had travelled since Texas. I headed north to Highway 24 east to Colorado Springs, where I got to catch up with my friend Les, who is another friend from college days. We conquered two passes on the drive, the first Poncha Pass, just over 9,000 feet, and Wilkerson Pass, which is 9,500 feet. That’s as high as I got on the whole trip, at least elevation-wise. It was really wonderful to hang out with Les. We used to spend a lot of time back in the day, hanging out and drinking coffee, (among other things…). I still remember how he would methodically pour the water into the Chemex – a fun ritual to remember. I got to go on a couple of walks with Les and his dogs up to the reservoir right up behind his house. He lives right up against the mountains, so a block or two behind his house there is nothing but wilderness. He is a great cook and I was the beneficiary of a fabulous roast with he and his gal. It was a great visit. Once I got into the West, I got to see all sorts of friends, which with my divorce being final right about then was a real comfort, and a totally different thing than most of the trip up until I got to Peter and Mirellas’ house in San Antonio. I got to bathe in the company of great old friends all the way home, and being with Les was another bonus. He was the consummate host, just like always.

I hit the road towards Golden, where another old friend lives. It had probably been forty years since I had seen Bo, and we had only recently even spoken on the phone. He was skiing when I arrived in Golden, so I found a spot on the main street, right under the sign welcoming people to town. With the exception of the gargantuan Coors brewery, it had the feel of a small town. It’s a bit touristy, but not over the top like some places. I was parked very close to a coffee shop named The Windy Saddle, and as I was walking through town in the evening there were a couple of people playing music. It turned out to be a woman named Signe Marie Rustad, and her “musical companion” as she put it. She is from Norway, but her grandmother lives in Golden. She was doing a little tour through the states and I just happened upon her. I bought her CD, named “Golden Town”. One of her parents is American and one Norwegian, I believe. Her music is in English, but she grew up on a farm in Norway. The music is great and the lyrics really spoke to me. There are several videos online. Check her music out. She’s really good.

When I connected with Bo on the phone, he said we were going to fly fish on the Colorado river the next morning. Having never gone flyfishing in my life, I was a bit intimidated. We got up early, met a pal of his and trailered his boat over the divide and launched in the river. They gave me a short lesson and away we went. We started out and the weather was just great. For about ten minutes. Then the wind came up in our faces and it got colder than a – well really cold. I had a blast. I think I am hooked, pun intended. Though I had no finesse, I managed to put the fly pretty close to where I wanted it to go, though I didn’t catch anything. However, both of these guys were rabid fishermen and very talented. It was a real pleasure to watch them fish. They each caught a bunch of brown trout – just beautiful fish, and I really liked the catch and release aspect of their deal. Not a fish was kept, and they all were just fine as they were released. They knew right where the fish were likely to be, so I learned a whole lot. We were in one of those inflatable boats, which was great, but with the wind coming up the river, it was like having a sail up, so we were actually being blown up the river. I wasn’t qualified to row through the rapids, but there was plenty of time for me to use my old crew skills in the calmer sections, and we were all so cold that it was a pleasure to row, just to get warm. So though I had no style whatsoever, I managed not to hook anyone in the ear or anything. It really was fabulous, and though cold, it was great to be on the river.

Years ago Bo loved speed and always had fast cars. When last I had seen him I had gone out to dinner with he and his parents and on the way home he let me drive his Alpha Romeo sports car. I got in and was driving gingerly, and he said “Get on it!”, so I got to drive that car fast for a bit – really fun and of course it had that wonderful Alpha growl – all those customized Hondas you hear these days don’t even come close to that sound. He hasn’t changed a bit. He has a pretty cool BMW, but the really neat thing is his bikes. He has several really special early seventies motorcycles – Moto Guzzi and Ducatti cafe racers and the like. Not only are they fast, but they are beautiful works of art as well. Catching up with Bo was great, and just another example of how the crux of people doesn’t change very much with time. We had a great time catching up.

One friend took a look at the blog and said “Hey Pete,  if you didn’t have that truck you wouldn’t have anything to write about!” So I am going to leave out a major mechanical story that happened in Golden – maybe it will be an aside at some point, but not now. Once that was solved it was time to head north to Montana. It was starting to snow and get pretty darned cold, so at this point I switched to Interstate travel and got on 25 and headed onward and upward…

I got back to Santa Fe, and Robbie’s house and started in on the various lists of projects to do around the house and on the truck before the final push home. One of the first things that Robbie and I did was get some tickets to Robert Cray, who was playing Sunday night at the Lensic Theater, just down the street from the house. Robert was just great, with a very small band, just drums, keyboards and bass. All three guys were really solid players, and of course Robert was amazing. Cool to see a guy who grew up around Tacoma and made good, playing in Santa Fe. It was a fabulous show.

By this point, Toby’s wife Robin had returned from a major trip and I got to meet and know her a bit. She is a very cool gal and seems the perfect match for Toby. We went on a nice walk close to his mom’s house where we found pottery shards from centuries ago and had a fun little picnic. I can’t say that I found any all by myself, but Toby pointed me in the right direction and I saw them. Pretty cool.

I want to backtrack a smidge and talk a bit about Carl the dog. I said I’d get back to it, so here goes. On the first bounce in Santa Fe when I had first arrived, I had come in to the house with Robbie and as we went into the back yard there were feathers everywhere and a destroyed pillow. Robbie just said “Oh Carl.” I was like – Oh Carl? – I’d certainly discipline him on that one, so Robbie and I had the corporal punishment discussion, where I said it takes a village, and if I had his permission to spank his dog on the butt if I caught him in some sort of infraction.  Well, the very next day I was reading a book that Robbie had given me (a fabulous book called “The Eighty Dollar Champion” – I highly recommend it), and I went out to work on the truck. I was gone for twenty minutes at most, and came back in and the book was chewed up – still readable, but pretty destroyed. So I picked up the remains of the book and went after Carl. This dog is FAST, so I couldn’t catch him. He went under the bed to a point that I couldn’t reach him, and I have pretty long arms. This of course pissed me off even more, so I lifted the end of the bed up a couple of feet and dropped it a couple of times, whereupon Carl made his exit and went to his next hiding place. At this point I am frothing at the mouth with the book in my hand, screaming, “Where are you, you son of a bitch!!”, (one of the few times one could use that phrase properly). It is at this precise moment that my friend Eric showed up to witness this scene. He’s standing at the front door with a very amused expression and points out Carl behind an end table whereupon I pulled that away and Carl made his move for the door at high speed with me hot on his tail. He rounded the corner through the French doors so fast that his front paws were getting traction, but his rear legs were sideways and just getting air. It was like some cartoon – he was getting away from this maniac with the tasty book in his hand as fast as he could. It truly was one of the funniest dog moments I can remember. It was hilarious. This dude is major fast – I never touched him. I couldn’t! He eventually got that same book again, chewing both covers off, but still leaving it readable. I have all the pieces as a souvenir of Carl.  Keep in mind that he’s a young boy, still under a year old, and he really does need a job. He’s a fine dog and will only get better as he matures. And really, in the big picture, in the moment, I was more crazed than Carl. I need to take a look at that I guess, as I am in the market for a young puppy and will be having some of the same issues with whomever it is when I finally connect with a pup. To that point, it was about then that we went to the Santa Fe shelter a couple of times. Nicest shelter I have ever seen – very plush. One of my goals was to find this new puppy.

I got to hang out with Eric and his wife Corinna some, which was a delight. He lives in a house that his grandmother built many many years ago, when Santa Fe was really a small town. She was around when Georgia O’Keeffe lived in the area and had her over for libations – kind of a cool thing. His grandmother had a few design features that were very cool, my favorite being a door in the backsplash that went directly to the trashcan outside. I love good design. Also, it had a fireplace typical of the area – totally different than most places in the country – the firebox is such that it focuses the heat to a specific point. They look like they just wouldn’t work at all, but they do. No smoke shelf or corners anywhere, just a totally organic shape and they work magnificently. Eric and I got to kibitz on a project or two around his house, one of my favorite things to do, one of which was an electrical problem with a bunch of convoluted wiring. I love working on projects with pals, and Eric is a very competent guy, so that makes it even more fun. Throwing ideas around and finding innovative solutions to interesting problems is one of my favorite things to do.

I had been working off the list that Robbie and I had made of stuff that needed to be tweaked around his house. For example, he had a fairly new clothes drier that had no heat, so he was drying clothes by blowing cold air on them – for HOURS! Fixing that was my favorite thing, but I knocked out a lot of things on the list and then got to work on the truck. I decided that a tune up was in order and got to work on that. I put all the parts in in the most workmanlike manner and went to start it and – nothing. She wouldn’t fire up. This does not engender confidence in a mechanic; I’ve tuned cars since I was twelve, so I was not pleased. To make a very long story shorter, remember when the rig caught on fire in Florida? Well, it turns out that the insulation on the main wire to the distributer had melted, and just the moving around of stuff during the tune up was enough to break the compromised insulation off and short the wire out.  It was hidden of course, so it took me a while to figure that one out. I did a bunch of other stuff to the truck, like get all of the running lights on the camper going and so forth, making new springs for the lights out of repurposed springs from ball point pens. There were a bunch of other things that I got done which I won’t bore you with, but the rig seemed good to go. Robbie was heading out to Florida for a veterinary conference, and I planned to leave a few hours later, once I finished packing everything. So I fire up the rig, put it in gear and under power, well, there is none. I couldn’t make it to the end of the driveway. A very inauspicious beginning to the final push! So I got the trusty extra bicycle that Robbie had let me use after I cut the tree down that was growing through it, and rode the four miles to the auto parts store and bought a new coil and rode back and installed it. That finally finished the tune up and I got on the road the next morning towards Colorado. 

I’m going to do something a bit different with this post. I’m going to do what I’ll call an aside. Asides are going to be tangential trips to the trip in the truck – mental or physical. It may be a mechanical aside, in which case motorheads might read it and nobody else. It might be musings on any subject that strikes my fancy. There’s a lot of time to think on the road, so there may be a few of these – and you can take it or leave it…

Sittin’ in the Albequrque airport waiting for the cattle call for my flight to California. The truck is in safe in drydock in Robbie’s driveway. I am travelling with my typical backpack with my travelling stuff; laptop, various electrical components, (chargers, cameras, thumbdrives, etc,etc,etc.) I also have a yellow plastic bag with a very ill-fitting wetsuit in it that I bought at some yardsale a couple of years ago. Its been living in Missie’s cottage in Rockport these past couple of years. I am bringing it because I need it for my trip. I am flying back because the water system at the ranch is screwed up once again and I have to go fix it if it isn’t fixed before I get there. I really didn’t want to leave Santa Fe right now, but there is another reason to go, and that is a memorial for my friend David Henderson, who killed himself several weeks ago. There is to be a paddle out in San Francisco before the party and I want to be in the water for that. I spent some time with David in the water back in the days of our youth. Carmel Beach in the winter.

It would seem that I am supposed to be there. I know I want to be there. It’s a horrible reason to get together, but the boys are showing up from all over the country and it will be good to see them. A lot of these guys are like brothers to me – we were very close for that brief time we were all going to Stevenson school in the early seventies. As it was a boarding school, these guys were family, and we did some stuff together. We spent a lot of time in the forest wandering the trails late at night, smoking pot, tripping on acid, you know, the early seventies. We got away with a lot, though we lost several classmates through the attrition of their being busted for one thing or another. I know that I got away with a lot more at RLS than I ever would have at home, but it was a different time.

David was like our crews’ Neal Cassidy. As he said, “If you’re not living on the edge, you’re just taking up space”, and he certainly did, sometimes to his detriment. I swam to Guatamala with him, as well as a couple of the other guys who are coming to the memorial, but there is an illustration of who David was in that swim across the Yucamacinta River. Several of us had already swum across and Kirk Funston was halfway across and stopped and started to panic, meanwhile floating down the river to god knew where. Of all of us, it was David who yelled at him “Put your head down and swim!”, twice or three times and Kirk did put his head down and swim and made it across.

On that same trip to Mexico, we were camping near Bonampak and there was rumored to be a very cool waterfall in the jungle. One of the Lacandon Indians was going to take us there, but he didn’t show up, so some other guy came to lead us to the waterfall. Another guy we have lost, Frank Moffett, was on this walk as well, and someone had showed him how to get fresh water by chopping down this certain type of plant in the jungle. So Frank takes a swing at this vine and immediately gets swarmed by a whole lot of insects of some sort – most amusing. Anyway. It became obvious that our new guide had no idea where the waterfall was – we walked and walked. We eventually came to a place where there was a pool that was twenty or thirty feet across. Having come that far very early in the morning David and I jumped in and swam across. We were the only two that got in the water. So we get to the other side and clamor up the other bank and walked a few yards and there was this huge lake – just huge. So we dove in and swam in what I can only call a Tarzan movie – just beautiful; vines coming down to the water all around it and god knows what swimming around in this thing, but I probably wouldn’t have been there or gotten that totally amazing experience had I not been with David.

When we managed to get surfing to be our sport in high school, there was a time in the middle of the winter when it was huge out, I don’t remember how big, but huge for Carmel. At the time, David used a belly board and fins and he was the only guy crazy enough to make it out that day. It was knarly getting out at Carmel on a good day, but if it was big it could take a half hour or more with all the rips and stuff. This was in the days before leashes, so I did a lot more swimming and paddling than actual surfing. So David goes out and in the time it took him to get out it got worse and worse out – ten to fifteen feet and now closing out. I remember all of us thinking how crazy it was to be out, but with David, it just sort of made sense. We all stood on the beach waiting for him to make his move, knowing he would just get hammered, all of us most amused waiting for the spectacle. He did get hammered and got the washing machine treatment, which Carmel was known for, but he made it back in in one piece.

I remember riding with him one night in that old Benz he had stashed in the forest one night and as he would come up to a stop sign he would turn his lights off to see if anyone was coming the other direction so he could run the stop sign. I, of course, wondered whether there was another guy like Dave coming the other way – maybe Kingery or something. Fortunately Bobby didn’t have a car stashed in the forest.

More recently, just a few months ago, Dave did some painting on a house I was working on at the ranch. He came to talk about the job and I was in the middle of stringing some overhead wires to the top of the biggest hay barn. It was a very tall ladder, so I was going up carefully. Dave looked at me and said “you don’t go up ladders much, do ya?” Matter of fact, I do, but he just charged up the ladder and started ripping and tearing at the tree the wires needed to go through. Just the same as always, he had gumption, something my mom noticed when Dave and some other pals helped my parents move in the seventies. He was the guy running as he worked – just a force of nature, no matter what fuel was involved at the time, and it was no different forty years later.

The main thing that I want to say about David is that there are few people in this world that I would want at my side in a hairy situation more than David. In the moment, he was the best – what I would call a good man in a storm. If a situation was dicey or dangerous, he was a guy you would want with you. I’ll miss him.

So my plane lands in San Jose and I get to the ranch after dark and start to diagnose the problem by flashlight. The water line is over a half mile long, is old, and very finicky. I can’t find any answers so hit the hay and get back to it at daybreak. I have Jose show me what he had repaired and I think I have the solution. The line goes across a ravine at one point. It’s probably thirty to forty feet across and way the heck up in the air. The repair was a little klunky and as the whole system works by gravity, it needs to flow smoothly.

So feeling fairly smug for figuring it out so quickly, I head back down to the house, get my “popout” surfboard that my dad and I made when I was fourteen or so and strapped it onto the car with a pad for a chaise lounge and some rope, throw the wetsuit into the car and head out for San Francisco and the memorial. The paddle out is supposed to start at 2:30, and of course I am running late. I thought that I had plenty of time and decided to take the brand-new Bay bridge. Traffic. The new bridge was just as congested as the old one, so I am barely moving and getting all stressed out that I am going to be late, when it occurs to me that if David was going to the same sort of thing he probably would be doing exactly what I am, so I just relaxed in to it and got there a half hour late – just when everyone else was getting ready to get in to the water. Perfect timing, actually.

I had never participated in a paddle out before, and it was wonderful. A bunch of us paddled out from Chrissy Field, near the Golden Gate and got in a big circle and held hands while words were spoken and flowers were put in the water. Everyone then threw as much water as they could in the air to release him and help him on his way.

We then reconvened nearby and continued with the memorial, where I got to catch up with some friends and meet some new ones. David’s brother spoke, as well as a few others, but the most amazing part for me was when David’s son Eddie got up and told a few stories about his dad – just great stories, and well delivered – a chip off the old block. Then he got his guitar and sang a song he had written for his dad. It was a beautiful song. How he did that I don’t know. Then he followed that with a rousing rendition of El Paso by Marty Robbins, and at the end of each verse, at the perfect place, the whole room joined in and sang along. It was awesome.  Here’s a link to slideshow of the memorial and the songs Eddie sang if you’re interested.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=No_JsoODXGs&feature=youtu.be

After the memorial I headed over to Berkeley to hang with the Haas brothers, Eric, Marco, and Gregory, who all went to RLS, and Gordon Maus who was a classmate as well, and his wife Quinty, who I had just met at the memorial. We hung out and had a great time, and the next day Eric, Gordon, Quinty and I headed down to the ranch, where I gave them the cooks tour of the place. Hanging with Gordon was as easy and comfortable as it was years ago – the sign of a good friend. When we first heard news of David’s passing, Gordon had called me – a rare occurance, and said about what he had done, “It’s a long-term solution to a short-term problem” a totally Gordon statement. None of us could understand why David did what he did, but none of us were in his shoes either. For me, I do know that I am doing my best to make this ride last as long as I can – this life is precious. Sometimes losing someone, or having a close call of some sort helps one to see that a bit more clearly. The whole thing with David, horrible as it is, brought a few of us much closer.

I guess that one of the things I am realizing is that none of us change a whole heck of a lot as time goes on, there are just more layers added. Fine tuning I guess.  During one late night conversation with Robbie in Santa Fe, he said “Our foibles get more refined as we get older”. Kinda true. Another thing I realized hanging out with some of these guys is why they are so important to me. What I came up with is that I got to know these guys and they me, when we were not fully formed adults. We were all just beginning to figure out who we were as individuals, but without all the layers of age, we got to know the crux of the person. So we know each other on a pretty deep level.

After they left, I got back to the work on the water system, feeling all smug that I knew just what to do to make it right. Well, as you may have already surmised, it didn’t go smoothly. It took me eight days to get the system working properly, and involved much more than you probably want to know. I got it licked though, with a lot of help. To get it running smoothly, there were a few added tees and couplings, and some new supports across the ravine, that I designed and built. It eventually became clear that there were some major air locks in the line, and after several tweaks to the system and a lot of burping of lines it was once again working  just fine. Just to get an idea of the project, here’s a photo of me on the very long ladder in the ravine, leaning on the wire rope suspending the pipe.

I am sure if David was around, he would have been racing up that ladder as well…

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.

Leaving Breaux Bridge, I headed down through New Iberia to Highway 82, which runs through Pecan Island and the rest of Louisiana, including a little ferry ride as close to the coast as I could and in to Texas. I drove through Port Arthur, the only thing I knew about it was that that is where Janis Joplin grew up. I didn’t explore as I was trying to make tracks. And make yet anther ferry to Galveston, Texas.

It was a nice ferry ride and I pulled into Galveston at close to sunset and spotted an RV park right by the ferry dock. I was tired so went to check it out. I rang and a nice guy came up to the office and said they had some sites available. He asked what sort of rig I had, so I pointed out the Cruiser and he said it was too small! They actually don’t allow anything smaller than huge to stay there. That was a new one on me! The employee was very nice though, and wasn’t the one making the rules. He told me the street would be fine, so I found a spot right by the water, in front of a beach bar. I pumped up the camper and went in to the palm frond roofed place and had some sort of boat drink of rum and some dinner. They closed pretty early, but across the street was a fun little club where some sort of hippie trio was setting up. They were just great, and there were some nice, colorful regulars. I had a fabulous time and danced my socks off. It was the first time in a long, long time that I felt like dancing. I clamored into the truck and woke up the next morning with a bit of a hangover and a dead battery. I got that squared away and headed for San Antonio to pay a visit to a good friend from high School. We were roommates senior year so a visit on his home turf was something I was looking forward to.

I took interstates from Galveston to San Antonio and made good time getting to Peter and Mirella’s house. I had never been to their house and it was just fabulous. Peter had had the house for many years, but had done a major remodel a couple of years ago. Not a large house at all, but every detail was done with class – every door, every fixture was the best, just as I would have expected. I love the details in a house, and this was a feast – the latest technology in every aspect, most of which I had never seen before. Most importantly though, was how wonderful it was to catch up with Peter and get to know Mirella more. I needed to do some legal stuff and got to use his office to do some of that, rather than some store somewhere. It wasn’t planned, but I ended up around an old friend at a tough time. We stayed up late and talked and talked and talked. I asked if there was a good hat store in town, as I wanted a new straw cowboy hat – the one I had was just a bit tight. So the three of us went downtown to a store that had obviously been there since forever. It was a venerable store with a guy working a steamer to shape hats, about a gazillion hats of all kinds, plaster missing from the ceiling in a few places – just about perfect. I got a great hat and had the guy with the steamer shape it for me. The truck has a hat holder on the roof that was a present from my big sis – I just needed a better fitting hat. My other hat went to Peter, so it was nice circulation, all in all. They took me on a cool tour of the neighborhoods, and the city itself, including the Alamo, which was a lot smaller than I thought it would be. I’d never been to San Antonio before and I got a great introduction from those two.

It was also good to be with Peter because one of our classmates killed himself a few weeks before, and we were both stunned by his doing this. It got a lot of us talking – another good friend said that it “was a long-term solution to a short-term problem.” It was good to be able to talk with someone who knew him as well. They crawled around on the floor together as babies – just a huge loss for a lot of people that leaves a hole where he should be.

It was time to head north, Santa Fe being my next stop, where I have some more old friends. I ended up getting a late start and headed west on Interstate 10 through the hill country of Texas. It was late and I was in a hurry, so I pushed the truck more than I normally would. The Texas hill country is rolling hills for miles and miles. I stopped in little town called Comfort and found a very cool Antique Mall. It was close to closing, so I didn’t have much time, but the whole place was filled with great things of all kinds. It turns out that Comfort was settled by “Freethinkers”, a group of predominantly German intellectuals who emigrated to America advocating reason and democracy over religion and political autocracy. They took a bad hit during the Civil War for siding with the Union and lost lives and property during that time. It is pretty country in its way, but the thing is, it was hell on the truck. It wasn’t like a mountain pass, where you just get to the top and are over and done with it – it’s up and down for ages – really hard on the transmission, especially if you happen to be a guy in a hurry trying to make up time. I was pushing seventy or seventy-five – the speed limit was eighty. Everything is going well, but the transmission is downshifting and upshifting constantly even with my help. I pulled in to a rest area and when I got back to the truck there is a little puddle of oil with a few drips leading up to it. Now I’m freakin’. I’m thinking I have killed the truck or done some damage just by being in a hurry. Turned out I hadn’t lost too much oil, but it scared the heck out of me. I found a motel room shortly after that to collapse in.

The next morning I hit Highway 285 just past Fort Stockton, a perfect blue highway that took me north all the way to Santa Fe. Starting out, I decided that I needed to let the truck decide what felt right speed-wise. It was easier country, miles of open country with oilrigs interspersed along the way. It was a far more relaxed drive and much more enjoyable as a result. This has never been a trip about pushing it, and when I relax into the flow of the trip everything seems to fall into place. I arrived at Robbie’s’ house in Santa Fe, just as it was getting dark.

From Western Florida I headed towards New Orleans. Again keeping to the shore as much as I could, I motored along on Highway 182. There was a detour with the whole highway having to go around the beach. I then started to see lots of impromptu parking lots and soon saw that I was in the middle of the 42^nd annual National Shrimp Festival in Gulf Shores, Alabama. I found a five-buck parking spot and got out to have some shrimp and see what was going on. There were lots of booths selling arts and crafts, food, and so forth – sort of a Puyallup Fair on the water. The sun was out and the place was packed. Where I landed was close to a stage and the crowd was thin at eleven in the morning. There was a guy coming on so I planted myself to listen. He was an excellent guitarist, and the more I listened, the more I liked it. He was doing something I have seen other people do, but still fascinates me. He was playing for a while, recording a bit of it, and playing it back in a loop and then playing lead to his own rhythm. I don’t think this was really possible until fairly recently, at least for a guy with just a guitar. Probably Robert Fripp was doing stuff like that in the seventies, but I would imagine that sort of equipment cost gazillions of dollars, and nowadays it’s probably an ap for an iphone or something. Affordable too, probably. As my dad said, “It’s a poor workman who blames his tools”, meaning that it’s the skill of the man, not the fancy tools that gets the job done. (I still have the framed New Yorker cartoon that was given to me on my way to college. It’s a drawing of a frustrated guy coming through the front door with his wife asking “How did Arnold Palmers’ shoes and Arnold Palmers’ gloves and Arnold Palmers’ clubs do for Fred Schwartz today?”, as the steam is coming out his ears.) You get the idea. Point being this guy could PLAY, and his lyrics were cool too. It was a great show, with not too many people listening. I once saw Elvin Bishop at the Fieldhouse at UPS, and nobody came. A very sparse crowd, and Elvin came out and said that maybe some were thinking they made a mistake by coming, but that “the best time he ever had there was just two of  us!”, and proceeded to rock the house for hours.  It’s a sign of a true pro and this guy played a fabulous show in a difficult time slot. His name is Will Kimbrough and he has played with major guys like Rodney Crowell and Jimmy Buffett to name just a couple. I bought a CD and have listened to it a bunch of times. It’s called Wings and I highly recommend it. I’m not a lyric guy so it takes a few listens for me to understand the song. He is an amazing writer. Check his stuff out.

After a great lunch of a pile of shrimp and a beer, I headed west again. I took my next ferry from Fort Morgan to Dauphin Island, Alabama and on through Biloxi, Mississippi. On the coast, both Alabama and Mississippi are pretty small. Both are big states, but both having a surprisingly small stretch of coastline. About this time, I started seeing all kinds of cool cars on the road – not just cool cars, really great classics and hot rods of all sorts. Turns out I was in the middle of the 13^th annual “Cruisin’ the Coast” celebration, where cars cruise up and down a twenty-nine mile section of the coast. People set up chairs along the road to watch all these amazing cars go by. It was really fun to drive along and have people applaud the Christensen Cruiser. They thought I was part of the cruisers! I was I guess, but by this point I had been cruising for four thousand miles or more. Now that is a cruise! Being a motorhead, it was fun in all sorts of ways.

I made it to New Orleans before dusk and found a hotel to stay at where I could leave the rig safely. The truck protects me from all sorts of stuff and is my safe haven, so securing it is fairly important. I got settled and got a cab, partly for the ride, and partly to get the local knowledge down a bit. I ended up with the perfect guy, who I had drive me around just a bit to get oriented and so forth. He told me which blocks were good to be on, where the gay part of Bourbon Street was and where the straight part was, and some local scams to look out for, all of which were tried on me at one point or another. It was all good information and a big help to me. I got out and started walking around. The street was packed and there were a whole lot of young people getting as blown as they possibly could. A whole lot of amateurs. I ended up finding what looked like a venerable old place a block off Bourbon Street. I had a great meal of some local fish that was blackened and fabulous. (I know, I know. No specifics for the foodies out there – sorry.) I had a couple of Manhattans and went forth into the fray. By now it was getting late and things were really wild. People bumping into you without even noticing, really drunk people, and the street smelled of overindulgence, to put it as mildly as I can. It was one of those moments where one is glad to have a few miles on the personal odometer, and know that that sort of thing is not remotely fun anymore. Not only that, the knowing that you were going to wake up in the morning feeling just fine, while a lot of these kids were going to be total wrecks and sleep the day away trying to recover was somewhat satisfying. One of the coolest things I saw that night was a couple of cops on horses. These horses were just hanging out in the middle of this bacchanal and were just as calm as could be – totally relaxed in the middle of the storm.

I got up the next morning and walked all around the French Quarter, seeing all sorts of music on the street, and going in to any shop or gallery that struck my fancy. In the light of day, it was a beautiful city, though driving in the day before, there was still lots of evidence of Katrina’s wrath. For obvious reasons, the French Quarter was just about perfect. I walked in some of the neighborhoods close by, and the architecture and the whole vibe of the town was just great. I got to see a funeral march go by as I walked, which was a pretty cool way to send somebody off to the next life – a joyful celebration, not some sort of dirge.

I’d had enough and got moving the next day, sticking to Interstate 10 for miles and miles of highway built above the bayou and ended up in Breaux Bridge. I meandered around town and found an RV park right beside the freeway. Run by nice people and very together. There was a restaurant that specialized in crawfish nearby so I walked to it and had some local beer and a sample plate of various crawfish delicacies.  This town is ground zero for crawfish, so it was really great. (I didn’t get to do the whole pile of them on the newspaper, but you can’t do everything.) By the time I finished my dinner it was pouring out, so I walked back having a fairly good shower on the way.

The next morning, after completing a long overdue oil change, I headed out of town. I stopped to visit with an old horse and two goats for a while to get the flavor of the place and headed for Texas.

Onward to Galveston…

I started my morning in Jacksonville by going to the auto parts store to pick up a heater blower motor that I had ordered. I might need a bit of heat or a defroster sometime. So I pick it up and decide to mount a switch to turn from running on gasoline to propane on the fly. It wasn’t past ten or so and it was already hot and sticky. One hundred percent humidity – tough to take for a northwest guy. I’m used to another kind of wet than this; the stuff that comes down from the clouds, not this oppressive stuff that just is. So I get it all put together with fancy high temperature goop and go to start the engine to test it out. It started right up and just about that fast there was a guy telling me my engine was on fire. I run to the back of the truck into the camper and get the fire extinguisher and run back to find the darned thing doesn’t work. The two guys standing there are doing just that – standing there. I scream for one of them to go in the store and get an extinguisher. Meanwhile, I take off my Salmon Beach tee shirt and smother the flames with it and it was out – mostly. The air filter continued to smolder until I got it off and drenched it. The fire was right around the distributer and spark plug wires, the temperature gauge sending unit, and some other wiring. The bottom line is that I got it out fast enough that nothing melted too badly, and the bomb that I am driving didn’t go off. Fairly scary, but everything worked out just fine – it just added a bit more patina to the engine compartment. (It wasn’t quite as exciting as the time when I was priming the carburetor on the 59 Reo schoolbus on the way to see the Dead and it backfired and my whole arm caught on fire. I’ll never forget the boys from the back of the bus sitting on a little knoll observing the operation applauding politely after I extinguished my arm. The only thing missing was cards with numbers on them. The good Dr. Beard got me to plunge my arm into the beer cooler ice immediately, and I came away from that mostly unscathed.) I ended up putting everything back the way it was and got on the road, heading west for the first time on the trip. That felt pretty good.

I took Interstate 10 for a ways and then headed south on highway 51 towards Steinhatchee, a town off the beaten path on the Gulf coast. At one point I stopped to get gas and there was a mini-mart attached, so I went to check it out. There was a huge rack of fireworks, the cheapest stuff I have ever seen, and nothing like what one can buy in the northwest. I spent less than twenty bucks and got about fifty bottle rockets, a huge package of firecrackers and a package of these huge M-1000s. I don’t know when I’ll use them, but I have “inventory” as Ib would have said. As I drove, it became clear I was in the South. I drove over the Suwannee river, complete with musical notes on the sign, and drove through Dixie county. Spanish moss was now everywhere hanging on the trees.

Once I got to Steinhatchee, I was on the west coast of Florida, and this time it was as I thought it would be, very isolated. I drove up along highway 361 and really didn’t find a place I liked. I did stop for a beer, and it was like going back in time. The place was full of smoke and smokers. I drank my beer quickly and got out of there before I choked. I’m just not used to that anymore. This state is pretty loose in a lot of ways. I saw a guy riding a Harley with no helmet and flip-flops for footwear. Crazy, but free.

I drove north to Dekle Beach and still didn’t find anywhere that looked like the spot, so I continued on, knowing the road would head inland shortly. I took a dirt road off the main drag and drove about ten miles on that and came to a little place with a small boat ramp by a creek, right by the ocean. I set up the camper and got the paddleboard and went for my first paddle in the Gulf of Mexico. It was a bit rough, but it was a nice paddle, very marshy and very shallow. It was a great spot with nobody around.

The next morning, some guys came to launch their boat and I saw them take off and it was much calmer, so I decided I would go out again. I paddled out the river and the ocean was like glass. It was also incredibly shallow – a foot deep or so for quite a ways. There were fish jumping as I continued out to deeper water. I then saw a pretty good sized fish, about a foot long or more, jump three times in a row, obviously trying to get away from something bigger. So here I am, alone, and I’m wondering what is down there looking for breakfast. The next thing I know there are three undulations in the water right beside me. To say I was freaked is an understatement, but as I looked I could see it was a manatee swimming right beside me. They are gentle vegetarian creatures, so it didn’t answer the question of who’s hunting for breakfast, so I headed back in, but it was one of those god moments that makes me feel like everything is going to be o.k. That everything is o.k. It was soooo cool, and I could see how sailors centuries ago imagined mermaids or sea serpents based on these creatures. With a little fog or darkness, one could imagine them being something else pretty easily.

Next day I drove out and hooked up with highway 98, the road that hugs the gulf into Alabama. I camped at Saint George Island State Park. I got in towards sunset, set up and headed out to the beach. There were red storm warning flags up, but looking out it didn’t look very rough to me, so I went out for a swim. The water is so warm here I can hardly stay out of it. White sandy beaches and warm water – heavenly. It was a bit of a hump to the beach from the campground, so I didn’t bring the paddleboard, but I got a wave or two bodysurfing. The next day I swam many times, and one time I was out and was surrounded by all these fish jumping and feeding. (This time they were around ten inches and were the hunters, not the hunted.) Cool stuff. That evening I walked out to the other side of the island facing the mainland and there were a bunch of dolphins frolicking in the water just off the beach. They were obviously just having fun, coming all the way out of the water, splashing and flipping over. It was a great show. I headed west the next morning…

The next place I headed for was Perdido Key, just about as far west as one can go in Florida. There is a Florida State Park on the key, which is day use only, and then a campground on the mainland called Big Lagoon State Park, where I set up the camper. About half of Perdido Key is part of the Gulf Islands National Seashore. I could get in to that with my very cool National Parks pass, which I bought for the whole year. WRONG. With our totally dysfunctional government shutdown, they are all closed down. Even the websites, though for the life of me, why they needed to shut the websites down is beyond me. How expensive can that be? Maybe the government could make a few less bombs or drones and save a few bucks that way. Nawwwww. That might even make some sense. Health care? Weapons? Where are our priorities? What did Ike say? Beware of the Military Industrial Complex? And he a republican general! I’d better not go off on that topic. Anyway. This whole National seashore is closed and the gates are locked. I have my pass though. So I got the paddleboard and hiked it down to the beach and paddled across the intercoastal waterway – a half mile across or so, and landed on the key. It’s only a couple hundred yards wide, so I walked across to the gulf side and there it was, one of the most beautiful beaches I have ever seen. And there was nobody there. I had the whole beach to myself. Quite a change from Rehoboth Beach! It was awesome. I had the added excitement of the possibility of the ranger coming along and citing me. I went in for a swim and as I did, a great blue heron flew in and watched me swim. I got out slowly and this bird kept coming closer and closer – very interested in me. So we hung out together. I went up to get a little sun and this bird came with me. Very cool. It had the most amazing yellow eyes, not to mention the huge beak, which would put a hurtin’ on anything it wanted to. I’ve never been so close to one. By now the sun was getting low, so I got the board and paddled back to the campground. I landed in a different place than I put in from, and put the board on my head and started walking. And walking. And walking. Long story short, I missed my turn and must have walked for an hour with the board on my head, and it is heavy enough to be pretty uncomfortable. So now it’s almost dark, I have a bathing suit on and I’m lost. I finally made it back after dark and collapsed with a nice bourbon on the rocks, probably an inch shorter from hauling this thing on my head. (The reefer in the truck makes a fine ice cube.) It was a nice analogy of taking the good with the bad, just like life. If you didn’t have those bad times, you wouldn’t recognize the amazingly good things when they happened. So the government shutdown worked in my favor this time. Having a whole National Seashore to myself was a blessing.

Onward to Alabama and Mississippi!

More soon.

The next day, after regrouping at the Motel 6 in Elkton, Maryland, I got rolling again, heading towards the Southeast corner of Delaware. I had barely gotten started when I saw a Midas shop. I thought it might be nice to have the pros do the job, the guys in Buffalo not withstanding. I stopped and they couldn’t have been nicer or more professional. The truck hasn’t sounded so good in years. They were great and renewed my faith in Midas. After getting that taken care of, I headed down the road towards what looked like it might be some rural fishing village or something, planning on doing my alternator swap in a remote campground somewhere. What I picked on the map was the little hamlet of Rehoboth Beach. When I got there it was late and I pulled in to the town and it was just the opposite of what I thought – it was more like some sort of Coney Island sort of thing. Boardwalk along the beach, lifeguards, lots of restaurants and shops – a total east coast beach town experience. So I head for the campground that I saw on the map and pull in to it and it is like a large subdivision of motor homes, stacked in there like cordwood. They w. It was now eight at night, dark, and I was beat. I drove back in to town and drove around trying to figure where to go. There wasn’t a parking place to be had, so I kept driving around the main downtown. I then saw someone pull out of the perfect parking place and I snagged it. A parallel space with no meter, the city having just removed the meters that week. Perfect. Not the camping place I was imagining, but a road trip requires one to be flexible. So I end up pumping up the camper, putting the paddleboard under the rig, and hoping for the best as far as the local constabulary goes.

There was a nice restaurant about twenty feet away, so I had a nice dinner, and went back to the camper for a minute or two and went for a short walk. There was a trio of wild women, one of whom was dancing and calling after someone – I didn’t think me, but it turns out it was me they were calling over. Turns out it was a group of friends who had been coming to this town for a number of years for a girls weekend. All of them were married, so we just had a great time hanging out in the bar of the hotel they were staying at, which was even closer to the rig. I didn’t have to crawl home, but I could have, if it had been required.

The next day, I rented a bike for the day and did the beach. There happened to be a beach cleanup that morning, so I got a bag and rode as far as I could and went to work. I found a few treasures (“Billy’s” plastic dump truck was my favorite thing), and turned in my stuff and went on my way. I then got the requisite trashy beachy magazines, a towel, and a folding chair I had in the rig and went and did a real east coasty beach afternoon. I lay in the sun, went swimming in the seventy degree water and read my mags. It was great. People were actually talking about how cold the water was. Sheesh – they should sample a bit of Puget Sound if they want to know what cold water really feels like.  The whole experience was totally what I was not expecting, and was fabulous. Families, couples, kids, beach babes; a guy couldn’t ask for much more. The cops didn’t bother me, it being just past the season, and I ended up in a far superior spot than way out of town with herds of Winnebagos. Nice.

Having been turned away from the tunnel in Manhattan, I looked up the rules for propane for the Chesapeake Bay Bridge/Tunnel from Cape Charles to Norfolk, Virginia and any way I sliced it I had too much propane to be legal, so I headed for the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, where I could legally cross.  (I know. I know. Two bridges, same name but for the tunnel part – a bit confusing.)

I went by Annapolis and skirted by D.C. to the South to get to 95 and head south. I stopped in Richmond to have a little lunch. It was good, but my advice to you would be to skip the lobster roll in Richmond. At least that’s my guess as to why I felt poorly for a day or two. I then drove for the Cape Hatteras National Seashore. I got there in time to visit the Wright Brothers monument and see where they made their first powered flight. Very cool for me. On my first cross country trip with the family in 1962, we stopped at the Smithsonian and in the old building, which was a total jumble of stuff sandwiched in there, hanging from the rafters were both the original Wright Flyer and the Spirit of Saint Louis. Even at eight years old, it was a total thrill for me to see both those planes as I had read the Landmark book on both stories.  Fifty-two years later, being where they actually flew for the first time was a special thing for me. I got there just in time to hear most of the talk by the ranger, with the full scale, flyable replica in front of him. It was really a treat for me. I then headed south to Cape Hatteras…

 I got to the Frisco campground near the cape and stayed for two nights and had a great time – the weather was fabulous and the beach nice. There is a boardwalk out to the beach to protect the dunes, which made hauling the paddleboard a bit easier. There were surfboards everywhere in the campground, and after I talked with some of the folks camping I learned it was about as good a spot as there is on the East coast. Unfortunately it was flat. I paddled out and messed around some. I didn’t get any of the small waves I tried for, but had a great paddle and swim. As I was getting ready to get rolling, a couple walked by and the guy said, “Gee. You came all the way across the country to go to the beach.” I guess that just about sums it up. Beaches. I love them.

 The next day I got up and headed to the southern end of the cape, and took the free ferry to Okracoke Island. I stopped to take a look at the local ponies, or “banker” horses, which I believe were stranded on the island after some Spanish shipwreck in the 16^th or 17^th century. They are different physically from other horses – they have a different number of vertebrae and ribs as well as a distinct shape, posture, color, size, and weight that sets them apart from others. I then got on the ferry at the southern end of the island and got to go on a two-hour ferry ride to Cedar Island and drove as far south as Surf City. Yup. There really is such a place, and it’s in South Carolina. I never did find out if there were two girls for every boy, as I got there late and collapsed.

Next day it was off to Charleston. I got in towards dusk and found a nice place to stay in the old part of town. The Vendue Inn is the name of the place, and it is very nice, and far from the accommodations in the Christensen Cruiser. It has a nice bed, a TV, a paper under the door, the whole works. They had bicycles to loan, so I was up at dawn, borrowed one and rode around the old part of the city. As I had heard, it is both a beautiful and totally charming city. The city is below sea level, which is a dangerous thing these days. I hope the hurricanes miss it for a while. The old houses all have storm shutters that actually work, so it’s pretty obvious that the locals can handle a storm. It was a great bike ride. Onward to Florida!

Fuck.

Where to start?

When I posted last, I had been back from the trip for a couple of weeks or so and I posted about Nahant, the town I lived in until I was eight and a half. (Remember when a half-year really meant a lot?) It was right about that point that my life started to totally unravel. This is not the place to write about any of that. Those of you that know me well know more than you probably ever wanted to, and those that don’t wouldn’t be all that interested anyway.

It’s now the beginning of September, 2013 and my divorce will be final at the end of this month. It’s been a rough almost two years. (two and a half!) It wasn’t all bad, even in the marriage department. I actually got a lot of things done in the midst of  my marriage falling apart.

I am in Rockport, Massachusetts at the moment and have spent most of the last month here. It is where the trip ended in October of 2011; it was stormy inside and out the week before I flew home. I want to be clear that I didn’t set out on this trip to get away from my wife or anything, I do these trips for all sorts of reasons, but mostly to heal – the road has always done that for me, and to begin this trip, I was pretty worn out from tearing the inside out of an old house and restoring it. Rescuing is more like it. There was that, the preceeding years had been tough due to losing both my parents and all that entailed. It’s a long list, but it was a busy time and I was just plain tired of everything. By that time the house was to a point where I knew I could finish it. It was a daunting project and I had been thinkin’ like a thirty year old when I started it. Suffice it to say that I’m not. I’ll be sixty this coming February, god willing and the creek don’t rise. The main point being that I didn’t start the trip to get away from my wife, but I‘m resuming the trip to heal from losing a marriage that I really thought was going to go the distance. Well, now I am at a distance in a few ways, and things tend to get clearer from that perspective. (Where are those glasses anyway?) I spent some time getting the truck ready to go after spending two winters in Massachusetts, including replacing the other exhaust manifold, which involved three broken studs and about twenty hours.

Rockport is where my aunt Jean (my dad’s older sister), and uncle John lived before we moved to California, and also where John’s parents lived, Aaron and Missie Arsenian. I have been coming here since I was a little kid. We came at Christmastime, and Aaron would dress up as Santa and everyone totally believed it. Aaron was about as skinny as me but that didn’t seem to matter. Aaron died early so I never knew him well, but Missie – Missie was a treat. She talked like ZsaZsa Gabor, and it was totally genuine. She was wonderful. She cheated at croquet and cards – she was  wonderfully full of life and a lot of fun. It is her cottage that I am lucky enough to stay in. She had it built by a guy who didn’t have a lot of experience building houses according to the family lore, but I love it. Not fancy and built with a lot of used material.  There is oak wainscoating all over that must have come out of some grand old mansion in Boston. It’s totally charming, and happens to sit about thirty yards from the Atlantic. It faces directly East, so the sunrises are astonishing, especially for a west coast guy. I have been swimming in the quarry that my uncle John used to tow me around before I could swim. He was a former lifeguard and it was no problem for him to let me hang around his neck when I was four or five. I met some new friends in the Rockport area, which was great. I think they will be friends for a long time. I did some figure drawing at the Rockport Art Association, realizing that I hadn’t drawn from the figure since last I was in Rockport – a long time for me. The time in New England was very healing for me. I deposited some of my parents’ ashes in the water off Meyer’s beach, across the street from the house we lived in in Nahant. It was a house my dad remodeled. I grew up with televisions on cement blocks and bare studs. I still live in a house with bare studs that is being remodeled. Some things don’t change.

I finally hit the road on September 14^th. I headed down to Rhode Island and stopped by Bristol to see the town and find the house that my friend Stubby Huey grew up in. Cool town, and the only one I have been in that had a red, white and blue centerline through town, just as Stubby said. I stayed at Burlingame State Park, near Watch Hill, which was on a large pond and was just great. Next day I got to meet an old college pal, Sandy Wood, who was travelling North on a road trip himself with his wife Sally. It was great to catch up, brief as it was. He gave me his road atlas to take with me, which is close to the shirt off his back; it’s come in handy already several times.

I then took off for Long Island and took three ferries to get there – a really fun day. The only drawback was that the truck blew out a doughnut at the just replaced exhaust manifold and started making noise.  The first night there I stayed at Hither Hills State Park, right on the Atlantic. Met some very cool people there and was treated to coffee and bloody marys in the morning. The next morning I went to Montauk at the very end of Long Island to find parts and check out the town. Once there the truck turned over slowly, and by the next time I went to start it the battery was dead. I ended up staying there another night to try to figure the problem out.

Which brings us to yesterday and a little sample of what life on the road with a forty year old truck. In the morning, the battery was dead again, even after I charged it up with the alternator and didn’t use the battery the previous night. I got a jump and headed on down the road, planning to get through New York City without touching down. I headed towards the Hamptons with this very loud, very old rig, expecting to get arrested for just being there – it is loud. So I’m just about there and I pull out the light switch and the engine starts missing, telling me that I was running just on the battery and was running out of time. I found a shop at the side of the road, full of Rolls Royces, Mercedes, and vintage vehicles. (Even though it is forty years old, my truck doesn’t qualify as vintage – it is just old!) Everyone was busy, and this guy probably didn’t want my truck in his yard, so he directed me to another shop, which I limped in to, of course leaving it running while I asked if the guy could charge my battery while I waited. Gallagher’s Auto Repair was the place, and the owner charged the battery. While I waited, I found a place about six miles away that had an alternator to sell me. I put the battery back in and headed there where the owner of the shop, a rebuilding plant as a matter of fact, Jamco Auto Electric. Amazing to find this place so close to where I was. I then went to three different auto parts stores to find the doughnuts and a few other things.

I then hit the road, running on the battery, intending to do some repairs once I was in a good place to do that work. I wanted to get through New York City as soon as possible to miss traffic. I drove like hell and was on the approach to the Queens-Midtown tunnel when I was pulled over and told that no propane tanks can go through a tunnel in New York state by law, whereupon I was dumped off the highway and into the thick of the city – ust what I was trying to avoid. Long story short, it took me over two hours to find my way to a bridge to get out of there. At one point I ran out of gas in one tank and had to switch over to another tank on the fly and hope there was enough juice in the battery to start it again. It did, and I made it to the Verrazano Narrows Bridge and over to New Jersey, but not before the other tank went dry right in the middle of the bridge, and I had to pull over. Fortunately, the left lane was closed and I actually could pull over – at the very middle of the bridge! This is happening at four in the afternoon with everyone trying to get out of the city – major traffic. I made it over and into New Jersey and drove like hell through the state. I ended up near Newark, Delaware. I was so beat that I stopped at a Motel 6 to get a shower and regroup. So there you have it – a day on the road full of excitement. The soul of an old machine indeed!

I am heading off to the east side of the Delaware Bay today. I am hoping to find a spot on the coast for tonight and maybe tomorrow as well. I obviously have some repairs to do, but am getting into the rhythm of the road. I have my hat on the hook for my hat, my coat on the hook for my coat, just like Scuppers the Sailor Dog, my favorite book when I was a kid. Everything is finding its’ place. It takes a while to get in the groove.

More soon. Thanks for tuning in.