[tcb] Long trip report
- From: "Denis Dodson" <coocoo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <tcb@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 13 Oct 2004 14:02:58 -0500
I want to put this in the start of my report in case it might be missed at the
end. I had the best VW experience of my life. We all have these cars, and they
are great, but the people with the cars are the best part. To be freaked and
stranded and to be taken in, fed, made warm, given a great place to sleep,
gotten drunk and made to laugh, and then to have my bus fixed well and for free
was unbelievable. I had a great time Saturday, and I didn't even have a car in
the show. Thank you all from the bottom of my hippy heart. And whatever reward
Paul receives for putting on the best weekend of the year cannot be enough. He
is an exceptional person, but then you all are.
I left Temple and went to Dallas, checked in to a Radisson, took showers,
soaked in the hot tub, ate room service and slept for about 10 hours. Monday I
got my MP3 fixed, bought another cool toolbox from Home Depot to replace the
one that I gave Bob, found a replacement antenna for my Sirius radio, bought
exotic food (none of which I can do in Fayetteville) and drove to my Sister's
house in Athens. On the electric gremlins re-appeared and in the 2 hour drive
from Dallas I had lost my turn signals, radio and brake lights. My brother in
law, Chuck, worked for VW for about a million years and is a Godsend at
electrical crap. We worked on the wiring for a couple of hours and we quit for
the night thinking we had gotten everything working. But Tuesday morning I had
no brake lights or turn signals again.
Chuck knocked off work and we finally did surgery and took out and replaced all
the wiring that showed signs of heat and strung a new wire from the Ignition
switch to the coil. I left Athens about 2:30 and drove up HWY19 through Cooper,
but nobody ran out to take my picture. I arrived in MacAlister at 6PM with no
turn signals, but it turned out that I did, I just had to jiggle the indicator
light in the speedometer. I got a room, ate Chinese food and crashed.
This morning I was up and out by 6:30AM. Coffee and a box of doughnuts. All
systems were go and I pulled up at home at about 11:00AM.
My GPS says I averaged 67 MPH. My temp gauge never read over about 210 and I
took three tanks of gas.
I got out of the cab and my builders asked me where to set the central heat and
air unit and I had to immediately give my dog a bath because she had rolled in
cow shit. It's like I never went away.
Things I learned:
Dan not only gets cranky if you don't feed him quickly, he also doesn't like
you to sit too close
Neal should blow up a Zales
Steve baby-sits Chinese people for a living and Sharon has so many trophies she
won't even get up to receive them any more
Mark cooks killer ribs
Joe has no luck with any of his vehicles
Katrina can wear a tie-dyed suit and look good. No one else can.
Fred has such good friends that they will pull, fix, and re-install his engine
in a baseball park if he needs it
Shirley travels with a 3 ton floor jack, and she makes me laugh
Everett works for the circus or something and his underlings call him on his
Nextel and bitch
Brent's hair IS fuzzy, how does he do that?
Eric and Amy only say that they own a VW, but no one has ever seen it
David Blades has enough incredible cars and if he shows up with another one we
should just kick his ass
Rob apparently speaks a language all his own. He moved his bus about two feet
"because it gets chilly by the door in the morning" or "there will be chili by
the door in the morning" We still don't know what he meant, even though he
repeated himself to us several times
When Lonnie says yellow he means YELLOW
And to all the rest of you, and you know who you are, thanks for a wonderful
trip and come on up to my house. We'll make some brandy alexanders and shoot
some bottle rockets.
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