Long Live The Van

This post luckily wouldn’t land in the obituary section of the paper, but it would probably only be a section or two away.

Our 1993 Eurovan has been quite a trooper over the last three months. It carried us along never breaking down, except for the the self-induced dead battery that we found after a long day of climbing at Smith Rock… I had pulled my signature move of leaving the lights on ‘for safety’ as we dubbed it over the course of the trip. We got the help of another fellow climber. His truck and our jumper cables got us back on the road. Beauty!

After a few days back home we finally made the 35 mile trip West to my old college town, Lawrence, home of the Jayhawks! We spent the day with some good friends and then spend the night in Lawrence. After a cold night and waking up to temperatures in the single-digits we were barely able to break into our frozen sealed van. We managed, only to feel a very odd slump in our van. I rocked it back and forth a few times thinking the snow had built up around the tires and was temporarily holding it prisoner. Up and away we went but the strange sensation from the rear left tire did not go away. I stopped a few blocks later and took a walk around the van. It was sure frigid outside, and I couldn’t see anything that gave away what was wrong. I started to realized it felt like the brakes. I couldn’t explain it yet, but that’s what it felt like. I pumped the foot break a couple times to no avail. At least the place I had in mind for breakfast was only a short drive away.

Wheat Fields has a warm place in my heart. It’s where I learned what good bread really tastes like, what the inside of a ciabatta is supposed to look and taste like. It’s a nationally acclaimed bakery that serves up artisan breads, pastries, breakfast, and lunch. Definitely a Lawrence trademark. Kristine even opted for a rich and spicy chocolate truffle.

I then had promised Kristine I’d take her to buy some warm clothes and what better place than Target. We drove to the sprawling strip-malls of Lawrence. It was there that we realized our rear back tire was seized and we’d been dragging it since we left the house that morning. We were fortunate that the snow and ice on the road had facilitate dragging our gimp wheel around town, but it certainly wasn’t doing our van any good. After some very cold minutes jacking up the van and scouting underneath it I realized it was the emergency brake that had somehow seized overnight. In retrospect I would not have applied the e-brake, but it’s such a habit with driving manual transmissions. It looked like a leak in the line had allowed water in while driving it around the day before, which had then frozen overnight when the temperature dropped.

We bought a repair kit at Target, which included a tire iron, a hair drier, an extension cord, and a power adapter for our cigarette lighter to an outlet for our hair drier. The plan was to warm up the line enough to loosen the seized brake line. This is what happened: We blew the fuss on our cigarette lighter since it takes a lot more wattage to run a hair drier than what the AC power can put out. We dragged our van around to find a outlet we could use. We parked across some handicap parking in front of Cutler’s Custard and I began blow drying the underside of our van. Realizing the futile nature of what I was doing I called to be rescued by the Road Side Assistance that Kristine and I had smartly added to our insurance coverage before the trip. With the streets clearing up we had become stranded driving only on the melting snow patches that remained. Getting towed home was the best option.

An hour later we were home, the van was dropped off and sat in the back of our friend’s house. I’d give it a day before attempting to fix it, plus the following day looked like it would be a little warmer than that day. So we perched up for the day at my friends house. Here’s Kristine cozied up and reading–a picture straight out of Dwell.

I succeeded in fixing the frozen emergency brake. It developed a funny noise since then that I imagine was caused by all the dragging around we did that day. It’s still something I need to look into. Along with getting a replacement rear right bumper, which apparently fell off while driving around yesterday, or maybe someone really desperate stole it. Either way it’s gone.

But the van lives on!

Yosemite Valley & One Wish

Kristine and I made the drive from Smith Rock to Yosemite National Park in two days. The first night we slept in the van about thirty miles outside of Reno, NV. Early the next morning we drove through Reno and into California. We didn’t like Reno much or anything about the cities in Nevada. The landscape was beautiful but the cities dirty with casinos and the bright lights, lifestyle, and trash that seem to follow gambling like a scent.

Yosemite Valley was serene. We arrived in the afternoon and the clear blue sky and bright sun made our descent into the valley almost magical. This is a picture of our van at top of the National Park, before descending down into the valley.

Here was our first view of the Valley with the Half Dome in the center of the background.

And here we are in the Valley with El Cap rising up into the sky behind the van.

Our first morning we headed for the renown Yosemite granite. The morning started out cold, but by the time we were climbing I had already taken my shirt off and it felt like the middle of summer. Kristine climbed great. The first climb we did was a 5.8 that started out with a thin slab that led into a finger crack all the way to the top. The second climb was a 5.9 thin finger crack that required a lot of balance and smearing, and Kristine climbed it gracefully only taking once at the crux. It was at the end of this climb that Kristine ripped off her left shoe off as soon as she got to the top of the climb. She has had a soreness in the side of her foot that has caused some discomfort and pain from climbing, but now it was worse than it had been. We ate a late lunch made up of mainly of popcorn and cliff bars and then took a break in the creek that ran by our climb. Kristine iced her foot in the cold creek water and we both contemplated what to do next

I was thinking about a time when I was young and I asked my Dad what he would wish for if he could have any one wish, anything. He didn’t think long before replying, “100% health for me and my family.” I tried to convince him he would be wasting what could be a real wish, something like time travel, magic powers, flying, etc.

It’s not until your hurt or sick that you appreciate being healthy; and being hurt or sick can be a devastating setback in sports, school, life, and should be avoided like the plague–literally. Kristine and I decided that we had to do three things: 1. Figure out what was wrong with her foot. 2. Eliminate anything that was irritating her foot and give her at least three days complete rest. And 3. See if we could find her climbing shoes with a wider toe box to accomodate her swollen foot.

Here’s what we’ve done/ figured out:
1. We think it’s a bunionette, which is simply a bunion on the outside of the foot near the little toe as opposed to a bunion, which is located on the inside of the foot near the big toe.
2. Kristine is no longer wearing her chacos, which were part of the reason that the bunnionette originally became inflamed. We headed to San Francisco for a short three days of rest. We figured the Valley would force us to climb if we stayed there, especially with the perfect weather that they were having.
3. We found her a pair of velcro slippers today at REI that seem to fit her foot much better, provide more room around her toes, and are a stiffer shoe that will hopefully give her more protection around the area where the bunionette is.

This post is already rampant and out of control, so I’ll stop. I’m sure Kristine will pick up the pen to describe our adventures in San Francisco.

Here’s my BMW, Sir, I’ll take the Eurovan!

This is what our driveway looked like at the beginning of September:

Then we decided that the VW Golf was just too small to be our home on the road. Initially we hadn’t even thought twice about it because its mileage had completely blinded us. We averaged over 50 mpg on our road trip down to Northern California earlier this Spring. We have been spoiled rotten with very infrequent trips to the gas station.

We started looking for the perfect road hog to be our new home for the next few months. We didn’t want to sacrifice mileage but we clearly needed a lot more room. The solution: A 1993 Eurovan CL.

In 1993 Volkswagen came out with three different models of the Eurovan: CL, GL, and WV. Each model comes a little closer to a camper. A camper would make us feel retired, we’d fit in at the parking lot of all you can eat buffets, and it was undeniably not the vive we were going for. And that explains why we chose the simplest model(that and we were able to keep our pocket book a little fatter).

Then one day it all happened at once. We had our eye on the perfect, or nearly perfect, eurovan and prudently decided to buy it even though we’d then be proud owners three vehicles. While we were on our way to pick up the Eurovan I got a call about the BMW. We returned home just in time for the prospective buyers to take it out for a spin. They were dazzled by all it’s BMWness and bought it right then.

The day after we drove the Eurovan home I removed the middle bench seat. I laid down in my new living room and thought it was very similar to the studio apartment I lived in for a few months in Capital Hill. Spacious!