![Image](https://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x133/73VW1800/IAC%2019%2008/08%20CA%2001.jpg)
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YOU see a beautiful little countryscape ... I was THERE, it wasn't pretty at all!
![Image](https://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x133/73VW1800/IAC%2019%2008/08%20CA%2004.jpg)
Telephoto'd here a bit, you can now see what I saw. Upper right is the Cajon Pass I-15, loaded with a interminable traffic jam of trucks. I wrote UPPER right. That's right. Way up. So is the middle right. You can see them easily enough in the middle. "Grumble" said the bridge. So I did:
![Image](https://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x133/73VW1800/IAC%2019%2008/08%20CA%2005.jpg)
And the traffic snaked down the pass to San Bernardino at 10 mph. I pulled off at a Shell Station. Calmly moved the hand truck of potato chip boxes, dragged a chair across the store, and hid behind the potato chip rack where a lone electrical plug hid with me, and I did my online work until dark.
![Image](https://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x133/73VW1800/IAC%2019%2008/08%20CA%2006.jpg)
Well, the stupid traffic never let up! Drove down one exit from Wrightwood and said, "Enough!" Pulled off on some little road that ran down along the wash, pulled off of that onto a dirt path that dropped steeply down to the wash, and drove until I could not distinguish the condition of the path (sand?). Popped the poptop and settled into slumber ... until Mr. Flashlight showed up. Wham! Awake! Mr. Flashlight then departed into the dark, but now I am feeling a bit trapped up in my poptop in the dark. Stupid Mr. Flashlight! Fell off to sleep again until Mr. Flashlight is now throwing his LED beam in through the jalousie. I yelled down from the poptop,
"Hey! Enough already, mister!"
"Oh, is someone in there?"
"What is with the damn light!"
"My name is Matt, I am camping down the road, my Mercedes is crap. It is not running. I can't afford to fix it. I don't know wh..."
"Hey MATT! Enough! Good-bye, Matt! Good luck with your Mercedes, Matt!"
Fell off to sleep again, eventually. This wash, under the stars, is also the main corridor for all freight trains in the Universe. They haven't a crossing anywhere, but they like to blast their horns anyway.
Yeah, woke up refreshed at 6:00AM. Saw Matt's crap Mercedes down the path, heard another train horn, shaved, and hit the trail back up to the little road. Thank-you NaranjaWesty. A magnificent performance at the eroded edge onto the little road, (an army tank could not have done it any better) past the Toyota Corolla that was blocking the way because, because, because she was texting right there.
Here is I-15 southbound into the smogmurk:
![Image](https://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x133/73VW1800/IAC%2019%2008/08%20CA%2007.jpg)
Satchmo's! A beautifully immaculate '90 L90D Vanagon very much reminding me of my beautifully immaculate L90D '89 Vanagon:
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Coffee and breakfast and brakes. Here is the original self-adjuster lever. Note how it is "near" the ebrake crossbar yoke slot:
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Here is the new one. It is not. It is not near the ebrake crossbar yoke slot. It is not near the adjuster teeth. It is not near nothing no way not happening no self-adjust not now not never no way:
![Image](https://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x133/73VW1800/IAC%2019%2008/08%20CA%2010.jpg)
We put the old brakes back in.
Then we checked the cylinder head nuts for any loss of torque. Well they were FINE:
![Image](https://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x133/73VW1800/IAC%2019%2008/08%20CA%2012.jpg)
Here is satchmo smiling, perhaps not yet aware that we accomplished mostly nothing except to rip my heart a little (apparently, I really miss my '89 Vanagon and the whole era that surrounded it!):
![Image](https://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x133/73VW1800/IAC%2019%2008/08%20CA%2011.jpg)
The test drive, oh it was so tinged with nostalgia, a Southern California Time Warp thirty years ago when I was thirty years-old in my L90D Vanagon, this thing drove almost as sweetly as my brand new one. We came back and ploughed into an electrical diagnosis of the cruise control system. Got the cruise control vacuum motor to fire up only with hot wires, but alas, it would not fire up with the switch on the turn signal stalk. But, you know, what a pretty car. After our Didn't Much Happen Day, I had a highly-appreciated shower, we had a lovely dinner with his friends, and I test-drank Whiskey. Did too. Then I waded in to the nighttime raging river of red taillights ...
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Camped in an industrial park at an out-of-business shop and let the LA racket of freeways and sirens and Harleys and trucks knock me out. Awoke the next morning to a truck back-up beep-beep-beep-beep-beep warning beeper. Arrived at tommu's so freakin early because there was such an unexpected ...
.
.
... lack of traffic.
Colin