The following occurred on March 17, 2010. I'm getting around to writing this on February 20, 2011. I've postdated it for April 2010 for continuity purposes (it seems to take me forever to write these things, probably because I drone on and on, adding layer after layer of pointless subtext and parantheticals, ad nauseum, long out-lasting the patience of my single digit audience with this wearisome diatribe). At some point in the spring of last year I forgot the password to this blog, and then, just today, I figured out what it was. Luckily I made some pretty thorough notes:
I also apologize in advance that there aren't any pictures. It all happened at night. Part 2 makes up for it though - I promise.
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Not remembering the circumstances surround this plan, I honestly can't fathom how I came up with it, but I decided that Levi and I would depart Walla Walla at 2 in the morning, drive through the night (during which, I reasoned, Levi would sleep peacefully) and arrive in the scenic Silver Valley of Wallace, Idaho at or near 6 in the morning - a time at which the bike's current owner assured me he would have already been up for only an hour or so since, after all, it was a Sunday.
Well, Saturday night rolled around, and even before I left my plan was unraveling. First off, I hadn't considered that, having been in bed since 8 o'clock, the six hours of sleep would be more than enough to sustain Levi through an entire night's worth of excitement on this "Grand Adventure" (as we had billed the ordeal). Instead of loading a quietly sleeping child into the truck just before taking off, I had an enraptured three-and-a-half-year-old assistant help me load up the truck before we got on the road.
The forty five minute drive to Dayton passed without incident, and I got to explain what the word Adventure means at least twelve times. Being the first real opportunity to drive Ugly, I noticed a few... we'll call them 'traits:'
1. The driver's side door wouldn't stay shut. No matter how hard I slammed it, it would slide open just enough to turn the interior light on. Not to where it would fly open, and I could, say, realize that this whole foolhardy enterprise was ludicrous and decide to actually get some sleep on Saturday night instead of risking the life and limp of me and my little boy at the hands of who knows what dangers - trusting in a truck that was taking every reasonable opportunity to suggest how unreliable it was - so I could pick up some old bike that had caught my fancy... No. Just far enough to keep Levi awake and chatty, and provide a nice gentle freezing wind on my left side.
2. The speedometer and tachometer didn't work. Well, the speedometer didn't work. The tach... it tried. I knew they didn't work before I set out, but I guess I kinda underestimated their importance.
3. The thermostat seemed to be stuck on because the motor never built up any heat. I mean, I could feel heat coming out of the heater, but the needle just wouldn't move off of the cold mark.
Finally in Dayton, I decided it would probably be a good idea to top off the tanks, as what lay ahead was 67 miles of... wheat. That's it. Wheat. 67 miles of wheat. At least we wouldn't go hungry. Oh, and there was a bridge. And a river. The snake river. A bridge over the snake river.
At the gas station, I filled up and, to convince Levi that he was in good hands, I got down and sort of glanced around underneath - like I was checking on something. I thought maybe I'd touch the transmission? See if it felt hot or something? The transmission was fine, but as I stood again to get back out of the cold, I noticed something drip down onto the pavement right where I had just been laying. It was off to the side, under the second fuel tank - the one I had just topped off. I got back down and noticed that gas was leaking from somewhere on the top of the tank and dripping on the ground. The smart money seemed to be on the transfer valve. Great. At least it wasn't dripping anywhere near the exhaust. I decided to press on - I'd just use that tank first to minimize the leakage.
From there things went as well as could be expected. We made it though the bread basket without problems. We didn't even have to stop for gas in Colfax - the first station we came to. I did notice 'trait' No. 4 though:
4. The high beam switch (more like the high beam pedal - it's on the floor to the left of the clutch) had a mind of its own.
I didn't even switch off the leaking tank until Spokane. So far so good. We got to Spokane, and soon it was onto Highway 90 - the Speedway to Idaho and Beyond. Then came the next issue.
It started as this dim sense that something (else) was wrong. We had just got on the 90, so I thought maybe it was just some wind noise. Through Spokane the feeling would come and go. Something just seemed off. Was it performance? Was I loosing power? I tried to get Levi involved. "Do you hear something?" I'd ask. "Yes." "What?" "You." A few miles later - "Did you hear that?" "What dada?" "I don't know." "Is it the motor? I think it's probably running."
Finally, just past the Idaho state line, I pulled over to check things out. The gas leak had dried up. The transmission felt normal. Was it a u-joint? The differential? It only seemed to happen when we got up to speed, but I couldn't even put my finger on what 'it' was. It was really strange - like this sixth sense would just kick in and I'd feel like something was wrong.
Back on the road, I began to catch hints of something actually sounding weird. At irregular intervals the truck would make these quiet little screeches, for lack of a better term. My first thought was that it was some sort of relay or solenoid, but it didn't seem to be in connection with anything. I wouldn't lose power. The lights wouldn't dim. It was just this weird little sound. I thought maybe I was losing the rear end.
We pressed on. The sun rose. We entered mountain territory.
Levi was an absolute sport. He never once complained about being strapped into his government mandated safety chair for the better part of five hours - instead enthusiastically asking me questions about where we were going, what a valley is, what the sun is, what a star, is, what a solar system is, why space is up in the sky, what a motorcycle is, why motorcycles only have two wheels, what a thing that drives on the road is that only has three wheels, about how silly it would be if a car had no wheels, what wheels are, what tires are, why people call wheels 'rims' when the rim is only the outer part of the wheel that holds the tire, why we need gas to drive our cars, what gas is, about how they make gas at the gas factory, what a state is, what a country is, what a nation is, what an indigenous people is, why we stole land from the Indians, if I was a communist, about the logical inconsistency of the subjective quantum view, and where in my body my soul was...
Before I knew it, it was 5:30, and finally, at long last we had made it to Idaho's storied and picturesque Sun Valley... turnoff.
To Be Continued...
This is GOOD stuff. You need to write more often than once a year. :)
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