An End on the Day

Twenty-five years ago today, about now, Jane and I were at Pinehurst Conservation Grounds, near Paris. We had been married for a couple of hours. We were living in a trailer at the end of my parents' yard. We had our wedding bands, and a 1973 Pontiac that cost us $200.00 and some sheet metal and pop rivets. This was as much honeymoon as we got; I was back at work the next day.

Jane was twenty, I was twenty-one.

If I look back closely over those twenty-five years, they contain too much detail to hold in mind at once, too many significant circumstances to appreciate, too much joy and striving and love, setbacks struggle and quiet triumph to name, catalogue or savour in one setting at a keyboard. This is, perhaps, why the years seem to rush past as we grow older: we lose sight of everything that makes up those years because there is too much on which to reflect. We simply stop trying to remember it all, overwhelmed by the sheer volume of our lives.

What a long way we have come, Jane and I, and what a long time it took to get here!

Three days after we were married, I felt as if we had always been married , with a sense of acceptance and the knowledge that the universe was unfolding as it was supposed to. Life is still ultimately happy, fractal, organized chaos with new wonders revealed each day - we're not done yet.

Technical details

1964 Imperials are over-built. They are more massively constructed under the dash, with heavier supports and extra brackets, all of which get in the way when you are trying to unbolt stuff. Add doors that have frozen shut from rust and age, other hulks cheek to jowl around it and specify that the floor be either rotted away or covered in ragged, rusty parts, or any combination thereof, and you will easily understand why it took me over two hours to get the vacuum booster for the power brakes out of the donor car. Getting in and out was an interesting act of contortion; I don't think the driver's door opened any more than 6 inches at the bottom. In the course of this job, I did the backwards-twist, sit and drag/ whole process reversal thing about seven times. I got soaked in the process, but as the other kind of weather available was hot sun, that took care of itself.
My learning curve contributed to slowing things down; this booster removal marks the first time I have ever done one.
Taking the busted one out and putting the donor booster in our car didn't take much more than 45 minutes - and resulted in some improvement, for a given value of some. I temporarily fixed a vacuum leak with some JuicyFruit gum, and will do it properly before we leave tomorrow. The problem is, as ever, that parts for old cars can be ordered in if you have a day or two or a week to wait in one spot for them. Which I will do when I get home.

Be Prepared

My Guide leader always told me to do my best, help other people and be prepared. Specifically, when we left on this trip we were at least mentally prepared for the possibility (inevitability?) of breakdown.

Our object lesson for the day starts when we decided, as we normally do, to wander our way home on quiet back roads rather than busy interstates. This may well have saved our lives, as our power brakes failed as we were pulling over to the side of the almost deserted road to change drivers.

For the last couple of hours, we have had a fascinating time. First we found a man(Doug?) that does wheel alignments in the town of Canisteo NY, chosen by Rob who spotted a couple of antique cars in his yard – thank goodness for his old car radar. His (Doug's) original suggestion? – “go and see “Wild Bill” who lives just north on the 36, he has an old Chrysler in his front yard and may have the part you need.” After consulting with a few people to find out what Wild Bill's actual name was, he was given a better suggestion by a buddy. A man named John in a smaller town a few miles down the road has “all kinds” of old cars. He might be able to help.

Hence the opening picture. We followed John from his shop to his farm and personal workshop. He was in his 1921 Dodge pictured here. She broke down on the way there, and the spotter he brought with him had to tow him home. Rob and John were out in the yard for a while, and have found the parts Rob will need, and Rob is now in the process of pulling something off an even older car than ours.

Since I started this story, I have had to move to a spot in a shed to get out of the rain and hail (which is deafening on the tin roof of this thing), and Rob is still out in the field/yard, trying to convince a 1964 Chrysler to give up it's parts.

The temperature today promised to be in the high nineties, and I know you will pleased to hear that New York weather keeps its promises. The hail storm was a welcome relief (easy to say from my vantage point under the roof of the shed) and has cooled the air way down to the low nineties.

Will he be home today, under the circumstances? Well, your guess is as good as mine at the moment. We prepared. We left a few days at the beginning and a few days at the end for just this sort of emergency – it's all just part of the adventure.

Photos that go with the last post

You may remember this from Close Encounters... It is the actual filming model. Now look closely at the picture on the right. No wonder they found earth, with good old R2 to lead them! We also saw a VW bus, and some little model planes in on the model. Below is the best picture we could get of the Enterprise. Unfortunately they don't let you go inside...

Heading Home

We found yet one more Smithsonian museum to visit on the way out of town; this one has the SR-71 Blackbird, the Concorde and the Space Shuttle Enterprise in it. And a billion other bits of aviation history. One such is the Enola Gay, now back in one piece after 40 years. One of two extant, it dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. (The other B-29 still existing - but not at this museum - is Bock's Car, which dropped the bomb on Nagasaki. Strange to think that of an entire production run, only these two were deemed worth keeping. More people died under their wings than any other two planes in history.)
I won't go into further detail of this place, except to mention the experimental counter-rotating helicopter built by a 19-year-old and static-tested in his father's driveway: Tom Swift is true to life after all.
Then we drove, in air made solid by the sun. It was about 98 F, but somehow far hotter than yesterday. I have not been in weather like that for longer than I can remember. We were later than expected leaving the museum - big surprise - and wanted to stay off the interstates, which is how we ended up in Gettysburg, with no time to see anything but cannons and markers against the skyline. On the way through the town, Jane spotted the same ice cream store where she had ice cream when she was 11. Then more driving to Williamsport, where we are staying at the historic Genetti hotel, which deserves its descriptive if the pictures of famous guests on the walls of the lobby are anything to go by. It looks (in the dark - it was a long drive) like it dates from the Twenties.
Pizza and sleep - we'll be home tomorrow.

We're old hands at getting to the Smithsonian now, beetling into the Natural History Museum about 1030, ducking in from a strong sun bent on driving the temperature outside up to 91 F or so. We have the idea that we will see only the galleries and exhibits that interest us, and we know what they are and where, and time will be conserved for the National Art Gallery. This time it's 1500 before we are standing on the steps - and we stuck to the plan, as far as seeing just what interested us most: displays on minerals and gems, dinosaurs, the ice age, early mammals, meteorites and the section on plare tectonics, earthquakes and volcanoes that snuck in when we weren't looking.
There are two kinds of children in the museum; those wide-eyed and in the process of having their understanding of the universe expanded by an order of magnitude and those who are tired of all that right now and need to get outside to play. As the day goes on, the ratio of the former to the latter goes into a steep decline. We headed down the street at a very slow stroll in the heat to the National Art gallery, and found that this one closed at 1700. We expected that here too we would be forced out at closing.
It has a dome-and-pillared rotunda that owes everything to the Romans, and outclasses them with ease at the same time. I have one photo that in no way conveys the majesty of the place. The galleries are endless, and as comprehensive in covering Renaissance and Dutch masters and Impressionists as anything I have seen in my limited experience. Sorry, that is badly put. This IS my limited experience at actually seeing these art genres; what I meant is that artworks and artists I have only read about are here, in front of my eyes. This is actually a problem; there are so many brilliant works that my mind eventually overloaded, and at 1630 we were outside, ambling through a giant folk festival on the Mall. What the National Art Gallery needs is a month or more where I spend each day in one or two galleries, no more, in hours of quiet contemplation. But I can definitely say that should they run out of space to store any of the Monets, I've got some wall space at home that, you know, could use a bit of brightening up, and I'd be happy to return them anytime after I'm dead.
Jane needed to rest, and while she did, I loped over the horizon to the Washington Monument (see enclosed photo, looking like every other photo of this massive obelisk) and the World War II Memorial, and the Vietnam Memorial. The last is too hard to take; I took no photos of either.
Then back to the hotel and the reality of hotel guest laundry rooms; nothing worth further mention.

Day Well Spent

The freeway that never sleeps howls below the hotel, matched only by the air-conditioner that won't let you sleep - but we slept anyway, dead tired and afraid of not getting an early start in the morning. Then it turned out that getting to downtown Washington is utterly painless: the hotel takes you to the Metro, the Metro takes you to the Mall, the stop is labelled Smithsonian, and there you are.
Not being entirely too bright, I didn't take a picture of the Smithsonian Castle, but google it, and triple the effect of whatever photo you might find, as the reality of it is quite overwhelming. After viewing the displays there, we went down the street to the National Air and Space Museum, where we assumed that between 1030 and 1600 we could see everything that would interest us. Wrong. It all interested us; the entire museum is all highlights, and they pushed us to the curb at 1700 with everyone else with at least one gallery missed and several rushed through. Hours later, I'm still trying to sort out how I feel about all.
All my life I have seen pictures of the Wright Brothers' Flyer - now I have seen the Flyer itself, the actual machine that started the 20th century with a bang that is not yet done resounding.
There is the Spirit of St. Louis, the Apollo 11 Command Module, Chuck Yeager's sound barrier- breaking Glamorous Glennis, and Friendship 7, a piece of moon rock you can touch and Space Ship One, and that's just in the entrance hall. There are early rockets and late missiles, a V-1 buzz bomb and a V-2 assembled from leftover parts of captured examples and not uncoincidentally reminiscent of an Oldsmobile hood ornament - if only a little bit bigger than the whole car. There is the backup Skylab that you can walk through, and a backup LEM that could have gone to the moon, but didn't, and a moon suit that did, and came back with grey dust from the surface that is still ground into the fabric - there is more in that building than I can describe, more than I could see, more than I could put into this entry and still expect anyone to read it. These things have held me fascinated since I was a child; it is not often that you get to stand so forcefully in front of your youth.

Random Thoughts on Driving

Driving through Shenandoah has a different feel to it than taking the Parkway in spite of your path picking its way along the same mountains; perhaps this is because a different group of surveyors laid out the Skyline Drive. Different artistic choices. As well, some of the difference can be attributed to the trees ( reforested ares that have not caught up to the Parkway) and wide vistas over the valleys that have been heavily settled for years that seem nearly absent further south.
I found driving through Front Royal after leaving the Park a useful reacclimation for the interstate to follow. As Washington is little more than 60 miles away from the end of the Park, and our maps and schedule were not up to the less harried routes we prefer, we chose to rip along at 65 mph along with everyone else and get it over with sooner. The first forty minutes were actually not bad, but the next twenty five on the beltway, were, by the standards of driving to which I have recently become used, hell.
Alexandria, where our hotel is (we will not be driving into Washington), has no old cars in it save ours; as far as I can tell, we seem to be a category of one. The very little bit of it we have seen is a sea of new or nearly new vehicles, all of them zipping along to somewhere important.

Life is Old There

Shenandoah National Park stretches along the 105 mile Skyway Drive. Its camping facilities are less rustic than those at Great Smokey Mountain (for example, you don't have to pay $6.00 to shower in a small town outside), but at the same time the sites are more secluded and wildlife is abundant. Our first night there, as we were sitting by the campfire thinking deep thoughts, three deer were grazing behind us, about 20 feet away. If we made a loud noise, they would look up, then go back to grazing. A ranger came by, warning everyone that bears had been spotted in the campsite, and to make sure our food and supplies were locked in the car at night. We had seen a bear running across the road the day before, but none came to visit.

Our second day in the park we went whitewater canoeing on the Shenandoah River. We have been stillwater canoeing together almost as long as we've been married, and we like to go once a year if we can, just to keep our oar in, so we signed up for the "Beginner Whitewater" run. This was 8 miles along the lazy South Fork, mostly soft ripples with the occasional category one rapid, and one strong category two for flavour. It was a great deal of fun, and next time we will step it up a bit and look for more cat 2 with maybe even a cat 3 for spice. No pictures of this, we kept the cameras safe and dry in the car.

I am going to leave the rest for Rob to show and tell...

A brief announcement...

Rob and I will be spending the next two days camping in Shenandoah National Park. Although it is possible, it is unlikely that we will be within reach of electronic contact while in the park. Try my cell phone if you need to contact us.

See you on the other side, on the 5th.

End of the Parkway

Things come to an end; there are only 490 miles of Blueridge Parkway and even at an average speed of 35 mph with all the overlooks possible stopped for, sooner or later we must run out of road. That was today's event: every inch of the 490 miles driven over, several of them more than once. In all the days that we have been at it, the Parkway has become our private road, a source of wonder, awe and solace. We left it to find lodgings at night, or to descend into towns or cities on side trips, but we inevitably relaxed the moment we got back on it. We grew used to polite, interested and interesting strangers talking freely to us at overlooks and trails, to a route with no litter and no road signs taken by people who wanted to be there. Once or twice someone hurried past - and if there were more than that, by the end of our drive, I had forgotten them. Sunlight through tall green trees on a downhill curve, the slow snaking of the car across the ribs of a mountain, the sight of farms 1800 feet below a weathered stone wall tends to rearrange your priorities. Some men built that road for my personal enjoyment, and if all of them are now dead then I still owe them a great and unpayable debt. I will drive it again, but never again for the first time.

Sunday Driving

We started off the morning in historic Mt. Airy. This is the small town that served as the TV model for Mayberry, (that's where the Guy named Shoney is from, Rhiannon...)

Naturally our car was very excited, and fortunately for her we were able to get a picture of her with one of her idols, Sherriff Andy's squad car...

The rest of the day has been an idyllic Sunday drive. We stopped for a short hike at Cumberland Knob, then meandered through mountain farms to lunch at Groundhog Mountain. Here we were witness to an impromtu outdoor hymn sing, complete with banjo and guitars. We pulled over to a little shop called The Wormey Chestnut for a softdrink, then found our way eventually here to Roanoke, Virginia.

DJ, the Sunday drive is most definately not dead. Look, from up here on a clear day you can see last Tuesday...

Saturday

We lost an hour solving the Mystery at BE, not that we were in a hurry particularly. but annoying because we have so many better things we could have done with that hour.

Still keeping with our plans, though, we headed up Beech Mountain for breakfast (now brunch) at Fred's Backside Deli. For those of you who were with us the first time, Fred's is still the same. We ate on the back patio - and I had a nostalgic moment while I looked back on the last time we were there, and remembered sitting in that same spot enjoying hot chocolate on our first evening on the mountain.

One of my favourite authors often has his characters advise to "budget the luxuries first". I have to go one step sideways, and advise: Budget the Memories first.

We stopped after that at Linville falls, and took a short hike up a well manicured trail to see the falls from above. Then off and driving again. We are now in Mt. Airy, NC - the significance of which will be explained on our next post, so tune in tomorrow....

Mystery at Banner Elk

A day later it is posible to be charitable and say that Best Western at Banner Elk is under new management and still ironing out the bugs. Yesterday was a different matter.
We had misplaced the CAA books, and were limited when it came to phoning ahead for reservations to motels listed in the guide to the Parkway, but as we wanted to go to B. Elk and Beech Mountain anyway, this one seemed a good fit as they had internet access. We decided to swallow the cost of the place, which was more than we would like to pay. They had internet access all right but it was in the lobby as lightning strikes had messed up their equipment. We ate in the restaurant just off the lobby - the cheapest entre, once we had seen the prices, and paid cash. Against all expectations in a story like this, the food when it arrived, was exceedingly good - but I could have eaten about three of them. The restaurant was also under new management, and the staff had the harried air of a disaster relief crew running around frantically nailing one wheel after another back on the wagon. It took forever for the food to arrive, and we got the wrong bill once and the right bill with the wrong entre and amount on it next. We paid cash.
At checkout time the next morning, we were presented with a restaurant bill, charged to our room at 2213 hours (after the restaurant was closed) for $56.00, and signed in block letters by "James McCormick". This would have been merely laughable except for one thing; Jane had called in our reservations over a cell phone with a less than clear connection and we were in their computer from the get-go as "James McCormick". When Jane pointed out that this seemed to indicate that someone had access to the front desk's computer, and by extention our credit card number, she was told that this wasn't possible, and that someone must have overheard us in the restaurant mention both our room number and a name neither of us have.
We were politely doubtful. Or repeatedly doubtful; it took the staff member a long time to get the fraudulent bill off our bill, as she had already checked us out. The manager was away until Monday, she said. We called MasterCard.
We then went to the restaurant, and spent half an hour of repeated explanations and confusion all round there, the result of which was to be told that a new waitress had misplaced a bill charged to someone's room, come across the lobby to the front desk and described the diners to the desk clerk - who helpfully picked us out of a hat and accepted the bill on our behalf. Customer realations ain't just a river in Egypt...or something like that.