Itinerant Air-Cooled Midwestbound
Posted: Sun Jun 18, 2017 4:14 pm
As always, a heartache to visit the people I love, but they can see the look in my eye more easily now. I can't be held down just yet. Give me a little more time with this. It will be, it is, too late to pick up where I left off fifteen years ago, but sometimes my heart wonders anew what price has been paid with all of this traveling. I can't imagine who I'd be had I not taken off for these laps of the country, so it is what it is and I am who I am and the clutch doesn't chatter anymore, so there's that.
Western New York gave me a halcyon day of golden sunshine over the rolling fields. It also let me own my Lexus. Through the past several weeks, I have been all up in arms because the seller did not provide me a properly transferable title. Albany DMV said I had to go persuade the seller to register smog inspect the car in Utah and obtain a proper title in order to sell it to me. Well, Mr. Seller basically said he was done with the transaction and I said no you're not you curbstoner flipper scofflaw, and I was ratcheting up the notion of payin him a call. Thankfully, the little ol imperturbable DMV lady in Albion NY had time and patience and we did a nice "correction" on the bad Texas title and I get to own my own car. I know, because I had to pay the sales tax. Fine.
Had a superb spaghetti supper with Cindy and family and some soul-restoring laughs:
In the summer, I can imagine living here in western NY like I did for thirteen years. Then I remember the relentless cold that steals your plans the other ten months. Besides, look at this countryside:
Now look what they are doing to it:
Like locusts, developers are rapaciously consuming farmland even as the greater Rochester region's population continues to shrink:
So phooey on them, I slink into the area like a ghost from the old days and go to my old barn and drive my old cars down the roads like I used to when they were in daily circulation and I try to avoid the hurried traffic that we never used to have.
The Squareback put up a good fight again. This time, the starter refused to turn over the engine and the brakes were bound up tight on account of the new roof leak nearby. Removed the starter in the dark and the spider webs and realized there was nothing I could really do for it with the rain drumming on the roof and dripping on the floor, so I hit it a few times near the brushes and reinstalled it. Tried to jump with Chloe, and Chloe the cow said "generator light", meaning no jump start from her, bad cow no clover.
The Mercedes started so quickly that it startled me. Just instantaneously, like who was just driving this thing? The Mercedes gave the Squareback a good thirty minutes of charging while I finished up reassembling the starter and trying to start the close-to-impossible upper starter bolt/nut buried under the fuel injection. And then . . . the Squareback started. And it broke itself free of the clutches of rusted brake drums, and puttered out to the main floor where I removed all shoes and pads and cleaned them up:
Then I illegally drove my plateless insuranceless registrationless but definitely not dragging plucky little Squareback to the gas station:
Had to wash the engine of mouse nesting, food residue, and mouse pee. Coated it in WD-40 which I hope is repugnant to mice. I really hope:
The Mercedes had a flat tire, a twenty one year-old Michelin MXV that actually holds air, but the aluminum wheel is corroded and possibly leaking from the bead:
The Squareback did another trip to the gas station so I could air up the Mercedes wheel, then I took the Mercedes to the gas station to pump up the other tires:
That Mercedes is so fine. Smells like good solid ol leather inside, moves out smartly, slows with authority, even the damn vacuum door locks are all still perfectly functional:
I'll fill in on the appointments in PA later, but here is the sign to Zelienople that let Cindy's daughter win the alphabet game in what, 2006?
Western New York gave me a halcyon day of golden sunshine over the rolling fields. It also let me own my Lexus. Through the past several weeks, I have been all up in arms because the seller did not provide me a properly transferable title. Albany DMV said I had to go persuade the seller to register smog inspect the car in Utah and obtain a proper title in order to sell it to me. Well, Mr. Seller basically said he was done with the transaction and I said no you're not you curbstoner flipper scofflaw, and I was ratcheting up the notion of payin him a call. Thankfully, the little ol imperturbable DMV lady in Albion NY had time and patience and we did a nice "correction" on the bad Texas title and I get to own my own car. I know, because I had to pay the sales tax. Fine.
Had a superb spaghetti supper with Cindy and family and some soul-restoring laughs:
In the summer, I can imagine living here in western NY like I did for thirteen years. Then I remember the relentless cold that steals your plans the other ten months. Besides, look at this countryside:
Now look what they are doing to it:
Like locusts, developers are rapaciously consuming farmland even as the greater Rochester region's population continues to shrink:
So phooey on them, I slink into the area like a ghost from the old days and go to my old barn and drive my old cars down the roads like I used to when they were in daily circulation and I try to avoid the hurried traffic that we never used to have.
The Squareback put up a good fight again. This time, the starter refused to turn over the engine and the brakes were bound up tight on account of the new roof leak nearby. Removed the starter in the dark and the spider webs and realized there was nothing I could really do for it with the rain drumming on the roof and dripping on the floor, so I hit it a few times near the brushes and reinstalled it. Tried to jump with Chloe, and Chloe the cow said "generator light", meaning no jump start from her, bad cow no clover.
The Mercedes started so quickly that it startled me. Just instantaneously, like who was just driving this thing? The Mercedes gave the Squareback a good thirty minutes of charging while I finished up reassembling the starter and trying to start the close-to-impossible upper starter bolt/nut buried under the fuel injection. And then . . . the Squareback started. And it broke itself free of the clutches of rusted brake drums, and puttered out to the main floor where I removed all shoes and pads and cleaned them up:
Then I illegally drove my plateless insuranceless registrationless but definitely not dragging plucky little Squareback to the gas station:
Had to wash the engine of mouse nesting, food residue, and mouse pee. Coated it in WD-40 which I hope is repugnant to mice. I really hope:
The Mercedes had a flat tire, a twenty one year-old Michelin MXV that actually holds air, but the aluminum wheel is corroded and possibly leaking from the bead:
The Squareback did another trip to the gas station so I could air up the Mercedes wheel, then I took the Mercedes to the gas station to pump up the other tires:
That Mercedes is so fine. Smells like good solid ol leather inside, moves out smartly, slows with authority, even the damn vacuum door locks are all still perfectly functional:
I'll fill in on the appointments in PA later, but here is the sign to Zelienople that let Cindy's daughter win the alphabet game in what, 2006?
