Spring Road Trip Part 1

Two days, two trips . . . so much fun. Here, on Monday morning sunburned and tired, I have to take the time to write about it.

 A couple of months ago Rob asked our friend and mechanic/detective Tory to take a few days and help Rob give my old Scooby some much needed overhaulin’. Tory is the best Subaru mechanic around --- he’s actually a Deputy Sherriff, so shhhh, don’t spread it around about his other skills -- he says that was his ‘other life’. Anyway, the guys came to an agreement about time and place and a few weeks ago they did the deed.

 

Abby D (my car) now has a new clutch, new hoses, new seals, new water pump, new belts, new filters (including a fuel filter and wahoo! Isn’t that grand?!?), new distributor cap and the rest of the bits that make a ‘tune up’. I’m like Jeremy Clarkson, I know exactly enough about cars to get my ass in trouble. Thus, being the wise and retiring sort of girl I am, I left it to them and trusted it would be perfect.

I got my little Scooby-doo back in tip top shape; all of a sudden that machine went from a putt-putt to a Go-Devil! That’s rather a tickle-me-pink prospect because gas prices as you well know aren’t insane any longer. The past two weeks we’ve taken the old girl out to stretch her legs and it’s been a blast.


Last weekend Rob and I (sans kids) went up to Hood and came back down the back side of Gov’mnt Camp.

That little jaunt was so successful that we decided to make our trip to Salem this Saturday with Japes. Salem, as you know, is a trip over the Santiam Pass, not quite has high as Gov't Camp, much greener on the other side and generally faster to get over the mountains.

That trip had some unexpected twists.

We started out late, not getting out of Bend until nearly 1 pm. Stopped in Sisters picked up some munchies after realizing that none of us had eaten lunch, and headed over the mountain. It was a gorgeously clear day and we stopped at a few place headed up to the top to take pics of the Gents.

The pics in order are Black Butte, Mt Washington, and Three Fingered Jack.We’d just passed Suttle lake and gotten over the summit when the car gave an odd little power down. I down shifted and pressed the accelerator and that same odd little power down happened again. Ruh-Roh Shaggy – time to pull over. Lucky for us it was just at Lost Lake, where there is a good sized turn out for ‘slow moving vehicles’ to let the ‘not slow moving vehicles’ get past them.

No sooner had I got the car to the side of the road than the engine cut out. Rob grimaced, gave a few dire threats to the little car and I tried to start her up again. The car tried for all it was worth to start but no ignition, no spark, was getting to it.

My first thought was no fuel, so we looked under the hood and under the car and we had no leaks – new filter, yay but what if the fuel injector motor or fuel pump had gone out? We hadn’t replaced those. I looked down into that very clean little motor and asked my husband, ‘What about the new dist cap, everything all tight there?’ Rob assured me it was all good and we had better call Tory.

Japes was upset of course. He had his heart set on a trip into Salem and the Toys R Us there. With the Scooby cooling its heels at the top of the mountain there was no telling how the remainder of the trip was going to go. We very well could have needed a tow truck to take us back into Bend. My guy did his best to wrestle impatientence, disappointment and the particular pain an ASD kiddo feels with the derailment of our plans. An ODOT plow truck driver stopped to ask if we were okay and we assured him we were, we were just about to call our mechanic.

Call him we did, and that wonderful man, on his day off mind you, drove his butt up to the top of the Mountain for us in record time (about an hour and twenty minutes from Alfalfa to Lost Lake – and it’s a good thing he’s a cop, I’ll just leave it at that). In the time it took him to drive up and rescue us no less than 4 different people stopped to ask us if we were okay. That was pretty darn cool. The ODOT guy came back by 3 times to check on us. He was a very, very nice man, going so far as to offer us a ride to and from the nearest rest area to have a potty break.

Around 4:30 Tory arrived. He gave us a little ribbing for our breakdown and we smiled and did the Goofy ‘Gu-huh’ noise a few times and he finally stuck his head under the hood. First thing he reaches for? That new distributor cap. “Weee-aall there’s your problem,” he says. Rob looks at me and says “Bitch” I laughed. While my husband was off muttering about how his wife is always right, even when she doesn’t really know what she’s talking about, Tory was taking out his handy-dandy screw driver and fixing the loose bit in the dist cap and telling me to turn the engine over and by-gosh-and-by-damn it fired right up and off we went! Well, not quite that fast. There was some more visiting; there was some assuring JP that we were still going to go down to Salem even though it was quarter til 5, a few hugs (from me to Tory) some bullshitting about the crazy people driving insanely fast where there were still spots of ice, yada-yada-yada-blah-blah-blah. Off we went!

 

We got into Salem right about 6 pm. I like Salem, it’s laid out a lot like Bend. The streets all run either North-South or East-West. Unlike P-town with its’ upteen bridges and freeway interchanges and twisty-twiney hills. I have a serious dislike for driving in Portland. Salem is a bre-e-eze. Lancaster Drive is the new part of Salem – it’s been built up for the past 25 or so years, down town on Liberty is the old part of Salem, much like comparing downtown Bend to the north end. Toys R Us is on Lancaster strip – and JP fulfilled a small part of his I want list this week by getting a few of the advance Star Trek toys. He is now the proud owner of the new Enterprise, a new Kirk action figure and the Scene It DVD Star Trek edition. Other than that, nothing on Lancaster was worth hanging around for. The Mall is the Mall is the Mall. Boring.

 

We headed downtown for a look-see and supper. We found a fun used bookstore, a bunch of little shops we must go back and explore and nifty little bar and grill with some fabulous fish tacos and not too shabby mural art. Rob enjoyed a good DB Black Butte Porter and I had a scrumptious margarita with dinner. Our after dinner stroll produced a gelato shop that makes the most heavenly caramel gelato and sinfully rich marzipan & almond gelato!

MMMMmmmmm.

 

We did a lot of window shopping – arriving in down town Salem on a Saturday night the only places that are open are for social gathering. We passed a restaurant where a young lady was displaying her prodigious abdominal movement (belly dancing), another with a band up on a tiny stage and the smells of fresh roasted coffee and stale cigarette smoke billowed forth, and the bookstore where kids dressed in prom finery kissed and groped in the fantasy section. There were several young people dressed in frilly dresses and tuxedos – and most of the girls were carrying their heels in their hands on that warm spring night. Who wants to run through the streets in spring wearing heels? Barefoot is more romantic.

 

The old Reed Opera House is on our list of ‘must explore’ places when we head back over in a few weeks. The building is amazing but the unique collection of businesses inside rival even the architecture and history. Where else in Oregon can you have Italian gelato, Traditional Greek, Scottish Clothing, Australian Outerwear, delicate Stationary, Gothic clothing, Hand crafted soaps and French Lingerie all in one building?

We strolled, we looked, we tourista’d. We had a grand time of it. Then it got dark, we got tired and it was time to head home.

We bought a used audio book at the book store and listened to Robert B Parkers’ Blue Screen all the way home. Finally, around 1130 pm we poured ourselves into bed.