Magnus

Yesterday: Phoenix to Albuqurque-ish.
Except for a few showers, just a long cruise among the adobe colored cliffs. It all looks a lot like the mountains around the town where Tow Mater is from.
Stopped by the Phoenix Cardinals' stadium to snap a few pictures. The grabbed gears to Albuquerque.
Today I continue east via Duran, NM.
That squeak from the throwout bearing is not as pronounced now but I wouldn't be surprised if the cable to the clutch has stretched a little. It still grinds a bit going into reverse but i don't have a lot of freeplay left so I don't feel like I can take up any of the slack. Oh, well, there is AAA in the Texas desert...right?

Yesterday: Albuquerque (Moriarity) to Oklahoma City.

Nineteen years ago I travelled through this area and stopped at a place called Duran, NM. Yesterday I stopped there again. Time does stand stll in some places...

That was in the morning. Wanting to keep up with the schedule I got back on I-40 eastbound. The adobe-colored hills of New Mexico became the flat grassland of Texas. And I mean flat. For miles and miles. But with a Roadster you are busy driving all the time so it doesn't get boring, even in a landscape like that.

By chance I glanced to my right at one point and caught the silhouette of the oddest view--the ten Cadillacs half-buried, nose first, in a vast field outside Amarillo. The 500-foot path from the road to the cars is packed hard from all the people walking out to get close to this public work of art. Over the years it has become part of the experience to bring rattle cans and spray the cars with graffitti. In places the paint is inch-thick and the air has that thick smell of spraypaint baking in the Texas sun. The area around the row of cars littered with dozens of spent spray cans...

Then on to Oklahoma city and into the wet blanket of Eastern summer. For the first time this trip I have a real concern that I will have to dig the top out of the boot and put it up.

Next: Atlanta

Yesterday: Oklahoma City to Birmingham, AL.

I came out of the hotel to find a duck pond on the tonneau cover. It had rained during the night and I now had the ultimate in car luxury--a liquid-cooled seat.
As I saddled up to leave OC I looked up to see a monster storm front roll in from the west. The rain started spitting and I was caught with my top down. In OC there are still two smoldering stripes between the hotel and the highway on-ramp.
The next 11 hours were relatively uneventful interstate driving with a minor detour to avoid a storm cell over Memphis.

As dusk turned to dark, it started. The weather radar map showed that storms cells were north of the road I was on...the radar map was not entirely accurate.

It wasn't a heavy rain, so based on the idea that I was only in the outskirts of the rain front I decided too just punch trough the shower. But after 45 minutes of punching the increasingly heavy rain, I reconsidered the merits of leaving the top neatly folded in the trunk. My car has wipers, but only on the front of the glass and my goggles turned into "foggles". Add street lights that refract off the droplets on the glass and I was, in effect, sitting in an unguided missile. Passing tractor-trailers blindly in a semi-hydroplaning is much less fun than it appears at first glance. I also began wondering if is is possible to get hit by lightning when you're in an open car, because the thunder bolts were close enough to be heard over the din of the engine and through my soaked earplugs.

And then the GPS quit on me. Fortunately my smartphone is GPS enabled so I still had a modicum of guidance.

I finally found a parking lot with lighting to stop and dig out the top. I got it installed with minor trouble.

Finally made it to the hotel.

This morning there is not a cloud in sight. The top comes off again. Life is good.

Next: Atlanta traffic

Yesterday: Birmingham to Deal's Gap (Tail of the Dragon)

My plan to bring back good weather worked well. As soon as I was done with my put-the-top-up-in-the-rain-dance the rain stopped and the morning weather was splendid.

I reversed my dance steps and soon had the top stuffed in the rear.

Moment later I was heading down the Atlanta highway. I missed the morning rush hour traffic and got right in to Turner field to take a picture. I decided that wasn't good and headed towards the gold-domed capitol. I snapped my picture and checked off a bucket list item: Like the Steve Miller Band's song "I went to Phoenix, Arizona; all the way to Tacoma; Philadelphia; Atlanta; L.A.; Northern California". In a Roadster. Solo.

I then turned my attention and car towards the Tail of the Dragon. On the way I had a good plate of BBQ at Williamson Bros. You know it's going to be good BBQ when the the thick Hickory smoke billows out over the highway and the path to the door is dark with years of greasy food spills.

Then on to Deal's Gap.

I got there early dusk. The GoPro camera got mounted on the driver's side fender and I took off. The road was as good as deserted and I got some nice curve-carving done. At the northern end I turned around and did another 318 curves. In the dark. If you think the Tail is fun in daylight, try it at night. It's a bit diffferent when you can't see the road beyond the the reach of the head lights. Let's say my speed was lower on the south-bound side.

Stopped for some night pictures of the dam.

Unfortunately I had forgotten to adjust my clocks from central to eastern and I got to the hotel in Robbinsville a bit later than desired.

Today I will try the ToD once or twice more (or until I get car sick) and the start up the Blue Ridge Parkway for the last leg home to Maryland.

Yesterday: Robbinsville, NC (near Deal’s Gap) to Hagerstown, MD

I wanted to get another run at the Tail of the Dragon so I headed back up to Deal’s Gap. I got a late start and didn’t arrive at the gap until late morning. Unlike the sedate and placid scene the night before, the air motorcycle resort was now teeming with activity. The hot summer air was dense with the thunder of a sea of motorcycles. The dune buggy club had a side meeting at the lower end of the lot. A pack of nitrous-fed Saturns sneezed by and threw themselves at the hill.
I parked and mounted my GoPro camera while fielding questions from several spectators. Even in this environment the car draws attention. A Tennessee Highwayman (trooper) had somehow gotten across the border and meandered about aimlessly.

I got my picture taken by the Tree of Shame and gave it a stern look as to tell it that I was giving it none of my fenders for decoration. If you’ve ever seen the tree you know what I mean.

With cameras rolling I crept up the hill from the resort and instantly got a taste of how crowded this road is on a summer weekend. For 11 miles I was caught behind two Harley who decided that they were out for a weekend ooze-cruise.

Also saw about five different businesses taking pictures to sell to riders, sort of like at the roller coaster at the amusement park.

At the northern end parking lot I pulled off to the let the engine cool down. Running in second and third tends to heat it up a bit. One biker came up and started to ask about the car. He was amazed and surprised to learn that I had used a modular Ford engine.

At the lower end of the lot, the Saturn kids entertained themselves by shoving a can of Rockstar up a tailpipe and then shooting it back out by revving the engine. Soon the took off and sneezed their way southbound. They burned rubber in that ominous way that makes you feel like nothing good can come of it. A few minutes later I strapped in and head south. At the first pull-off one of the Saturn drivers was crawling around the front of his car trying to keep his spoiler from becoming a Shame Tree decoration. He must have hit something after he headed up the hill...

After my two runs at The Tail I headed towards the Blue Ridge Parkway (BRP). The plan was to take it all the way through Virginia and then head the last few miles home.

Near the southern terminus of the BRP is a tourist trap known as Cherokee, NC. I would describe it as Native American-themed South of the Border and don’t recommend it other than a study in what a tourist trap is.

As I was hungry I stopped at something called Paul’s Diner with porch seating. If you ever decide to disregard my advice about Cherokee, please avoid this place. It’s one of those places that doesn’t care about it’s customers because they know they will get new people coming in regardless of how awful they are. What I ordered was called “Frybread with chili”, what I got was a large, soggy donut with a slopped-on ladleful of meat slurry. It looked unpleasant but my hunger took precedence.

While I’m sitting there, pondering the sad concoction in front of me, I hear someone say “Look at all that rain”. Seconds later I’m out at the car, in the summer gully-washer, frantically applying the tonneau. Then back to the meat slurry, past the snickering diners on the porch.

I left Cherokee and headed up the BRP and the vast, misty vistas it offers for miles and miles. But as the day was wearing long, I decided I would leave the BRP and head for home. After crawling through the oozing Asheville traffic, I finally made it out to the interstate and headed on up north.

Three hours from home it began to rain. Hard. What I can tell you is that going slower than 60mph causes the rain drops to smack you hard on the forehead, no matter how much you scoot down. Going faster than 70mph invites hydroplaning.

Hydroplaning in the Roadster feels a big like being pushed by a strong side-wind but you don’t dare steer against it in case you suddenly regain traction. You don’t want to have your front wheels pointing in a different direction than the one you are hydroplaning. All you can do is lightly feather off the throttle and hope that you don’t snap-oversteer into the tractor trailer you were foolishly trying to pass.

A few times I considered putting the top up, but I was in that I-just-want-to-go-home mood and kept punching through the rain. Tunnel vision sets in and all concentration goes into keeping the car within the parameter. Add poor visibility, fogged-over goggles, water on the inside of the wind screen and Virginia’s apparent disdain for road markings that are visible when wet and you’re in for quite a ride.

As the trip was drawing to an end I noted that the car still ran reasonably well. The squeak from the throwout bearing is less pronounced and is only heard at the bottom of free-play travel. The idling problem, where the engine ran up to 3,000rpm on idle seem gone also.

An hour from the house, the rain subsided and at three in the morning I arrived home--wet, exhausted, hungry and grinning like the Cheshire cat at the thought of what laid behind me.

My bucket list just got a little shorter...

I've been home for a few days and still trying to dry out the car, post pictures, catch up at work, launder clothes. Even when the driving is done, the trip isn't over. I'm starting to see pictures of me and the car being posted online by the photographers that were stationed along The Snake and The Tail of the Dragon. I am thinking about buying the one of the pictures from The Snake.
I'm trying to dry out the car and have fans and dehumidifiers going in the garage. There was a bit of a funky smell, but I think that was from the milk in the coffee that I spilled in teh passenger-side foot well earlier in the spring. My wallet is mostly dry, though.
Somehow it seems like I should have more pictures and video of this trip but considering how much driving has to be done, a lot of the pictures start looking alike after a while: the road ahead with the fenders showing at the bottom of the frame, and stepping out of the car to get a different perspective take time away from driving so that was not always an option.
And everything collected along the way seems to have sentimental value, like every gas receipt is a memory of someone coming up to talk about the car (and the friend/uncle/brother/husband who has/had/will have one).