Happiness is a Northbound Yankee

[Paddy Acme]

I've been hesitant to document anything of my trip, for I never would guess that it's turning into such a learning experience.

But this Is really more about precisely how not to a trek from Florida to Massachusetts. Starting in Sarasoto Florida or south of the South. I'm taking a 1977 300D up to Plymouth Rock. This car should travel on the back of a trailer. MAKES me think of the old joke: What do Harley Davidsons and dogs have in common? They both like riding in the back of pick up trucks. Which segues into talking about the Trailer Glide.

Well, my unnamed parts car plans to travel under its own steam. So far I am in Shelby NC, which is amazing since I left the south of the South on April 17th. Almost three weeks. A new speed record for me. When I drove truck, I'd regularly go from Denver to Los Angeles or Chicago or Little Rock overnight. I ran a lot of backroads to evade the scales and changed log books like my socks. But now I run the backroads to take it easy.

My tranny still slips once in a while, even with Trans-x along with a liberal application of Lucas. Eventhough my erratic slipping may be due to throttle shaft linkage troubles

[Paddy Acme]

Was just looking at my picture up in the corner of my post. What an avatar or profile pic? It's from Maspee Beach looking at Chapaquidac on Marthas Vineyard at The Ted Kennedy Driving School.

But yeah my car has a lot of blow by. One quart of oil consumed, disappeared the first 500 miles. Yup, one quart of 70% oil-25% Lucas with 5% soot. Topped off with Lucas and what's the cheapest 15-40 (last week Delvac, this week Delo).

HIGHWAY SPEEDS have been tough. Blow a lot of oil, get 20-22 MPG, and bear the stress of the interstate highway while stressing about the oil consumption along with the impossibly fast tire wear, particularly on both front tires on their outside edges.

And tgen I found the options button on the google maps app. I am floating along

[Paddy Acme]

Now, it's no more Big Roads. Blue Highways. Read a book called Blue Highways about a guy who traveled by only driving on these back roads. Also makes me think about another book about zen and motorcycles and back roads and a search for quality or the truth of quality or the quality of truth. And about getting the mind set to keep stuff working. Used have that, lost it and now the unnamed parts care is re-intoducing back to me.

That's why this trip is important and why it makes since on this purely abstract perspective, which renders the logic of the status quo stifling

Now it's all about slow roads and scenery and driving between rush hours abd going between Wal-Mart campgrounds.

Blowing way less oil and MPGs 28-32. No guarantee the odo is accurate.

When I got this car I did not even own a screwdriver or a pair of plyers.

[Paddy Acme]

Did not have tools and forgot how to look at a car.

Spent hours just looking at the car, looking at diagrams and photos along with videos. Spent mamy hours reading forums. Many hours. But it took many hours to help see the functions and procceses and try to filter out the malarkey, the Mickey-Mouse malarkey.

We are social beings and the forum is great. We have a platform to help each other by each other. Gaining knowledge and wisdom without the learning experience, withoht paying tge high cost of blooded knuckles all the time.

Years ago a friend taught me how to torque bolts without a torque wrench. We checked it with a torque wrench and we were right on, like telling the time from the angle of the sun.

Today, I use the torque wrench bought from Harbor Freight. 3 @ $9.99 each.

Before I could visualize the threads slightly distorting and feel those threads curling into a proper tight fit. I thought of it as the threads became married. Ah yeah, better to have loved abd lost to have never loved at all.

[Paddy Acme]

The car ran, but not well. The HVAC was stripped. The servo was gone along with tge auxiliary water pump and tge AC compressor. It was plumbed by Salvador Dali and filled with rusty wated a sinekind of oily stop-leak that at first worried was engine oil. It was cobfusing. A 77 did not match up to the pictures of other 300 Ds.

Yhe tranny slipped bad, but could not find tge vacuum, which was more difficult because so nany lines were missing or dangling. Finally, isolated the essentials and everything else was ripped from the car with extreme prejudice and a precarious sattisfaction.

Went too far and ripped out vacuum door locks, and tossed the eggshell holding tank. Power Windows were all stuck half upen or half shut. I could keep the tarp on it at night but I thought adjusting Windows would be nice. And I've got 'em. Four Windows controlled manually with bungee cords. Actually proud of how the Windows worked out after ripping the bent and broken regulators ended up in tge recycling bin. Did feel a little stupid or quilty for tossing the doors panels and eventually the back seat, the auxiliary fan and the condensor.

It was mystifying how the car had some new parts and old.

[Skid Row Joe]

Are you sleeping in your MB diesel @ Walmart Supercenters? You wrote that you departed the South of the South, Sarasota, FL. on April 17th. It is now April 5th. Have you been on the road just short of one year?

[Paddy Acme]

When I finally left I made a choice betwenn AAA and Anytime Fitness. I really wanted the luxury of a hot shower most days, but I thought back to a time when I made a choice between buying oil for the 79 Ford and buying beer. Well, the truck threw a rod and I never got my whistle wet enough. Haven't needed AAA yet and thank God for that, although baby wipes make a pretty good replacement for a shower, yet I want my hot showers more often.

See that was another lame move but I wanted to get going, though did leave a month too soon as far as weather went. My goal was to camp in national forests for free but springtime is muddy, and the rangers are hunting the meth cooks using the forest and I got a drug bust from 1969. Long time ago, but I developed an aversion to cell since that time. So plan B was Wal-Marts and truckstops. I'm getting too old to be impulsive and reckless, but working at being an outlier took effort once upon a timebyt now it kinda becomes a habit. I just trust in The Process that will bring me the lessons I need. Hell, I'm fat, dumb abd happy thanks to living in America. I just try to give everything away.

In fact, that's the reason I didn't have a car three years and wanted to simplify my life even more and how I lost my feel for a wrench. But it's all good

[Paddy Acme]

It all began when I got rid of my 1967 Pie Plate Dodge pickup in 2009. I wanted something newer and got a Rav and immediately became allergic to sebsors and black boxes. But I loved that Rav. Hence major cognitive dissonance. It bothered me so much that eventually gave the Rav to friend who needed a car and decided I was gonna walk up the east coast and started by taking the big dog to Key West and Iplanned to walk and camp and see the sights.

The trip was a fiasco on many levels but it offered multiple learning opurtunities. I realized our possesions truly do own us. We don't drive the car, rather it drives us. Ecen along this trip when it became obvious that there was too much weight in the car and some must be abandoned or it would cease any foward movement, I still fought with giving my favorite earthen bowl to the thrift store . But in that moment when it went from my car into tge goodwill the power of the bowl escaped on fleeted wing. I watched it fly off to the horizon and beyond. But I know the predictice persistentce of the elliptical journey. It's power will return with the sane Sirene singing the new improved song. Abd my peer demographic will shout it from the rooftops and the fiber-optic smoke signals. Oh how soon I will become label conscious as I guzzle my latte? How soon? There is no if left to us for I am recklessly eschewing one after the other. But the relentless draw of conspicuous consumption insures the illusion of acceptence by my fellows who feel nothing for me while they consune my opinion of them.

[Paddy Acme]

What was I thinking? Rolled out of Sarasota on 3-17-15. Didn't really seem like Saint Paddyy's, ya know? Back to the car.

When the parts car got replumbed the heater was bypassed. Sure makes cooling easier and getting rid of the condensor with the bent fins lets the radiator breathe easier. Funny, the radiator looks almost new, at least it was new before it sat abandoned from the old guy. What old guy?

Let's see. This might get murkey. I have some of the maintainence records

1. Original owner summered in Portland, Oregon and wintered in Palm Springs, California. It lived a sheltered and pampered life for the first 160, 000 miles

2. Then the next repair notations come from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. It starts out there getting pampered, but then I don't know what happens. Services get stretched a little further apart.

3. The owner is in St Petersburg, Florida. Gets murkier. All I have on him is some rumor that he was an old guy, who was restoring the car. He became sick and died while the car was apart. Eventually, his sons/grandsons got it together enough to sell it without functioning climate control. Actually without any kind of climate control.

[Paddy Acme]

4. He's a guy who needed a cheap car. I talked to him on the phone. He told me he only changed the oil. He had it for 4 years. The first two it ran and the next two it sat because it wouldn't start. Left by the beach under a tree. #5 says he knows he spent more money on more repairs but never paid attention to what was done. When he talked to me he was manic and distracted, but he had just back out of the psych ward.

5. Was a friend of #4. When #4 moved to Panama City, Florida he sold it to #5 unseen and not running. #5 with the help of AAA gets to Sarasota where a friend got it running with new lift pump and filters. When I pulled the fuel tank filter it was obvious that was cleaned and the fuel was clean. He paid the guy $300 to get it running but neither of them dropped the oil. #5 bought for his daughter but she thought it was a weird car. So it just sat for a little mor time. Then he bought a new Honda and his daughter got his old Nissan. He put it in Craigslist for $1100. Then I bumped into him and mentioned that I was just now looking for a car.

6. I bought it for $800. My friend doubled his money. I drove it home with the tranny slipping bad after it got warmed up and temp starting to spike. Seemed good until I realized the gauge was in Celsius. That's when I started working on the cooling system, replacing waterpump, thermostat, along with belts, hoses and radiator cap.

Eventually, I changed the sooty oil a couple of times and adjusted the valves and did a diesel purge.

[t walgamuth]

Quite a story. Why are you traveling north and why are you driving the parts car?

[elchivito]

Robert Pirsig

http://www.amazon.com/Zen-Art-Motorcycle-Maintenance-Inquiry/dp/0060589469/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1428244063&sr=8-1&keywords=zen+and+the+art

[Paddy Acme]

4-5-15

Was talking about first impressions of coming from Boston and waking up in Utah. TOO many differences to swallow at first. Was able to see people that were part of a community that shared each other's joys and sorrows. And found a refreshing honesty that showed through even when getting bull****ted or scammed.

Hard to explain. It was a different type of toughness. It wasn't just physical because both places had tough people. But in Boston a guy struggled to do the right thing to maintain the illusion of approval. If you didn't get caught then you did nothing bad. Out west people were more true to their own integrity and might feel shame over cheating someone. They might help them out some other way or go help a stranger. Two neighbors feuding and won't talk to each other will still help the other corral their escaped cows. BUT in Boston guilt and remorse are limited to what others think. Character is relative.

I still trouble with articulation, but I see this type of integrity in the south, not Sarasota which is more of a Yankee colony coupled to California-style entitlement. When I lived out west I hated to see license plates from New York and New Jersey. But Massachusetts scared me the most, and now I go back there. But that's a story we will get to anon.
Here in North Carolina, one of my favorites, I'm pained to think what my kind are doing. I try to not linger and infect the place with anger and hate. Even when I'm happy the anger smolders.

Our family was not close. Many Irish are not. But we learned to hate almost everybody including ourselves. First learned that in the Army when I found I had neutrality towards Mexicans and American Indians . Although if I paid attention more at home then would of realized that our hate for Canucks included Indians. But having escaped total xenophobia now a chink crept into my Boston armour making me a Yankee with no roots. No loyalty to the status quo. No guilt prodded obligation to accept the terror of what is different.

Thus, enjoying an educational friendship with Gene Washakie, the only guy I ever met who could drink like me. Gene was from Wind River Wyoming. I never lived in Wyoming, yet Gene's openness invited me to the western way.

Funny, it became obvious that xenophobia, like its sibling homophobia, is rooted in hate begat by fear and self doubt. These social survival mechanisms have the power to kill and first they kill the soul of those who blindly wield them. Maybe it's a bully mentality. Bad karma. Imagine never getting the happiness that seems entitled, happiness at the expense of others. Sometimes society lies.

I believe there is more racial and class hatred in the north than in the south. And when I say north, I want to include southern Florida, south of the South, and California, west of the West.

[Paddy Acme]

Have lost two posts, which bothers me, because I lose my continuity. Yes it is very cathartic, but I only get to write about a fraction of what is thought. I write to an audience and now I am afraid my lies will get bungled . Lame data connection in the mountains and I screwed up twice. Typing with one finger on the phone is challenging when I try to edit on Docs and delete.

[Quahog]

just keep writing, please, I'm digging the story