Whatchya buy then?
I bought a piston engine!"
You'd have to be a Monty Python fan to understand the sketch those lines were taken from, but everybody should understand the punch line. I've decided to celebrate the collapse of gas prices by purchasing the biggest most enormous engine I can find, a Ford Vortec V10, and heading south to see just how cheap the gas price will get. If you add up the engine displacement of my car and motorcycle and double them, this thing is even bigger! By a fortunate coincidence it came attached to a 32 foot motor home, complete with a trailer hitch to pull the bike. All told the thing is 44 feet long, and handles exactly like you would expect of a vehicle that's wider than a standard house lot.
Many times over the years I've cursed motor homes as they swayed slowly down the highway or crawled even more slowly up a twisting mountain road, leaving me trapped in their wake as I waited for a place to pass. You can't see around the damn things so you can't get a good sight line to see what's coming the other way, and more often than not the cursed things seem to travel in packs requiring you to pass several at once. Even with the power to weight ratio advantage of a motorcycle getting stuck behind one can be frustrating, at times even dangerous. I've never liked motor homes. And then there's the drivers. Far too often they seem to piloted by a senior citizen, no doubt with fading eyesight and deteriorating reflexes, and no matter how big it is they don't even require any special training or licence to operate.
Well, if ya can't beat 'em....... As part of my retirement plan - my very vague retirement plan - I had given some thought to buying myself a motor home at some point in the future, far, far, in the future, and spending the winter swanning about the southern US with my motorcycle in tow. The future has arrived. I just didn't realize how noisy the future would be. Think about taking an average house and putting it on wheels, then think about all the noise all the crap in it would make as you bounce down the road, the dishes and cutlery, pots and pans, especially all the doors and windows. No wonder all those people drive so slow, it's a futile attempt to keep the cacophony down to a tolerable level. And the reason they go so slowly as they make their way into a parking lot is because they're overcome with panic as they desperately survey all the traffic and obstacles and think "NOW WHAT?!?!?!"
The cheapest fuel I've found so far was a couple of blocks from Graceland Tennessee. $1.86 A gallon. Two years ago I paid more than that per liter at Saskatchewan Crossing in the rocky mountains. I was there on new years day, Graceland was going to open late, there were bad thunderstorms coming so I kept on going, that gives me an excuse to come back next year. I spent New Years Eve at a truck stop somewhere in Tennessee, partying with a bunch of truckers who'd started a bonfire in a barbecue pit. The cops came by to see what all the fuss was about, cautioned us against drinking and driving, then kept going.
Right now I'm having breakfast in a Starbucks in Midland Texas, across the street from the RV park of last resort, Walmart. Yesterday the weather had gotten worse and worse, rain becoming heavy rain, then snow, then freezing rain, then sleet. That's when the carnage started. First there was a tractor trailer on it's side in the ditch, then half an hour later another, a few minutes later another, and quickly it began to look like the set of a Mad Max movie. Vehicles of every description were strewn all over the landscape with varying degrees of destruction. There was even what was left of a pre-fab house still attached to what was left of the flatbed that had been carrying it that looked like it had rolled several times on it's way to the bottom of a ravine.
Enough is enough. It's not that the conditions are bad by Canadian standards, but there isn't a single salt truck in the entire state. I decided to call it a day and pull in to the next Rest Stop but when I got there the access road had a bunch of road flares burning across it. When I rolled past I could see 3 tractor trailers still on their wheels neatly stacked on top of each other in the ditch. It looked like they pulled onto the ice covered roadway and one by one were blown off at the same spot to slide into the ditch.
I finally made Midland just before the State Police closed the Interstate, and pulled into the first parking lot I saw, Walmart. It was only mid afternoon so I headed in for some shopping to be confronted by a scene of pandemonium. The place was jammed, everybody was buying warm clothing and emergency supplies, the aisle where the water should have been was barren, the battery and flashlight racks were empty, and I began to realize that I'd managed to drive a few thousand kilometers to put myself in the middle of a disaster. As I returned to the RV I could see that all the hotels in sight already had No Vacancy signs displayed, and I was glad that I had brought my own room with me.
It surprised me how many people had mentioned staying at Walmart when I needed, and I had slept in their parking lots many times in my car as I've made my way back and forth across the country. But it's not without it's hazards. I wasn't inside for a full minute before there was a knock on the door. I opened it to receive a well rehearsed pitch from a scruffy guy who was living in an even scruffier van asking me for money. At least a real RV park doesn't have panhandlers.
The Interstate has reopened, I will probably get to Eloy tomorrow night, the Canadian Invasion starts next Saturday, and my room-mates will be arriving soon after that. When that's over I'm heading to Vegas where Mark will be just finishing up a trade show, and after that the plan gets kinda' vague. I don't have to be anywhere anytime soon, and the only goal I have is to return home after the snow has all melted. Both here and there.
The cheapest fuel I've found so far was a couple of blocks from Graceland Tennessee. $1.86 A gallon. Two years ago I paid more than that per liter at Saskatchewan Crossing in the rocky mountains. I was there on new years day, Graceland was going to open late, there were bad thunderstorms coming so I kept on going, that gives me an excuse to come back next year. I spent New Years Eve at a truck stop somewhere in Tennessee, partying with a bunch of truckers who'd started a bonfire in a barbecue pit. The cops came by to see what all the fuss was about, cautioned us against drinking and driving, then kept going.
Right now I'm having breakfast in a Starbucks in Midland Texas, across the street from the RV park of last resort, Walmart. Yesterday the weather had gotten worse and worse, rain becoming heavy rain, then snow, then freezing rain, then sleet. That's when the carnage started. First there was a tractor trailer on it's side in the ditch, then half an hour later another, a few minutes later another, and quickly it began to look like the set of a Mad Max movie. Vehicles of every description were strewn all over the landscape with varying degrees of destruction. There was even what was left of a pre-fab house still attached to what was left of the flatbed that had been carrying it that looked like it had rolled several times on it's way to the bottom of a ravine.
Enough is enough. It's not that the conditions are bad by Canadian standards, but there isn't a single salt truck in the entire state. I decided to call it a day and pull in to the next Rest Stop but when I got there the access road had a bunch of road flares burning across it. When I rolled past I could see 3 tractor trailers still on their wheels neatly stacked on top of each other in the ditch. It looked like they pulled onto the ice covered roadway and one by one were blown off at the same spot to slide into the ditch.
I finally made Midland just before the State Police closed the Interstate, and pulled into the first parking lot I saw, Walmart. It was only mid afternoon so I headed in for some shopping to be confronted by a scene of pandemonium. The place was jammed, everybody was buying warm clothing and emergency supplies, the aisle where the water should have been was barren, the battery and flashlight racks were empty, and I began to realize that I'd managed to drive a few thousand kilometers to put myself in the middle of a disaster. As I returned to the RV I could see that all the hotels in sight already had No Vacancy signs displayed, and I was glad that I had brought my own room with me.
It surprised me how many people had mentioned staying at Walmart when I needed, and I had slept in their parking lots many times in my car as I've made my way back and forth across the country. But it's not without it's hazards. I wasn't inside for a full minute before there was a knock on the door. I opened it to receive a well rehearsed pitch from a scruffy guy who was living in an even scruffier van asking me for money. At least a real RV park doesn't have panhandlers.
The Interstate has reopened, I will probably get to Eloy tomorrow night, the Canadian Invasion starts next Saturday, and my room-mates will be arriving soon after that. When that's over I'm heading to Vegas where Mark will be just finishing up a trade show, and after that the plan gets kinda' vague. I don't have to be anywhere anytime soon, and the only goal I have is to return home after the snow has all melted. Both here and there.
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