Well, i actually pulled in on the 6th at 5am after a 19 hour straight drive from Oakland with my g/f. It took me 3 days to get from Lafayette to Oakland and i stayed there for 3 days before making the final stint to Seattle.
The trip was long (ended up being a little more than 3000 miles i think) and seemed to have something interesting in every state i passed through.
Somewhere between Houston and San Antonio, there was a Chevy Cavalier doing about 20mph in the West bound lane...but heading East :shock:
I was wondering why the semis stopped leap frogging each other when i noticed the car putting along. Then it looked kinda funny. It took a second to realize i was looking at his head lights, not his taillights. But mmy first thought was that it was an elderly driver who got confused on an on ramp somewhere, but as he passed, i saw that the driver was about 30
go figure.
After that, about 2 hrs later i'm nearing the outskirts of San Antonio and i notice a couple of F-16s flying around in the distance. They weren't hauling ass and it didn't look like they were on manuvers or anything but their landing gear was down so they may have been doing touch and go runs at the air strip. This didn't strike me as odd but kinda made me lift an eyebrow in retrospect as a tour bus passed me with a big ass Homeland Security symbol on the side
Don't they have better things to do than to drive around the fucking desert?
I have to extend a big thank you (read: you fucking bastards) to the DOT of San Antonio. Thanks to them i was on edge all through town and for about 60 miles after as the construction the were doing on the inner city portion of I-10 made the lanes extremely narrow to the point where i was afraid to blink for fear of the UHaul getting to close the lines, allowing the trialer to find a groove and scoot into someone else's lane. Fortunately that never happened, but for someone who doesn't have much experince with a heavy fuckin truck let alone truck with trailer, it was pretty hair raising.
Nothing happend for a few hours which was fine by me. Night fell and about 190 miles out of El Paso, i get passed by a Honda Prelude. Ok, no big deal, cars have been passing me the entire trip so far. the funny part came when the retard decides to pass the semi truck in front of me, on the right
he guns it the second he reaches the big rig's trailer. Well, he made it halfway up the trailer before the trucker started moving back into the left lane. I can only figure that the Honda was in the rig's blind spot (he didn't flash his high beams to let the guy know he was there or anything) so there was no way the trucker could have seen him. Now when someone starts moving into your lane, you would sound your horn and alert the other person to your presence...but no. Honda boy pulled a Gumball and jumped onto the hard shoulder and floored it
I only wish a State Trooper had been there to see it all and then ticket the Honda for passing on the right and passing on the shoulder
(the truck was in the clear because he had just completed passing me)
Just my luck, i reach El Paso and it's fuckin raining :roll: and yet again, thanks to construction, there were no recognizable lines on the freeway to mark the lanes :roll: so once more, key up the nerves
Especially when i get passed on the inside of a turn by a Ford Exploder and fucker sprays a blinding sheet of water on my windshield eliminating my sight until the windshield wipers can make another pass
and again another mile or so down the road by a semi on the left :roll:
Construction on I-10 was non-stop from about Beaumont all the way through to the New Mexico line :roll: I would have to say the points where it narrowed down to one lane were the best :fist: Thanks Texas :roll:
I pulled into the first rest stop in New Mexico at about 1am. I had started out on my drive at about 7:30am the previous day, so it took me about 18 hours to get from central LA all the way across TX and into La Cruces, New Mexico.
Thanks to the Red Bull i downed just outside of El Paso, it took me about an hour to fall asleep. 4 hours later, i was back on the road.
New Mexico...what a bore
nothing but desert foilage to look at. Fortunately, it's only about 120 miles from La Cruces to the AZ border
I swear, there are exits off I-10 in NM that serve NO purpose at all. You look to the either side of the freeway and see NOTHING. No houses, no gas stations, no barns, NOTHING. Not even a cactus. Hell the exits don't even have a town name listed on them. It's just exit 123 or whatever number it is
The drive through AZ was pretty uneventful right up until i got into Phoenix, well except the Maserati convertible that passed me. I got a pic of it, but you can barely see what it is :roll: . I stopped off to see my old boss and to take a break from driving (Phoenix drivers are the WORST). i stayed there about an hour and a half, two hours. Somewhere during this stop, the AC compressor clutch went out. I got back on the freeway, unaware of this until my bird began acting funny. when i realized he was panting, it hit me that we was starting to suffer from the heat. I tried turning on the AC, and this is when i found out it had taken a shit on me :roll: So i got off the freeway after about 20 minutes of bumper to bumper traffic, and had to duck into the air conditioning of a Chevron station so that i could get my bird cooled off. that was easily the most tense hour of my trip. Once he fluffed his feathers back up and started holding the ice cubes i was giving him on his own, i wen tout to see if i had picked up a rock in the AC condensor or something. Thats when i heard the compressor squealing. Of course no one answered on the 24 hour breakdown line that UHaul has :roll: so once the bird was back to normal and traffic freed up, we were on our way. By now the sun was going down and it was beginning to cool off. It was probably about 11pm when i pulled into Indio, CA and found a hotel.
The next day, after checking out, i called UHaul again and they told me that i could take the truck to the repair center in Cathedral City, which fortunately was in the direction i was heading anyways. Of course when i get there, the AC is working fine :roll: i had to spend a good 15 minutes explaining to them that the way i saw they compressor turning was NOT the normal cycling of an AC compressor. I had to convince the mechanic to go drive the truck to get it to act up. At this point both him and the manager kind of had that "this fucker is out of his damn mind" look on their faces. Until i told them what i did for a living
10 minutes later, the manager tells me that after driving the truck, the compressor clutch is glowing bright red
Unfortunately, before they change any parts on these trucks they have to get the approval of UHaul's corporate office :roll: so 3 hours later, i was finally on the road :roll: (the compressor clutch is NOT that hard to change, especially since on the Ford 460cid, it's right on top of the engine. The most difficult part is taking off the drive belt).
so by now it's about noon, i'm still on I-10 and i have a long way to go before i get to I-5. Traffic sucked ass as i neared Fontana, thanks to something going on at the speedway. Once i got passed there, i could see the brownish green haze of the LA smog
I missed the 215 interchange to bypass Los Angeles (thought i was looking for 210) and had to get on 5 North where it physically interchanged with I-10. All the way from there to Grapevine, traffic sucked monkey balls
probably didn't help that it was Labor Day weekend (3 day weekend in the US) and it was Friday, so everyone had the same idea of cutting out of work early to beat traffic. That works providing you get out before everyone else does though
The Grapevine was fun. 6 miles of going up a god damn mountain to get out of the valley
it's about a 15% grade (you gain 15 feet of altitude for 100 feet of distance traveled) that is spent in 2nd gear at about 40 mph. kind of a confidence killer when you see signs that say "Radiator water- 1 mi ahead" and "Turn off Air Conditioning to avoid overheating" all the way up.
before reaching the peak of the hill climb, i glance in the side mirror and see a flatbed truck about to pass me. As he goes by, i get a look at what's on his bed. A Maserati
Brand spanking new. didn't even have a temporary tag on it yet. Of course it would pass by right when i have to conentrate on the impending descent i'm going to have to make :roll: and to add insult to injury, on I-5 South, there is a damn 360 Modena mocking me. AND I CAN'T GRAB MY CAMERA :bad-words:
The descent out of The Grapevine is just as bad as the ascent. Why? Because you get the confidence inspiring signs that say "runaway truck ramp 1 and 2 miles". AND when you look out at I-5, it's nothing but a long, straight, black line as far as you can see
and trucks, along with cars with trailers, are limited to 55 mph in California :cry: (didn't stop me from convoying with the trucks at 65 mph though
) What's a Runaway Truck Ramp you ask? it's a long ramp made along the side of the road where trucks who have smoked their brakes and can't downshift anymore can exit and subsequently get stuck in the deep gravel instead of continuing down the hill at the mercy of the truck and the laws of inertia.
I'd like to extend another big thanks (again, read: FUCK YOU) to CalTrans for allowing the left lane of I-5 to go to absolute SHIT. I couldn't go 200 feet without hitting a damn pothole
and of course if you travel in the right lane, you get a ticket. And it would be just my luck that i'd be the one to get busted. So i stayed to the left. I got passed by an M3 that had been riced out to look like a CSL (see previous topic in Car Chat) .
I pulled into Oakland about 11pm where my g/f's dad was nice enough to move his van and let me park my 33 feet of vehicle in front of their house for 3 days while i stayed and rested before grabbing their daughter and dragging her up here for a few days
I met up with ae86_16v for lunch since he lives pretty much on the other side of the freeway from my g/f. (Thanks again for lunch Ken!) He's pretty cool and his M3 Sedan looks even better in the metal than in his pics :good:
The drive from Oakland to Seattle was fucking long and wasn't helped at all by the drive through mountains between Yreka, CA and somewhere near Medford, OR, i think. Fuck that is one never ending pain in the ass
The last time i was on edge though was driving over the Columbia River into Washington. Thanks to construction on the bridge on I-5, i was forced to use the 405 detour into WA. Now here's the shitty thing about that. when cresting the bridge, you can see that it turns to the right...somewhere. It's more of a blind turn than the braking zone and turn in point to the Corkscrew at Laguna Seca. Especially at about 1 am :fist: Not cool when you have nearly 18,000 lbs behind you :bad-words: There was only one more WTF moment in store but i wouldn't hit that until about 4:30 AM and that was construction work on the I-5, SR 18 Junction, which royally sucked because they had the 18 East exit closed (the one i needed) which meant they detoured you onto 18 WEST, just to get on 5 SOUTH to exit to 18 EAST
Which by the time i got on 18 East, i was so fuckin dizzy i was questioning as to wether or not it was the direction i was supposed to be going. couple that with a cranky girlfriend and you have to LONGEST 20 mile final stretch in history :roll:
I pulled into the driveway of my parents house at 5 am. 2 hours later i would realize that i has lost a day in my internal calendar and that it was a day earlier than what i thought it was, so there was really no reason for me to drive 19 straight hours
But, everything is squared away, i have most of my stuff in storage, my tool box is at my new job and i start tomorrow. Girlfriend just called me, she just got off the plane back in Oakland (she's moving up next year) so now i can finally relax for a little while
Sorry to everyone who wanted to meet up along the way that i didn't get a chance to stop off and see. We'll have to try again when time isn't really of the essence :bah:
I'm going to make a post in the travel section with a few tips for road trips that i've learned on my long haul (well, i learned it on my first 2 hauls as well, but only now am i on JW
) a little later. But first...lunch
Linear Mode
