With the roadtrip behind us, carried across the finish line by three vehicles nearly as old as their drivers, a spotlight on each:
George’s 1991 Volkswagon Cabriolet. “The Bumblebee.”
Purchased sight-unseen two weeks prior to departure on August 13th, brokered by “Aunt” Heidi, and repaired at Nyseco Motors in Santa Ana, California.
The Bumblebee was the only four-seater among us, although the back seats have no seatbelts. It also lacks a working radio, the A/C option was installed but it is broken, the driver and passenger seatbelts work but do not retract, the horn and reverse lights work only intermittently, the washer fluid pump doesn’t work, the cardboard shroud for the radiator has dissolved, the power steering pump makes strange noises at extreme angles, and the soft-top is covered in mold. The mighty Bumblebee caused more delays than the other vehicles because of its starter solenoid, which sits right below the exhaust manifold, preventing a hot-restart. George replaced the starter in LA and installed a solenoid fix kit in Indianola. Aside from non-starts, he was only stuck once at Balboa Park in San Diego when the key could not be removed from the driver door, which he had to take apart and fix on the side of the road.
But as we climbed through Big Sur along the Pacific Coast Highway, George stopped feeling like he was driving someone else’s car and became one with his mighty Bumblebee. He also earns points for most significant repair work, with the starter replacement.
Evan’s 1987 Alfa Romeo Spider, Graduate Edition.
Purchased August 28th at Calstate OC Auto in Santa Ana, California, a “buy here pay here” kind of dealer who was creatively deceptive on the paperwork.
The Alfa features a broken speedometer, uselessly slow wipers, catastrophically poorly focused headlights, and a busted lock in the passenger door. En route, Evan was able to fix the locking mechanism in the door, and realign the headlights. The only holdup it caused was when stress fractures in the key (caused by the door) caused the key to stick in the ignition. After tracking down a locksmith who actually had a blank to fit the Alfa, he got a new key cut to avoid that issue.
Evan struggled to find the ideal setting for the Alfa until cruising up the boulevard of expensive little beach towns along Highway 1 into Los Angeles, and that’s when, as he put it, the Alfa started to make sense to him. But it wasn’t until the vineyard drive into Paso Robles that he realized, “Oh dear, I think I love this car.”
Taylor’s 1988 Nissan D21 Pickup.
Purchased August 29th in the loading dock of Escondido Resource Recovery, a waste and recycling disposal center, brokered by two aids: the previous owner’s brother who translated and Evan who knew how to drive a standard.
The Pickup has no working instrumentation (save maybe the gas gauge that might be semi-accurate), mileage is at least 350,000 but the odometer was rolled back and disconnected, the blower’s diverter doesn’t work, there are no vent covers anywhere, the dome light shorts, the toolbox lock is busted, the headlights are poorly aligned, there are tears in the cab’s vinyl headliner, and for two solid days the radio was stuck loudly tuned to a Mexican pop radio station. The truck never truly broke down, although it did spend three days struggling to start, running rich, and billowing smoke on a cold start with its SES light on. But that mysteriously mended itself after San Francisco. The working theory is a faulty sensor sent a bad reading and triggered a failsafe condition — but that seems awfully fancy for such a base configuration. The only holdups the pickup can be blamed for were occasional stalls, caused by its incompetent student driver.
Having always wanted a pickup, Taylor was immediately fond of the spirited rustbucket, but the true bond was cemented along the Sausilito-Legett segment of Highway 1, north of San Francisco, after the full day along a mostly deserted cliff-side beach highway and a long night weaving through a forest.
Update, 2021: Doing a little maintenance (technical and grammatical) on the blog, I’ve reread the archive from this trip start-to-finish. What a time. Back when we all thought this would be the only one. The missing chapter never recorded here, because I couldn’t believe it myself, was how it all ended. A year or so after this trip, I compiled a printed book to tell the full story, so allow me to add that final episode:
Although the particulars of this trip have always been flexible, let’s recognize that most of it, surprisingly, went according to plan. This afternoon, we confronted a miscalculation over one bit of minutiae. Put as delicately as possible: over our dead bodies would we surrender these heroic automobiles.
From the drive up to Los Angeles to pick up Bumbles, we knew George would be hard-pressed to give it up. And indeed, even from the start, he was almost as invested emotionally as financially. By San Francisco, he was vowing to bring home the Bumblebee unless it truly betrayed him. He never even listed for sale.
Evan spent the first part of the trip actually complaining about some of the Alfa’s quirks, then spent the latter half of the trip trying to continue his whining so that parting would be easier. He listed the Alfa on Craigslist back in Portland and had been screening calls since, but he received no solid offers.
So George and Evan spent the afternoon of our arrival into Seattle entertaining quotes from uShip contractors and other freight companies looking to mail their cars home.
I, on the other hand, was determined to be sensible! This was a summer fling: picture perfect, immensely enjoyable, undeniably unforgettable, but so obviously over. So I listed the truck on Craigslist just before leaving Indianola. In truth, my car was the most likely to sell quickly because others may consider it a work vehicle. I really thought I could let it go. Suddenly, my phone rang. And my heart plummeted. As I became increasingly traumatized fielding calls, I heard George strike up a conversation with his shipping contact:
Yes, and there’s a third, but it’ll be shipping to Austin, Texas. It’s a Nissan hardbody truck from the eighties. Okay, yeah, I’ll have him call you.