The Long Drive

April 20, 2009

Karystos, Evia

 

 

Montana is done and I am in Greece, and it is time, dear readers, to fill you in on at least a few of the constituent elements of my most recent time of silence, wrested bit by bit from the very maw of oblivion. The Bitterroots are an entire hemisphere away, and let me tell you how I left them. Oh boy let me tell you. So that the month and change since my last significant anonymous epistolary activity can at least begin to escape the grim cipher of solipsism that will corrode and erase all uncommunicated experiences without our keenest efforts to pickle them in words. So: A tale of departure for now, and with ample additions on the parade of days that concluded my time in the Bitterroots soon to follow, not to mention an ample supplement to my short story, awaiting reclassification as a novella, on the administration of justice. To be succeeded in turn by an account of arrival and a fumbling, asymptotic attempt to grasp the forever fleeing present.

 

The end to my winter in the cabin was as sudden and eventful as the start. Between shifts in service to the parasitical juggernaut that alienates me from the fruit of my labor and my well-nigh frantic attempts to sap the mountains of as much experience as possible before leaving them, I was not totally prepared for the end when it came. What I mean to say is that Nystrom's Pride was not prepared for its drive halfway across the yawning continent. About a week before setting off for my father's town in Wisconsin where I'd planned to leave the vehicle, and other possessions unsuited to overseas travel, the timing belt failed. The timing of which failure was good, of course, inasmuch as it did not happen during the drive itself. I had no idea what had caused the engine to fail at the time, of course. I walked to the nearest gas station from where the truck had failed and called AAA. They came promptly and towed me to a garage in town called Sober Automotive. Sober was run by a friendly guy named Greg. His first impression was that the engine had seized up and that cylinder heads would have to be rebuilt. If that had been the case I would have abandoned my eponymous Pride with no further ado and asked Darren to drive me to the railroad in the northern part of the state for my journey east. But it turned out to be the timing belt, which was less serious, so we went ahead. He fixed the problem at what I think was a fair price, and had the truck ready for me the day before my departure.  But while running errands after picking it up, I discovered that the repair to the engine had either uncovered or exacerbated another serious problem - a significant oil leak. Since it hadn't leaked on his lot, Greg had failed to detect it. And by the time I noticed the bleeding there was no time (for Greg) to wash the engine down and troubleshoot it. Darren theorized that the new timing belt and pulley assembly and whatever tightening of screws Greg had undertaking in his repair had increased the pressure in the engine to its normal level and accelerated a leak that had been able to fly under the radar while the engine was operating at reduced pressure. Theories aside, I bought a few quarts of oil and decided on a course of wait and see. I spent the rest of that day in a flurry of packing, cleaning and preparing, hoping for the best as Nystrom's Pride bled in the drive.

      The morning of the big day was crisp, sunny and hopeful. I said my goodbyes to Darren and Tipper, topped off with half a quart after starting the engine and determining, sure enough, that the oil was low, and was off.

      I will unburden you of any suspense from the start and tell you that the truck made it. But not without going through--get ready for this--50 quarts of 10W-30. It did not take long to determine that the engine required constant topping off, and I had settled on increments of a quart or a quart and change every 40 miles by the time I'd made it halfway across the majestic Big Hole basin. It wasn't long before the rhythm of the drive was as regular as a beating heart: With a raptor's eye to the thermostat and the odometer, I would drive 35 miles or so, usually getting most of the way through a cassette tape (I was equipped with Fine Young Cannibals, Wagner's greatest movements, the best of Piotr, Pavel and Marya, a Snoop single and REM's 1988 album Green--the very same color that was later officially adopted by Snoop) and a liberal pinch of chewing tobacco (I went through pouches of Beechnut, Taylor's Pride, Levi Garret and Red Man) and then began scanning for an exit not too far to either side of the 40 mile mark. Then the dirty work would start: Slow down, pull off, coast down to the apron at the start of the on-ramp, cut the engine, turn on the hazards, get out, empty spittoon and bladder as needed, pop the hood, check the dipstick, unscrew the cap, add a quart or a quart and change through a party head, recheck the level, replace the cap, start the car, roar back into action--always leaving a significant oil patch on the ground where I had parked--and see that it was good.

 

In this way I covered 500 miles the first day--spending the night in a Super 8 in Miles City, MT--and 700 the next, which got me as far as the Mississippi River at Minneapolis. There were a couple of incidents that interrupted and added color to my insane routine, the first of which came halfway between Butte and Bozeman, where I was unable to tend to my oil on the shoulder of I-90 and was unable, for about ten minutes, to close the hood. The latch had been beaten out of shape by hard use and I could not get it to catch. After banging and prodding in vain for about ten minutes as traffic cresting the pass stampeded past my sorry rig, I settled on a provisional solution involving a piece of hanger wire harvested from my garment bag in the back.

 

The next tight spot came later that day during a top-off just east of Billings, when the wind was blowing so hard off the plain that it jarred the hood off its prop and would have sent it crashing into my skull had it not been for my Beechnut-primed reflexes. The night at the Super 8 was notable for the fact that I was able to enjoy high-speed Internet for the first time in 3 months, a privilege I used to watch a streaming episode of The Office. NBC is funding this post, in case you couldn't tell. As is the Beechnut Group. Toyota didn't want anything to do with it.

 

I left before dawn the following morning. Mostly to get a jump on the day, but also to prevent any of the hotel staff from noticing the rather voluminous territorial markings made overnight by Nystrom's Pride. My shame at its leakiness had also put me in the habit of parking in the back or off to the side whenever I ducked into a gas station to buy another ten quarts of 10W-30, or however many they had. My interactions at such times were cut from a single piece of cloth: I would lurch up to the counter with my armload of oil; the clerk would raise her eyebrows and say something like 'You must really need some oil'; and I would respond 'Oh no, not at all, these aren't for me, these are party favors.'

 

The next little issue cropped up just shy of Fargo, ND, and would haunt me for the rest of the drive. When I was forced to brake more sharply than usual on an offramp, Nystrom's Pride fishtailed and nearly flipped. The right front brake had failed. I will not go into the reasoning behind opting to continue rather than having the brakes serviced in Fargo, or even in Minneapolis the next day. Suffice it to say that I did continue, and that Nystrom's Pride made it, relying on transmission braking as I limped my way down the Red River Valley, across the Mississippi, and into Chippewa country and Packer-Land as the remaining brakes continued to deteriorate with every push of the pedal. I acknowledge my foolhardiness and offer no excuses. It is hard for me to brook any alteration to a trajectory once set, danger be damned. A common human failing, I suppose.

 

In Minneapolis I enjoyed the company and hospitality of my friends Tobin and Jenna. I arrived at 10 and was up talking until 2. We talked about what was on everybody's mind: Depression, want, contingency plans, the specter of violence. I feel some wonder, looking back, that I was able to carry on a coherent conversation after 17 hours of uninterrupted and unsafe vigilance, making use of fragments like 'Such is the nature...' or 'And so it goes...' or 'Thus it was decided.' Remarkable. I was running on physical, intellectual and moral fumes. Nor was I much restored the following morning. But I had managed to top off my powers to the point where they were able to handle the 240 miles that stretched out between me and my father's home amid the potato fields of north-central Wisconsin. And that was all I needed. At some point that afternoon I added maybe a quart too many to the engine. For about five minutes afterwards, I was trailing a towering plume of smoke as the excess mixed in with the fuel and burned off. People in the passing lane tried studiously to avoid looking at me. When the plume had subsided I thanked Allah and lesser deities that there had been no enforcement officials around to nail me.

 

Once I'd limped into Antigo with the brakes catching hardly at all and set my feet on the same ground that will serve Nystrom's Pride for a hospice as she rusts through seasons to come, I jumped for joy and collapsed in relief. The next 48 hours or so passed in a delirium of fatigue. From time to time I would drift off and begin casting about in that mental darkness for the thermostat, for the 40 mile mark, for the mother lode of 10W-30. Once I started awake in the middle of the night, wondering how I would ever make it through North Dakota.