Archive for December, 2006

Berck woke me up at 1 am last night when he and his dad got home from flying the Airbus simulator to tell me all about it. “That was well worth coming to Memphis for.” Maybe he can write more about it here… if he ever stops working on the car.

Berck got me up this morning to say it was time to go work on it. His dad drove us to Sears to buy a torque wrench and 12 mm socket, then out to the house. My assignment was to find a machine shop in Memphis to take the engine head so they could grind it down and make it level again. Street Atlas doesn’t have “machine shop” as a category, however, so I didn’t get very far. I called Comcast to see if we could get the newly installed Internet connection working, but I got tired of being on hold after a minute.

I set to work putting our bed together when Berck’s dad came in to say that he had to take grandmother to a doctor’s appointment, so I should go back to Aunt Robin’s house with him to pick up his Miata and take it back to where Berck was continuing to work at the new house.

I packed up our stuff at Aunt Robin’s, so she could have her bed back and we wouldn’t have to drive back and forth to work on the car. I also got a list of machine shops off the Web and printed it out. Then I stopped at Target to get a shower curtain and some other supplies.

I started looking up locations of the machine shops on Street Atlas, but I didn’t have zip codes to go along with the addresses. Street Atlas had to search through all 27 zip codes for each search, so I thought I’d wait on hold for Comcast while I was waiting. Of course, this time, after wading through the menu options, I was connected to a human being right away. The Comcast guys got me connected, but while I was on the phone with them, Berck decided that he needed to take the engine head to a machine shop right away and went through my printed out list by himself, settling on a Napa auto parts store with a machine shop in the back on the other side of town.

Before we headed over there, Berck had to put the top down on his Dad’s car, of course. It’s weird being in a place that gets hot in December again, especially when his dad keeps the heater in the house on all the time.

The shop is in an older part of Memphis, with a barbecue place on either side of it. The guys at shop gave Berck a hard time about having the top off. The fellow in charge told him to get back with him tomorrow evening about the engine head. He didn’t seem concerned about fixing it at all.

In other news, the parts that were supposed to be delivered today hadn’t come by the time Berck’s dad checked his mailbox. That may put a kink in our timing, since parts keep breaking or Berck keeps remembering to order things the day after he put in his last order. The latest is the catalytic converter, which had one of its studs unattach itself as Berck was trying to disconnect the exhaust. A new catalytic converter is $200, and this one is far from being used up, other than the unattached stud. Berck is wondering if he should try to extract it and the other studs that he assumes will break off as well with the drill press or save himself the trouble and order a new one. Which takes longer—for the new one to arrive after a cross-country journey or to jerry-rig the existing one—is up in the air.

In Internet news, Comcast took over our cable provider and changed our IP address. Berck called them to try to find out what it was (so we can get our mail and put the blog back up), but they couldn’t figure out how to give it to him. So we will remain silent for all of those who have no idea how to get here.

Tomorrow: (sigh) Memphis.

Monday, December 11, 2006
Southern Tour — Day 3, Sokoban

We started off the day with a big breakfast at Perkins. Then we drove our Miata out to Berck’s dad’s new house. He and Berck’s grandmother bought it so he can take care of her. It’s a huge house. Next we took grandmother home to Aunt Robin’s house (all three of them are staying there presently) and went to rent a truck.

Berck’s dad went to U-Haul, despite Berck telling him he’d be sorry. He had called to reserve a truck an hour ahead of time. We got to the place, which had more U-Haul trucks than I’ve ever seen at one time before. It being a weekday, there were plenty to go around. The clerks told us we could have the truck until 6 o’clock. Berck’s dad said he would go ahead and get it for 24 hours, since it would be the same price anyway. They said he could only have that truck until 6. Why? Because it was reserved for the next day. We walked out in disgust. This is how U-Haul always is and why Berck and I go out of our way to use Penske or Budget.

The storage place where Berck’s dad has his stuff has a truck you can rent, and it was for the same price as well. The girl who waited on us was very helpful, giving us a half day instead of a full day’s price. It turned out that we only needed 2 and a half hours to load up most of a storage space, drive it to the new house (which is way out on the southeast side of Memphis), unload it, and bring it back. She didn’t even fuss at us when we told her we forgot to fill up the tank before we brought the truck back.

We moved the contents of the one storage space because it had the tools in it, the tools Berck needed to work on the car. So we drove back out to the house, stopping at Sam’s to get some good oil and Advanced Auto to get a jack, jack stands, oil filters, cheap oil, and antifreeze and Auto Zone to buy some latex gloves.

While Berck started taking apart the car, his dad and I started unpacking the kitchen boxes and finding places to put things. We got most of them done by the time it was time to leave.

Berck had called the Mazda dealer in Birmingham where we orders all of his parts and discovered that they should all get here tomorrow (and they had a special on free shipping). He also called Flyin’ Miata in Grand Junction, Colorado to get their advice on our predicament. They said that it was quite possible that he had a warped head (but we already knew that), and he could probably take it to a machine shop, and they would grind it down to make it fit again. If we’ve got a cracked head, I don’t know what we’ll do.

The three of us then went out to eat at a very yummy Chinese restaurant. Currently, Berck and his dad are at the flight simulator training headquarters for FedEx, where they have two hours booked in an Airbus sim.

We were supposed to be attending a bris for Berck’s cousin Michael’s new son in the morning, but the pediatrician said, because he has a rash, it should be postponed. I didn’t know the timing on these things was negotiable. Berck’s dad seems to think the pediatrician is an idiot. Aunt Robin is bummed, because she had planned a big event afterward.

And I am heading to bed, because I worked hard today and am very tired.

Southern Tour – Day 2

We ended up eating at Chili’s last night after driving around and not being able to find anywhere else we wanted to eat. There were tons of cars parked downtown, which meant there were hundreds of people going out somewhere nice, I’m sure, but I couldn’t figure out where. So we gave up and had cheese sticks and chicken fingers at a place we could anywhere in America. The good part is that they had Shiner Bock on tap, and after an exhausting and frustrating day, all we wanted to do was sit and relax for a bit.

When we returned to the motel, Berck decided that we did indeed have a busted head gasket, if not a cracked or warped head as well. So then we had to decide what to do next. All of the tools are in our apartment in Colorado, so we could try to make it back home. On the other hand, Memphis is closer (and on our route), and Berck’s dad probably has most of the tools we would need. He also has a new house with a garage in which we can work (something we don’t have back home). So we decided to press on to Memphis. Berck will order parts on Monday, which will hopefully get in Wednesday. Also, Berck has time scheduled in an Airbus simulator at the FedEx training headquarters (not for any good reason other than his dad knows a trainer there).

We stopped in Broken Arrow for some huevos Mexicanas then got into Memphis around 5. Street Atlas failed us as our exit was blocked off, then our alternate exit didn’t exist. But we finally managed to get off of I-40 and to Aunt Robin’s house. She and Berck’s dad and grandmother and we all went out to a delicious Vietnamese restaurant.

Berck stopped every couple hundred miles to refill the radiator, so it’s a relief to be somewhere where we don’t have to worry about the car dying.

After going to bed about ten last night, we got up at 3:30 am, showered, packed the car, and left in an hour. Memphis was 18 hours away, and we wanted to get there before midnight.

Looking for breakfast in Lamar about three hours later, we missed our turn to Kansas and instead found ourselves in Oklahoma. No problem, it wasn’t any further to go our new alternate route. (After traveling this route three times in a week a year ago, you would think that I would wonder why it didn’t seem familiar. That’s because we had taken that route on a “short cut” on our way back to Norman, OK that would have been fine except that the county road we took was horribly maintained.) The advantage of our new route was that the rising sun wasn’t in our eyes as we headed due south.

Following Street Atlas’ directions on a gravel road circumventing Boise City, Oklahoma, we turned east and joined US64. A few miles down the road, Berck yelled and immediately pulled off onto the shoulder. He had looked down to find the temperature gague all the way past H. As soon as we stopped, we could see the steam shooting out from under the hood. Berck opened the radiator cap (because he knows what he’s doing and isn’t going to hurt himself–kids, don’t try this at home) and poured what remained of our two bottles of drinking water inside. The steam, which had stopped, started up again. Apparently, he had noticed we were out of coolant right as we went bone dry. It was also pretty darn cold, so we may have been riding in an air-cooled car for a while. Either way, it looked like we had avoided seizing the engine by a hair.

Lucky as we are, we were still stranded on the side of the road in the middle of The Panhandle (read, the Middle of Nowhere). Berck’s new phone doesn’t have analog capability, but fortunately, my phone still does. I called AAA, not really sure if my mom had renewed my membership for this year. Nope, my membership had expired in April, but they were kind enough to MapQuest the nearest wrecker service… which was 50 miles away.

We figured we could do better with Street Atlas, and sure enough, Berck found the number for a wrecker and repair service in the town we had just bypassed. I called the number, and a woman answered the phone, “Hello?”

I was worried I had a wrong number. “Are you open?”

“No,” she replied. You might think I would be dismayed at this answer, but I was actually elated that I seemed to have the right business. I launched into an explanation of our coolent leak, where we were, and that we needed to be picked up. “Hold on,” she said, then in the background, “Mike, there’s a lady stranded.”

I told Mike where we were (I knew exactly, thanks to Street Atlas–I could have even given him coordinates), and he said he would come pick us up but added, “It’ll be hard finding a place open to fix your car on a Saturday.”

Then we waited for the tow truck to come. There were very few cars on that road on a Saturday morning. Since we were in Oklahoma, I knew it would only be a matter of time before someone stopped to help, but only about five cars passed us in the twenty minutes or so it took the wrecker to show. Sure enough, a middle aged man in a suit stopped right before the wrecker pulled up.

Mike pulled the car onto his flatbed with one hand on his cell phone, trying to get in touch with a mechanic who would work on Saturday. He found a fellow towing company in Guymon, the nearest “big” town away, who said they would. Unfortunately, Guymon was fifty miles away. It was that or try to find a place in Boise City until Monday.

$256 and a very bumpy ride later, a fellow in Guymon was trying to find our coolant leak. Berck thought it might be a plug in the back of the engine, but it turned out it was a hose at the back and bottom of the engine that doesn’t exist in the ’91 Miata but does in the ’94. Berck had checked all of the other hoses in the car to see if they needed replacing when we first got the car but not the ones he didn’t know about.

A couple hours and $110 later, we had a new hose and a coolant system that didn’t empty itself immediately anymore. We stopped at Yesterday’s Diner that was serving excellent black Angus bugers and finally got our breakfast. It was around 2 o’clock.

So much for getting to Memphis in a day’s drive, and so much for getting up at 3:30 am. We decided to stop in Enid for the night.

At a gas station in Woodward, the temperature gague suddenly rose again as we pulled up to the pumps. Berck spent the next 45 minutes putting water into the radiator and revving the engine. When we got to Enid, the radiator was low again. This is bad news. It means that the head gasket is busted or we’ve got a cracked or warped head and coolant is leaking into the engine. Berck can replace a head gasket himself, but he’s not so sure what to do when he doesn’t know exactly what the problem is. The good news is that we can probably keep driving if we keep the coolant level high.

The other good news is that we are settled into a motel room in Enid for the night. The great thing about Street Atlas is that it will not only tell you how to get to Enid, it will also tell you where all of the hotels are, along with their phone numbers. So I called through the whole list (it being Saturday and mobile phone calls free) and got rates. We decided to check out the cheapest one first, $35 pre tax.

It looked decent. I opened the door of the office and was overwhelmed with the scent of curry. Uh oh. My dad swore never to stay in a place run by east Indians or Pakistanis
after my family had a bad experience once. But the place looked neat and clean, and we really couldn’t beat the price. Berck walked in after parking the car and said, “Something smells good!”

The young man who had hurried into the office from the back room (in which I could see squealing kids playing on the floor and grandparents looking after them), wiped his hands on his pants and said, “Yeah! We just finished eating enchiladas.”

Berck and I looked at each other after we walked out of the office, “Curry enchiladas?”

The room turns out to be just about our speed: dated furniture, well worn carpet, a slightly cracked bathroom mirror, but neat and clean, although Berck swears he saw a roach in the sink. We even have a microwave and a fridge.

Berck was worried about the temperature dropping tonight and the car not having enough antifreeze in it, so I found the nearest auto parts store with Street Atlas. When we got back to the motel, I found the Weather Channel on the TV and discovered that the forecasted low tonight was only going to be 36 degrees. That made Berck happier, but so did putting more antifreeze in the car. Actually, he’s not very happy right now at all, too worried about the car.

Now we’re going to go out and try to find some dinner. Street Atlas has a whole list of most of the restaurants in the city, but unfortunately, it doesn’t say which ones are good. So I suppose we’ll have to go back to the method of driving around and looking.

Tomorrow: Memphis?