Aug 31, 2004 16:25
It was the best of trips, it was the worst of trips.
Full of successes, full of disasters.
It was everything I had hoped and more, it was a fiasco.
Okay, enough of that crap. On to the trip.
We left around 1:30 because Richard wanted to get there ASAP. I don't blame him. It was about a 5 hour trip to Mena, Arkansas, and he was hoping to get there while his grandfather's shop was still open. We were taking his dad's '78 Silverado up there. We took this car because it was getting it's windshield fixed in Arkansas. It was a regular cab with a bench seat, which was just enough space for the three of us to ride barely comfortably, but still comfortably. Richard drove, I rode shotgun, and Jason rode bitch, because he was the only thin one. He didn't seem worried about it.
At Sulphur Springs, about 2 hours into the trip, we stopped at Braums. After finishing off our shakes, we got in the car, buckled up, situated outselves, and started the car.
Well... we ATTEMPTED to start the car.
In case you failed to pick up on the sub-text there, the car did not start. This surprised and cunfused Richard greatly, because it was a brand new battery; in the car barely a few days. So we did everything we coud to try to get it to start; Richard did his thing, which failed. We got a jump, but that failed. Richard did his thing again, but that failed again. Finally we admitted defeat and decided we would call Richard's grandfather to come and pick us up with the dolly. However, that meant waiting the 2.5 hours for him to get there, then driving another 2.5 hours. Unfortunately, we weren't that lucky. It took Richard about an hour and a half to get ahold of his grandfather, and then it turned out that his grandfather wasn't even IN Mena at the time. It would take him an hour or so to finish what he was doing, drive to Mena, pick up and set up the dolly, THEN drive the 2.5 hours to Sulphur Springs and pick us up. Finally, around 11-12PM, he showed up. We hooked up the car to the dolly and piled into Richard's grandfather's smaller Silverado, which was a VERY tight fit for that long of a drive.
Once again, we were not so lucky. We stopped for gas about an hour away from Mena. As we were pulling in, we had to make a rather sharp turn for a pickup towing another pickup, and the towed became seperated from the tow-ee. Basically, the dead truck came off of the dolly. Luckily it didn't come off enough to go rolling down the hill. However, we still had to take about 45 minutes to fix everything. By the time we finally got to Mena, dropped off the truck at the shop, then got to Richard's grandfather's house, it was 3 in the morning (Side note: from this point hence, I will refer to Richard's grandfather as "Poppa", which is what I think I was supposed to call him anyway). We all took showers, then went to bed.
The next day, we went to a shop that customizes cars. Rich people that buy brand new sports cars suddenly realize that their car could be even better. Unfortunately, they also realize that they don't know anything about cars, but that they like things chromed. So they send their cars to this place, and pay for expensive and wonderful LS1s, possibly man's greatest contribution to the world. The LS1 is an engine, that is 2nd only to the new LS6s that come in the 2004 Corvettes. While we were getting a tour of the facility, we got to see a a hot rod with an LS1 get started. Now, I will admit that I have never been THAT impressed by powerful engines. However, when he revved that thing, I felt all tingly. It was coool...
Just before lunch, Richard, Jason and I went downtown to get some photographs of an old police car ('50s? '40s? '30s?) that Jason and Richard were hoping to make a model of.
The rest of the afternoon was spent messing around at the shop. We hiked through the woods to an abandoned house and explored it pretty thouroughly. That evening, we went to the first part of the hot rod show. They had blocked off a section of the downtown area and they had all the cars lined up on either side of the street. Many of them had some sort of particular theme, like Black Cherry, one of my personal favorites. There were also some muscle cars and sports cars that were verrry nice, especially a '68 Camarro SS.
The next day, Saturday, was spent at Poppa's shop, messing around with the various tools and equipment there. We took a tour of the area, which was a house used for storage, a pre-fab used for the shop, and a large field covered with cars in various stages of destruction as well as piles of scrap parts or just scrap. Around 1PM or so, Jason and I discovered welding. Used Poppa's stick-welder to make our piece of scrap-art, The Conglomerated Mass. We started with one piece of metal and added another, just to experiment. The process went as such: we would weld a piece onto it, then we would scavenge the scrap piles for a cool-looking piece of metal. Our first major project was to add an arm with a chain hanging off of it. Then we added a satellite dish-looking thing. Richard, Jason, Poppa and I went out for pizza that night at a place called Simple Simon's, which was very good.
On Sunday we went to Richard's grandparent's church, which was incredibly tiny. Population of maybe... 30? After church we hung out at their house all afternoon, then went to the evening service. On Monday we went to the shop and welded some more. Richard finished up a very cool bench he had started, and Jason and I made a chair. We used a jack as the support, so the chair was adjustable. Unfortunately, we tried to use some big springs we found to make it... well... springy. Unfortunately, it was overly complicated and its not very comfortable to sit on. However, the important thing is that it works.
Around 5:30PM we were finally ready to leave for home. We joked about how despite the fact that we were leaving 3-4 hours later than on the trip OUT there, we would still get in several hours earlier than on Thursday.
Oh how wrong we were.
We were taking the had-been-broken Silverado, since Poppa had jerry-rigged it and replaced the windshield. The problem had been the starter; the alternator wasn't charging the battery. So what he did was rig up what sounded like a capacitor to charge the battery instead. We were told that we needed to watch the voltimeter; if it got below a certain point, we needed to pull over and sisconnect the capacitor-thing. We were also told that it would be unwise to shut off the engine for prolonged periods of time.
It was alright for the majority of the trip. We stopped in Sulphur Springs (I know, bad idea) for Whataburger. We took turns going inside to order while somebody watched the car, which wa sitting in the parking lot with the engine running. Later, we were about 60 miles outside Dallas, which puts us at about 2 hours from home, when the battery started to die. At this point, we had literally enough electricity to run the engine, and that was it. We didn't even have headlights, and this was around 9PM. So we figured it was a bad idea to go down the freeway at night without any lights, so we decided to pull into the next gas station. I remember that Jason and I were flashing a flashlight out the back window, since we didn't even have hazard lights. However, the engine started to backfire, and it ended up dying on us completely. So we pulled over onto the grass divider between the highway and the access road and called Richard's dad. Unfortunately, it was another situation where Richard's dad was an hour or so out of town. He had to get home, pick up his pickup, THEN drive out to us. After that, we had to drive BACK to Sulphur Springs to drop off the once again broken Silverado at a house that belongs to Richard's family. THEN we drove home. By the time we finally made it back to Fort Worth, it was, ironically, much later than when we had made it in Thursday. Unfortunately, this was the first day of school for Richard and I.
I'll admit that waiting for Richard's dad to pick us up was kind of nice. We walked over the the access road, since it was in the middle of nowhere and hardly got any traffic that late at night. We set out our bags on the shoulder and layed down. We just kind of hung out under the stars. It was pretty nice. At one point I had to ah... go. So I took some TP and hiked along the road looking for a secluded gulley, just in case some car drove by. Since we were out in the contry, it was pretty easy; there were plenty of trees that had grown past the fence along the access road. Finally, I found a near-perfect spot. I was surrounded on 3 sides by thick foliage. The only problem would be in a car came down the road going a particular direction. However, most of the cars that had gone by had gone the other way, so I wasn't too worried. However, as our luck had been SO wonderful, it just so happened that a car went down the wrong way. My little enclosure was lit up like a Christmas tree, with me squatting there with my pants around my ankles and holding some TP. Luckily, they didn't even slow down, so they may not have seen me, but it was still kind of funny.
One last thing comes to mind that was kind of funny. After we hiked through the woods to that abandoned house, we inevitably got ticks and chiggers. We expected this, so thats not a big deal. However, the chiggers really went for Jason. both of his legs, from his lower ankles up to his knees, were literally covered in chiggers. I have never seen so many of them in the same place before. Richard and I both felt pretty bad for him, but we still kind of made fun of him a little bit. It was remeniscent of the time I got bit by all those ants. I was at a summer camp, many moons ago. Late one night, we snuck out of our cabin. We were walking along when we saw a car drive by. Everyone hit the birt, including myself. Unfortunately, I also hit an ant pile. My entire left arm was COVERED in bites for about 2 months.
Anyway, I think that about sums it up for the trip to Arkansas. I'll write about the first day at TCC in another entry.