Date: 2011-04-06
To: what a trip it's been so far
Miles today: 0.0

Dear diary-It has been an interesting couple of days. Right now I am on a bus to New Orleans, which was never really part of the plan, but you can't plan these things out.So we started out yesterday, four of us in an '84 VW Vanagon, headed to florida. James and Rachel had recently purchased this brown beauty for $750 with the intent of carting all of their stuff from Austin to Marathon, FL, where they have a sailboat awaiting them. Ben, our other travelling companion, is headed to Pensacola where he has family. James and Rachel had spent most of the week fixing up the VW to a point where they deemed it suitable for cross-country travel. Still, as we began our journey it had the following problems, at least as far as we knew at the time: it leaked brake fluid (which powered the braks and the clutch); the manual transmission was very loose required a lot of guesswork, brute foce and familiarity to find the 4 gears; it leaked oil, which would spill out in puddles evetytime we came to a stop (although the dipstick always gave a solid reading); the gas tank could no be filled completely due to a hole near the top that would spew gas once it reached a certain level; it usually took 2-3 tries to start the van, and when fired up would unleash a huge cloud of blue-white smoke.But once it got going, whe it had mometum, it was a thing of beauty. Ran like a champ really. So we left Austin around noon and took a detour down to Edna, where James had some saling equipment stored at his dad's place. We pulled up at a proper texas farmhouse, complete with front and rear porches and a basketball hoop in the backyard. We tried unsuccessfully to find the hydraulic leak. And then we were back on the road, hobbling along, but hobbling nicely. Then I took the wheel after we left Houston, as James had been doing all of the driving up to that point. It was quite glorious, more conceptually than practically. Sitting in the driver's seat of a vanagon, heading to new places seemd almost too cool, borderline cliche. But then we hit construction on I-10, just outside Beaumont. And in the idling, the van started to over heat. James jumped in the driver's seat, and after a few minutes of being stalled out in the middle of an interstate traffc jam, he guided us to the safety of a parking lot. But the vanchecked out ok, and we continued on, trying to detour around the traffic, but then the clutch started losing pressure, so we had to pull over and bleed the system. Right around midnight. And then James tarted to feel ill, so we decided to call it a night and found a Super 8. James go us a room, and then proceeded to puke in the parking lot a few times. I slept like a rock. We were up at 9, out by 10, and the trip had a new day, a new start. 15 minutes down the road, a wheel bearing went out and we limped into Orange, Tx to find a mechanic. After considering our options, Ben and I decided to jump ship and find our own way. He said he has friends in New Orleans who were headed to Florida in a few days. So we start hitch-hiking our way to the local greyhound station.A good-ol'-boy named greg picked us up in his Silverado. He's drinking a bud lite, and has a small bottle of whiskey in the cupholder as well. He took us to his house, and gives me a doctor pepper before he drove us the 41 miles to Lake Charles, LA, where we could catch the next bus to New Orleans. Just before the bus pulls away, he comes and gives each of us a to-go meal of fried chicken. Great guy.Cheers