It's 1am. My friend and marathon driving companion Ben and I have been on the road for 15 hours when we pull into Whitehorse, BC, Canada - the smallest big town in these here parts - when suddenly we start to smell a burning smell from my hood. We're 946 miles into our 3,300 mad dash to San Francisco from Homer, AK, and weren't exactly excited about stopping for an emergency roadside oil change.
Earlier this week I realized that my current reservoir of oil has been sliding around my engine since my truck was in Chico, CA - in late April. Since then it's bounced around over 17,000 miles of roadside. For some reason it just didn't occur to me that my lovely friends who drove my lil' truck 10k miles from Cali to Alaska wouldn't bother to change the oil, and I really should have done it when I took repossession of it upon arrival, but it just didn't happen. Ben bought the stuff to do it before we left but that didn't happen either. It obviously was meant to do it in a hurry on the roadside in Canada late at night.
So why am I typing right now and how is this even possible? Both good questions, of course, and I wouldn't think of glossing over them for several reasons. First, I have to wait. The oil is hot and changing it now will just make a hot, sticky, and incomplete mess before it has a chance to settle into the bottom of the truck. Next, we're parked conveniently outside of a hotel that surprisingly has free wireless internet access and owing to my junky-like web addiction I would of course know that within minutes of realizing I have time to kill that doesn't involve me getting sleepier.
So what's the plan? It's simple: drive until we can't drive anymore. We left Anchorage at 9:45am (really, we consider that a fairly early start) with the mission of hitting Vancouver, BC, as soon as possible, each driving in 6 hour shifts. So far we've listened to three lectures from the Harvard Business Review (it's 'energy' management, not 'time' management!), an episode of This American Life (trained monkeys did not make that tissue box holder, kid), 2.5 comedy albums (Ben loves my taste in Lewis Black and Mitch Hedberg but, even with so many references to his hometown Atlanta, he surprisingly isn't into the almighty David Cross?!?), and an assortment of music largely made on our destination of the US west coast. 15 hours have somehow both flown by and barely piddled away.
Why the hurry? It's simple. Burning Man awaits us next week and stopping for a few days in San Francisco is absolutely imperative. Would you not fill up on gas before going on a road trip? Of course not. Would you not stop at the grocery store before going on a picnic? Hell no! So SF here we come!
Ok, it's been 20 minutes. Time to jump under my truck and make the (somewhat environmentally unfriendly/irresponsible) magic happen....
Posted August 18, 2008 02:58 AM @ (GMT - 6)
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Drive safely you guys! Nice to get an update from you...was just checking in to see whether your twitter had been updated and lo & behold, a whole article is here for the first leg of your journey! House isn't the same...each day more people leave - I now realise how I am always the one leaving first - it sucks to be left behind! Went kayaking with your uncle Don yesterday - it was an AWESOME day! Shame we didn't get to hang out with him more while you were here - he is a real gem. Hugs to Ben. Keep each other safe and sane. M :-)