Route Not Found

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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…

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

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).

Monday: Raced to San Antonio Dealer in the Xterra. Drove to Lowe’s in the Mystery Machine. Walked back to the Dealer. To Alamo in the Xterra. Back to Lowe’s in the Lyft. Home in the Mystery Machine.

Side note: “Mystery Machine” was what I was calling The Celica before Tacoma… I need a better preview name.

Tuesday: To Amtrak on foot and CapMetro Rail — only for the Amtrak to not arrive because of wreckage on the tracks in Temple. Home in a Lyft.

But while I was waiting on the train that never came: finally got an Austin Public Library card, successfully spent zero dollars while wandering aimlessly in the REI, bought two books at BookPeople, and ate a veggie hotbox from Whole Foods.

Wednesday: To Cloudflare in Mystery Machine. To Amtrak on a Lime Scooter. To San Antonio on the train!! To Alamo on a Bird Scooter. Back to Cloudflare in the Xterra. (Explanation of … all that … to the office security guard …) Back home in the Mystery Machine.

Thursday: To Cloudflare on Bike. Loaded bike into Xterra. Work day. Happy hour and dinner with George and Aaron from Tulsa who are in town for a thing! Back from the bars to Cloudflare on yet another stoopid Lime Scooter. Home in the Xterra. Unloaded bike. Crashed into bed.

Started a new book recently, Oregon Trail Stories, a collection of excerpts from diaries, reports, and news from Oregon and California Trail travelers. Some of these names and places are starting to become familiar.

Reading a little more on the train down to San Antonio for Part 2 of the mission most recently mentioned…