On the Road with Adie

Playlist: Ohio

Pit stop at home for a few days and we need some songs to keep things moving even while we’re cooling our heels.

We made it back to our hometown of Dayton, Ohio. We left the coldness of southern Wisconsin early on Tuesday morning and drove straight through to Ohio in ten hours. And by straight through, I mean that we barreled south to avoid the rain and snow around Chicago. (Remember—no wipers.) Then we jumped on interstate heading east to Indy and then I-70 to Dayton. I had plenty of time to think. So here are some random observations about the drive:

Security for your bus

Know where your bus is. Over the past three months SpotTrace has told us 2,600 times where Adie is at that moment.

Every so often the topic of security comes up on the VW Campers forum on Facebook. What do people do to prevent theft? How do you keep your most prized possession from getting nicked? There’s always a laundry list of answers that runs the gamut from people putting up pictures of their manual shifters and saying “no millennial will know how to steal this [laugh face emoticon]” to the person who simply says “Smith and Wesson.” I’m going to do a quick run through of safety/prevention/recovery options before saying you should get SpotTrace. That’s the main takeaway—SpotTrace is invaluable.

Playlist: Indiana

We will be passing through Indiana twice in the next leg of the trip. This first part takes us through Mayor Pete’s hometown and the second jaunt through the big city of Indianapolis itself for a VW interview. So, for the first leg, let’s get some tunes going. I’ll be posting pics and stories of Indiana on the way back through in mid-November.

and then the wipers broke

We came back to Minnesota to pick up the bus at Dune Buggy Supply and decided to swing by the Bob Dylan mural in downtown Minneapolis. When our friends at Happy Productions, Shawn and Emma, found out we would be in the neighborhood (a couple of hours qualifies as being in the neighborhood in the northerly reaches of the US), we decided to meet up for lunch. Being VW people, nothing went as planned. We interviewed Sam for our podcast when we picked up Adie and that went long. (You can catch his podcast in Season 4 or 5.) Getting to the mural involved a lot of maneuvering in order to avoid the $12 parking fee. Lunch became dinner.

Dune Buggy Supply

We knew going in to this venture that we would face breakdowns—flat tires and parts failure are a part of the game. In fact, they should be expected. We did not bargain for our recently-purchased rebuilt 2L to completely seize on us. I wrote a couple days ago about our tremendous luck during the ordeal, but by far the luckiest thing to shake out of the whole deal was meeting Sam, the man behind Dune Buggy Supply.

The internet void

The internet should be a public utility. If you don’t believe me, go travel.

Back to Minnesota

You can’t have conflict in a story without grist, I would tell my students. Here’s a picture of what conflict looks like in nonfiction.

We left early this morning to go get Adie from Dune Buggy Supply. All systems appear to be go thanks to Sam and his crew. Not only did he get a rebuilt engine installed in record time, he also worked on our sliding door, replaced a wheel bearing, and—this one is impressive—got our heat working.

Breakdowns and getting unstuck

Breaking down is demoralizing for a lot of reasons—mostly that you are stuck. The trip of a lifetime, the open road, adventures awaiting and suddenly you’re stagnant. Then the news comes: that engine you had rebuilt is a stinker. It’s a goner. The money you spent? Also gone.

A lucky engine failure

If you’re going to break down, be strategic. And by strategic, I mean lucky. As an Irishman, I swear my luck never runs out (knocks on wood). After we left our friends at Happy Productions Studios in Minnesota, we realized we had nice little gap in our schedule to swing through Stephens Point, home of Cider Boys. After a wonderful tour and some talk of cider, we returned to our bus… which wouldn’t start. And it was bitter cold, my friends. And I was just bitter.