The Oregon Trail

Immigration was the theme all winter, and we decided to start for Oregon. Late in 1843 father sold his property and moved near St. Joseph [Missouri], and in April 1944, we started across the plains. The first encampments were a great pleasure to us children. We were five girls and two boys, ranging from the girl baby to be born on the way to the oldest boy, hardly old enough to be any help.

We waited several days at the Missouri River. Many friends came that far to see the emigrants start on their long journey, and there was much sadness at the parting, and a sorrowful company cross the Missouri that bright spring morning. The motion of the wagon made us all sick, and it was weeks before we got used to the seasick motion. Rain came down and required us to tie down the wagon covers, and so increased our sickness by confining the air we breathed.

Our cattle recrossed in the night and went back to their winter quarters. This caused delay in recovering them and a weary, forced match to rejoin the train.

Catherine Sager Pringle, Across the Plains in 1844 (written 1860). Collected in “Oregon Trail Stories” (David Klausmeyer).

A reading from the Roadtrip Slack:

So true to form, someone burried the lede. While George was in town last week, we were talking about the trip without mentioning any automotive specifics. Or at least any automotive giveaways. We remained amused and enthused that we both got cars before Evan, whose increasing desperation was starting to show in the group chat.

Not gonna lie, I enjoyed my visions of him rolling up in a fender-bended Corolla.

But apparently he called George that weekend and described an odd (but not out-of-character) situation: he was looking at two cars, one of which had been inoperable on a dealer lot for a year and that dealer was willing to cut 50% off the asking price to get it gone. The other was a backup option that was apparently under tentative consideration.

Until he used one of my extra Carfax credits:

Dunno what it was, but it got junked by someone. So instead of buying a running car on a salvage title, he seems to have bought an inoperable heap at a discount. And he gave himself the deadline of :checks-watch: Today to get it working, lest he replace it…

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I have also been informed that he has named this situation “Dusty.” And George has been referring to his as The Firetruck.

I bought the Mystery Wagon a present, which I picked up last night from the folks’ place after it traveled all the way here from Latvia. While I was there, I took Mom, Dad, and Aunt Leslie for a test drive around the neighborhood! It went great! And then today after work, I installed said present and got ready for another little victory joyride to Wednesday night climbing.

But I could not. One of my vehicle’s persistent personality quirks has become a Situation™. But given Evan’s response, his car isn’t working either, so at least I’m not alone in my sorrows.

Our weekend of labors wrapped, it appears there have been victories and further complications. We start our way to Missouri in ten days.

My Mystery Wagon is drivable once more, but with a fix I’ve described as “functionally adequate, but looks like garbage.” It also required a second trip to the junkyard to find this part. At some point this week, I may make a run to the tire shop for a spare/donut situation.

George is in Oklahoma City (ish) both to keep the Fire Truck hidden and also to work on it with his Dad. Apparently he’s in good shape (still!). He’s dropped it off for a brake job, and “ran into another surprise job.” As he put it:

[Car manufacturer] makes multiple [parts that you would not expect this to be the case for] that are visually identical and also not interchangeable.

And then there’s Evan. I’ve since learned that “Dusty’s” exhaust manifold gets so hot it will glow. I don’t know what else is wrong with it, but I’m sure that’s not all. But at least some of his toils appear to be self-inflicted:

Current status is I can’t find my keys and I feel like I’m going insane. I wasted the entire day [yesterday] trying to get the alternator out. And most of today looking for my keys… and then trying to get the alternator out. I finally succeeded, but it took a 4-ton body jack to do it. Needless to say the bracket got a trip to the grinder.

And although George insists that Evan has had his car running since the day after he bought it, Evan is being coy enough about its current state that he’s either pulled off a miracle… or he’s in serious trouble.

In the early Autumn we reached the Columbia River and we drove down through the Barlow Pass and came into the Willamette Valley. Father was anxious to secure a place where he could have shelter for the invalid mother and when he found a chance to buy out a homesteader, he was glad to pay him his price ($1,000) and take possession at once. The place was on Mill Creek, four miles East of Salem. There was a comfortable log house of two rooms, a log barn, and ten of the 640 acres was farmed. […] Oh no, we were not poor! Father brought $10,000 to the country. How? In gold and silver. You know mother was brought on a bedstead set right into the wagon. Well, underneath her bed was a box of bedding and in that box, the money was cached.

Mrs. Mary Elizabeth Munkers Estes, Crossing the Plains in 1846 (written 1916). Collected in “Oregon Trail Stories” (David Klausmeyer).

You must be the only person in Austin who owns three cars but bikes to work.

Aunt Leslie

My company’s new East Downtown office has me crawling out from my “work from home” hermitage more often than I ever would have expected. But I find myself going in more often over the past couple weeks as a way to avoid Oregon Trail related distractions. But I keep going to/from on my bike because the trails are far more inviting than the interstate.

I’m beyond ready for our adventure.

Evan sent this to the group earlier this evening.

I have no reason to believe I’ll need to buy a second car. Probably.

So the exhaust manifold no longer gets so hot that it glows. Apparently the ECU had a bad ground, which was causing it to slow the timing at load, which was causing combustion flames to enter the manifold. So that’s a whole thing.

And a replaced gasket on the vacuum pod for good measure.

This means his car is new enough to have ignition timing determined by the ECU. Detectives, get out your service manuals.

But that’s odd… because he also wailed about the state of his distributor (which he also had to take apart and put back together). Of the three of us, I am the least knowledgeable on such matters — and I look forward to being thoroughly schooled about this in Missouri — but I thought either one might have a distributor (like, say, The Truck) or you would have computer-controlled ignition timing (like, say, Xterra the Younger), but not both… but apparently Evan’s mystery wagon… has both?

In the meantime, I gave up and put in a call to a dealer in Austin for the proper replacement to the mission-critical part I tried to salvage from a junkyard. They wanted to be paid … more than I wanted to pay … but I’m hoping the output will reduce the heckling from G&E, instill more confidence from me and Evan G, and — with any luck — allow this to go unnoticed by a Portland buyer.

I just asked George if he’s been up to anything of conseuqence:

I’ve been doing stuff! I’ve been fixing grounds and opening doors and trying to make it idle properly.

And even more exciting than all that obviously made-up nonsense — George has made us a dinner reservation! In Independence, Missouri. For exactly one week from tomorrow where the six of us will meet.

During our three play-throughs of the 1990 The Oregon Trail, I was amused at the “music” that would beep loudly during the “cutscenes” (still images) marking key stopovers and landmark waypoints on the crossing.

Soundtracks in video games at that time was mostly an exercise in the most musically-adjacent use of the computer’s variable-pitch terminal beep. But most of the songs were easily recognizable classics. I went looking to see if anyone had made a list of those songs and stumbled across “My Gaming Audio History: Oregon Trail (1985),” compiled by Blogger user Matthew Thompson in 2013, which I have turned into a Spotify playlist:

• Leaving Independence, MO: Yankee Doodle
• Kansas River: I Gave My Love a Cherry
• Big Blue River: Oh Dear!  What Can the Matter Be?  (Johnny’s So Long at the Fair)
• Fort Kearney: The Campbells are Coming
• Chimney Rock: Auld Lang Syne
• Fort Laramie: Billy Boy
• Independence Rock:  Wayfaring Stranger
• Fort Bridger:  Where Has My Laddie Gone?  (Blue Bells of Scotland)
• Green River Crossing:  All Through the Night
• Soda Springs: Charlie Is My Darling
• South Pass: Believe Me, Of All Those Endearing Young Charms.
  • Known by many for its appearance in those Looney Tunes shorts where the piano is rigged to explode (YouTube).
• Fort Hall: Skip to My Lou
• Snake River Crossing: O Shenandoah
• Fort Boise:  On Top of Old Smokey
• Grande Ronde in the Blue Mountains: Long Long Ago
• Fort Walla Walla:  Flow Gently Sweet Afton
• The Dalles: Jimmy Crack Corn (Blue Tail Fly)
• Willamette Valley:  Viva la compangie (Viva l’amour)

I tried to find instrumental versions, skewing bluegrass/country-ish when possible, of these. Many are released largely (or even exclusively…) as lullabies and singalongs (from which I have protected you). And more than I expected were Irish or Scottish folk songs, which I suppose may be historically accurate given continued European immigration.

This may not be my Oregon Trail equivalent of the Guardians of the Galaxy Awesome Mix tape, as the Mystery Wagon has newfangled Bluetooth, but it was fun to find all this music.

Helped out at a high-speed spontaneous poetry writing workshop with Evan G today. They brought typewriters for everyone to use! This may not win me a Robert Frost Medal, but I gave it a shot. (Complete with a historical reference I’ll work into a future post.)

Leaving Tuesday. Still have route planning to do. Still have (another new!) Oregon Trail book to read. Still have video to edit. Still have packing to do. (Which requires the laundry I still have to do.) Still have a mountain of work to do. And probably still have necessary car repairs yet undiscovered. But I’ve just bought myself a present because I was left briefly unsupervised with a credit card.

I said I wasn’t going to buy the new Zelda game until after the trip… oops.