It was cold and rainy all day. George and I both had work, too, although today was special on my end. After a very early meeting, I spent the day doing knowledge share calls, making transition notes, and having a gaming hangout with my team. It’s my last day with Marketing Engineering. After this trip, I’ll be returning to a new department. So the tradition of at least one of us going through a job change during one of these expeditions continues — although I am excited that my next chapter will be with the same company.
I did take a break briefly to run Evan down to the only shop in town who was able to swap out the fuel pump in the Piazza. Hopefully that means he’ll be able to run longer tomorrow. Not that we’ll be doing more than a few miles at a time with the Fiero and its gas tank from Zippo.
I used the weather as an excuse to skip my afternoon run and proceed directly to the “get a beer and play with cars” part of my afternoon.
Evan helped me adjust the cable tensioner on the Volvo’s throttle so the accelerator won’t have as much slack in it. We also suspect an exhaust leak and we know the heat shield is a loose, so it makes a lot of noise. Meanwhile, George replaced his EGR valve and throttle position sensor because he has some fuel delivery weirdness at idle and light throttle.
And then we headed over to the town square for pizza and an explore. Independence has a lovely historic downtown, although like so many small town squares, there are lots of vacancies.
On the way back to the house, we saw The Harry S. Truman Home, which was built in 1867. Harry Truman and his wife Bess made this their home when they married in 1919, and it served as the “Summer White House” during his term in office.
The sky cleared up around sunset when we arrived back to our mansion and I walked around the block to see a couple things we missed last night.
The United Nations Peace Plaza in Independence, Missouri, was unveiled on October 27, 1997, formally dedicated by U.N. General Secretary Kofi Annan on April 25, 2003, and is described by its creators as “the only memorial in the world to those persons serving in the Peacekeeping Forces of the United Nations”.
Wikipedia.
And the giant futuristic spire behind it is the Independence Temple of the Community of Christ, formerly known as the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, often shortened as RLDS.
The temple was built by the Community of Christ in response to a revelation presented at their 1984 World Conference by church prophet-president Wallace B. Smith [great grandson of LDS founder Joseph Smith]. The revelation was the culmination of instructions shared over the course of more than 150 years by prior prophet-presidents recognized by the Community of Christ. Groundbreaking for the temple took place on April 6, 1990, and the completed structure was dedicated on April 17, 1994.
Also Wikipedia.
A recent chapter in one of my books did a deep dive on the Mormon influence — both in the development and use of parts of the original Oregon and Mormon Pioneer Trails, as well as the restoration in later years, complete with a little revisionist history for good measure.
We ended the night by watching George’s video diary of getting started with the Fiero, then nailing down a little route planning to figure out how we’ll actually get to Fort Kearney tomorrow as most of the Oregon Trail is not roads here. It’s a mileage-munching day, largely a shakedown of today’s repairs, but we do have a few places to stop along the way.
