Road trip

The drive to Denver and back reignited my wanderlust. I looked at the map. Highway 149 said, "Try me." So I did. From Blue Mesa Reservoir near Gunnison, through Lake City, over 11,530 foot Slumgullion Pass, past Spring Creek Falls, to Creede, following the Rio Grande to South Fork. Then US160 over 10, 857 foot Wolf Creek Pass (of C.W. McCall fame) to Pagosa Springs. A night at Ute Campground then on to Durango, where I'm writing this and trying to decide whether to take the short way back to Ridgeway via US550, which I've driven before, or take the long way via Cortez, Lizard Head Pass and Telluride. I'm leaning toward the latter, even though I've been that way before, too. Just not as recently as US550. In the meantime, here are pictures from the first leg of the trip.

Lake San Cristobal as seen from Slumgullion Pass

Uncompahgre Peak (sixth highest in Colorado)

Spring Creek Falls

Main Street, Creede

A section of Wolf Creek Pass

It's harder to cut crooked than straight

While Cyan and Forrest were dealing with tires, Lou and I worked on the shower floor. The unique requirements of the monster truck's camper wouldn't allow for a standard shower pan or stall. It's all going to be built from scratch, starting with a floor that tilts toward the drain.

Angle here, taper there, measure, cut, test fit, adjust, lather, rinse, repeat. But we got it done.

That's the drain in the corner

I don't know what the next step is. Lou has it mapped out. I just assist. And make unsolicited suggestions. And ask questions. And kibitz.

Tires!

New rubber is finally going on Cyan's truck. She and Forrest spent hours pounding, prying and swearing as they struggled to get the old tires off the rims and the new tires on.

Cyan is a very hands-on type of person. She works on the truck herself. Last week she was under the engine, changing the filters. Pay someone to do what she can do herself? Ridiculous.

Just do it

I'm the type of person who mulls things over. A long time. I'll come up with different solutions for some small situation, weigh the pros and cons, eliminate the ones that probably wouldn't work or are too complicated or too expensive, contemplate the remaining ideas, maybe resurrect part of one of the rejected ideas, think it all over some more, come to a tentative decision, then wait for the time to be right to execute it. I think it's my father's deliberation genes expressing themselves.

One such overthought problem was how hold the rear door open part way so that it would resist opening farther or closing because of the wind or the slope of the land. It should be quick and easy to set up and take apart. I have been thinking about it for about three years.

Forrest, on the other hand, is a man of action, a let's-do-it-now type of guy. After I changed the way my solar panel was mounted, I thought, "It would be good to trim down those uprights," which in my mind comes with the assumption, "sometime in the convenient future." But when I mentioned it in passing to Forrest he went into the shop, brought out his handheld band saw and cut the suckers. Oh. Okay.

So when I told him about the door thing he walked over to the van, looked it over as I shared some of my solutions, said, "A bungee to hold it closed and something to prop it open." Then he walked to the side of the shop, came back with a piece of two-by-four, set it on the bumper and closed the door until it stopped part way open. Oh. Okay.

"Now I just need to get a short bungee cord," I said, thinking I'd need to go to the store. At some convenient time in the future, of course.

"I probably have one in the shop."

He did.

I hooked it on the latch and a screw that was already in the door. Presto, all that mulling, over all that time, laid to rest in about five minutes. Damn.

A do-nothing day

Lou headed off early to do laundry and shopping. Forrest has been here and gone and here and gone. Nothing is happening on the monster truck. I've been reading and web surfing and having random thoughts instead of doing anything about the stuff on my list. Ya gotta have days like this once in a while.

Making holes

It's for either a window or a TV from the '50s

Scratch one more thing off the to-do list

Most of the time my super plush mattress stays on the bed platform, but it tends to slide around when the roads get twisty. No big deal, really. I just shove it back into place. The problem solving part of my brain wasn't happy with that. It wanted something done about it. First there was an arrangement of bungee cords. Then rope. Then clamps. They were more trouble than they were worth. And they didn't work that well, either.

Since I'm at Forrest's place, with access to a variety of woodworking tools, I decided to do something that looked less jerry-rigged and would probably actually work.

Start with a one by six board, use the chop saw, the band saw, the router, some sandpaper, the drill, paint it...

Et voila! It should keep the bed in place without getting in the way of my enjoyment. In theory. We shall see.

Now, about the eleven other things still on the list...

Progress was made while I was gone

The sleeping capsule and bathroom had been mocked up and test fitted. Since I like to be able to turn around, bend over and reach all parts of my body when I shower, I would want something larger. But Forrest is happy with this. "I've allocated space based on how much time I spend using it."

You know things are getting serious when there are pieces of plumbing hanging around and some panels have been varnished.

Meanwhile, new seats were going into the truck. Forrest scored some Subaru WRX buckets and the crew modified the bases to bolt into the Isuzu.

I've wanted a better seat ever since I got the Rolling Steel Tent. The stock seat isn't very supportive, the vinyl gets hot and sticky and the springs are starting to make themselves known. I've tried a sheepskin seat cover, a bath mat and a fancy gel pad. Eh. I wasn't happy over the long term with any of them. Maybe I just need a better butt.

Field research

I have a reputation as someone who'll drive several hundred miles just to spend a couple of days, then drive back. What's wrong with that? If I have a hankering to be somewhere else, and I have the gas money, why not go? I spent too much of my life being told I had to have good reasons, approved by people who thought they had the right to say so, in order to travel.

So, when Forrest needed a load of specialty plywood picked up in Denver, he turned to me. A 560 mile round trip for some wood? Sure. Why not? And I didn't need to do it in one day.

Forrest didn't expect me to add wear and tear to the Rolling Steel Tent, so he had me take his fourth-generation Dodge Caravan. "The space in back is exactly 4 by 8, if you scoot the front seats forward an inch," he said.

The back of a minivan looks huge with the seats out. So huge that I got thinking about the feasibility of me living in one when the Rolling Steel Tent can't wander any longer. Thirty-two square feet instead of sixty? Only 45 inches of headroom? Hmmmmm... We tossed in a foam pad, my pillow and a blanket and I hit the road.

Once I got reacquainted with quicker steering and a lower view of the road the drive was rather pleasant. Well, except for the bulge on the door containing the power window and lock buttons. It was in exactly the right spot to dig into the top knob of my left fibula. The route took me over 11,312 foot high Monarch Pass. The Caravan took it easily. I took a picture.

From the crest of Monarch Pass

I found the lumber yard then went scouting for someplace to park for the night. Walmart? No, there were nasty signs forbidding overnight parking. What about on the neighborhood with lots of apartments behind the lumber yard? No parking restriction signs, but I felt weird just sitting there waiting for night. "No, I'm not some creepy guy casing your apartments." So I looked up nearby campgrounds. Ah-ha, a country recreation area with a campground. But when I got there, "Sorry, we're booked up until next week." Okay, what else, what else? I googled sleeping in cars in Denver and found a guy's blog. He told of some park & ride lots on the west edge of the metro area. It sounded like what I needed.

It was dusk when I got to the lots right by I-70. Other vehicle dweller types had started arriving, which was a good indicator it was okay to be there. I climbed in the back of the minivan and tried out the foam pad. It wasn't my super plush bed, but it was better than nothing. Then I started thinking.

Okay, I could remove the passenger seat and put the fridge there, just like in the Rolling Steel Tent. And I could radically minimize my other possessions, do a drawer under the bed—a narrower bed, of course. A small cabinet there... and so on.

Then I had another, more immediate, thought. What if I need to use a toilet tonight? I could pee in the bushes, but what about poo? I hadn't come equipped for that. Rats. So I crawled back into the driver seat and went to check out another park & ride a few miles south.

What luck! This one was next to a 24-hour convenience store. And it was a little farther from the highway, so quieter. I returned to the back of the minivan for more thinking and planning.

Then the thunderstorm hit. It gets very stuffy and warm when all the windows closed. And some of this particular minivan's funkier aromas become more apparent. And the pad wasn't helping much. So I tossed and turned for several hours and wondered whether it would be safe to open the windows or would there be more rain after I finally fell asleep. I kept the windows closed and managed to nod off for a while.

There was a hint of dawn when I woke. And I needed a bathroom. The men's room was out of order, so I used the ladies'. It was 4:15, who would care. Not the night clerk.

A good thing about major cities is that it's easy to find decent bagels. A day that starts with a good bagel is much better than days which don't. So bagel, orange juice, gas, then off to the lumber yard. The order was ready and, as promised, fit into the minivan.

Even loaded up, the Caravan drove happily along. Up steep grades, air conditioning on, no overheating, no lack of power, no problem. Except for that thing digging into my leg. I'd have to do something about that. If.

The beginning of the end

There are gloomy philosophers who say we start to die from the moment we're born.

The same can be said of objects. Everything starts to deteriorate the moment it's made. Case in point: my jeans.

They started out dark blue about five years ago. A few months back I realized they had become pale blue, like the jeans I bought that way back in the '80s. And frayed bits had developed on the cuffs. Then, the other day, tah-dah, a hole on the right leg.

"Cool, you're about to become stylish," joked Lou.

Eh, I did the ripped jeans thing back in the '70. Now my priority is to not look too much like an old homeless guy who lives in a van. So these will become my dirty work pants. Grease, paint, adhesives, more rips, whatever. Then one day, when the crotch rips out, I'll send them off to blue jeans Valhalla. And some other jeans will become the designated grimy pair.

A morning of wandering

Lou and Joe went fishing. Forrest and Cyan went... somewhere. So I did a little exploring. Southwest out of Ridgway on Highway 62. Up over the Dallas Divide. Into San Miguel Canyon. Then, on a whim, I turned on Specie Creek Road. It took me up a canyon, through aspens and into alpine meadows at about 9,000 feet. Ranches and cattle.

The San Miguel River flowing strong with snowmelt and silt

Lone Cone Peak

The road looped me around to Norwood where I rejoined Highway 145 and headed back toward Ridgway.

There's a mesa north of Ridgway. I had never been up there, so I took that turn. A small turnout on the way up is a great viewpoint.

Mount Sneffels on the left

At the top of the mesa is Loghill Village—new homes and a country club. Development gave way to ranch land as I continued north. A sign at the entrance to a ranch said Dead Realtor Rd. I guess they were tired of agents trying to buy their property.

After a detour for road work, I connected to US 550 and headed into Montrose to get lunch and a piece of lumber, and to wash tree goo (I'm camped under some cottonwoods) and the dust of unpaved roads from the Rolling Steel Tent. Gotta look presentable. If not me, then the van.

Shocking

When you convert an Isuzu NPR to four-wheel-drive, you have to figure out how to mount the shock absorbers. And, of course, the fabrication starts with sparks.

The lower shock mounts were welded to the spring mounting plates. Why slots instead of holes? Because, um, there was a reason I didn't quite understand, but it had something to do with bolts and clearances. Once the shocks are mounted, Forrest will weld on pieces to close up the fronts of the slots. If he needs to change the shocks he'll cut off the added pieces. "A minute with the angle grinder."

Since the new bottom location is a few inches higher than the stock mounts, the upper mounts needed to be raised also. That meant cutting the tops off the shock towers and welding in additional steel.

The driver side mounts had to be raised farther than the passenger side in order to clear the steering linkage.

Doing custom stuff like this usually means a cascading series of modifications. If you move this, then you'll have to move that, and rework the other thing, and get a different one of those... One hopes the chain of changes doesn't loop back around on itself, necessitating more changes. When that happens you get out the huge hammer and start pounding. On your head.

Working at our own level

The camper section of Forrest's expedition vehicle is off the truck and down on the floor where it'll be easier to work on. The underside of the floor is in place and painted. Provisions have been made for a gray water drain, and locating pins to attach the camper to the truck have been welded on. The stilt system for removing the camper from the truck has also been fabricated, which is why the truck could be driven away.

Since there are no blueprints or CAD drawings to work from, no step-by-step instructions, everything needs to be figured out along the way. In what order do things need to be done? If this thing is done that way, how does that impact the other thing? And the thing after that? So there has been more thinking and measuring and discussion and measuring and thinking again than actual construction. But that's good, because you want to be building solutions, not problems.

Meanwhile, the truck has a list that needs to be done. Today it's a new tie rod for the salvaged front axle. It's always good to have a vehicle go where you point it.

Let's go for a ride

Palisade, Colorado, near Grand Junction, is known for peaches, vineyards and Victorian houses. But that's not why the gang loaded into a minivan and drove an hour and a half. We went for a vintage motorcycle show. And brunch at sidewalk cafe. And camaraderie.

I wouldn't consider myself a Harley fan, but I like the naked mechanical complexity of the early ones, like the 1927 version above. Or like this Douglas—a brand I'd never heard of—with it's horizontally opposed twin cylinders oriented fore and aft.

I'm a big lover of British bikes, though, even with all their leaky unreliability. They're beautiful. I was drooling over this BSA racer and the Triumph scrambler next to it.

But the bike that made my heart leap was this Yamaha Twin Jet 100. Wow. That was my first motorcycle back in high school. I bought a ratty one from my friend's older brother for one hundred hard-earned fast food dollars. The maroon paint was faded and cracked, and it spent a lot of time in the shop, but it was a motorcycle! And it was mine!

Pet sharing

Caira visits the Rolling Steel Tent