Andrew's Sprocket

Three of my favorite books have “road” in the title and in a few weeks I will be traveling cross country on a road trip, starting a new chapter in my life. I thought it pertinent to mention these books prior to my journey.

On The Road by Jack Kerouac (1957)
The End of the Road by John Barth (1958)
The Road by Cormac McCarthy (2006)

I recently read The Road and found a few memorable quotes:

He pulled the boy closer.
Just remember that the things you put into your head are there forever, he said. You might want to think about that.
You forget some things, dont you?
Yes, You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget.

A notable writing style by McCarthy is the absence of the apostrophe when used in contractions to show the omission of letters. Maybe he was inspired by Frank Zappa’s notion that “the crux of the biscuit is the apostrophe.” From Zappa’s great album, Apostrophe(‘) (1974).

Another of my favorite passages from The Road.

On this road there are no godspoke men. They are gone and I am left and they have taken with them the world. Query: How does the never to be differ from what never was?

This suggests that never to be was destined to never happen but what never was at least proposed some chance of happening.

A worthy site to check out is booklamp.org. The author compares it as the Pandora for books, however, its database is not as vast as Pandora but still a noble effort and some cool technology.

I am hoping that my trip relates more to Kerouac’s than the other two but time will tell…

P.S. The Road motion picture is set to be released in 2009.

Much like waterboarding, dashboarding can be very painful. I recently pulled the dash out of my Chevy G30 Hi-Cube Camper and out jumped a spiderweb of wires. Luckily most were connected to something, however, there were a handful of disconnects and “droopy wires”. Now, nobody likes a droopy wire so I ended up tracing back all the droopies I could muster to the two batteries.

First, let me say that the Haynes Diesel Engine Repair Manual came in handy with flow charts for diagnosis.

Here is a Before and After shot:

Before:

After:

There was a bit of work to do: Install new 4×6 front speakers, wire speakers, test/replace dash lights, install a 12V molex connector, and cut holes in the new dashboard: for the Oil Pressure Gauge (which is still not connected because of the rouge green and orange wires), Engine Temp and the right A/C vent. Oh and cut a hole for the stereo head until and cut A/C holes for the center dash.

After rerouting wires and A/C unit components I tested everything, starting the Camper to make sure I didn’t cut anything important. It started up and everything seemed to work. Then next day was spent screwing the thing back together and into the front of the camper.

The fun just didn’t stop there, today the camper refused to start. You’ll notice the dog house is off exposing the engine. I suspect a glow-plug problem. Maybe the glow-plug relay. I ordered a new one, we’ll see what happens now.

goodnite.

Ok, the glow-plug relay almost did the trick, now the light comes on and the glow plugs seem to be getting power, this does not mean they are glowing Since they still could light a test light and passing power even though they may be stalled. I will need an Ammeter to test each glow-plug. This will be a PIA.

Well I decided to replace the glow-plugs (GPs), some looked newer than others so this will be an upgrade and a sure start on cold days

The new AC-Delco GPs seem to have done the trick. Starts like a champ now.

Post Road Trip Note:
The GPs now take some time to trigger. This maybe an issue with the temperature sensor that triggers the GP relay. Now time to run some tests.

What would America be if it couldn’t profit from anything and everything or is this just another money making scheme from this crumby oil grubbing administration? If you have flown on a commercial airline and have had a laptop with you then you were, instructed to remove it from the bag and place it into it’s own bin, I tried to put a hat in the bin and was reprimanded by TSA trolls.

This changed over the weekend as the TSA unleashed a list of not only approved laptop bags but ‘checkpoint friendly’ ones as they are terming it, because the X-ray machines supposedly have trouble with my nylon timbuk2 messenger bag. This makes me wonder if this isn’t just an easy way to create a new market and sucker people into buying crap because it is suppose to simplify, as stated in the above URL, your flying experience.

I am surprised that all electronics aren’t confiscated for some absurdity and resold on the black market like another notorious government organization, cough cough, the DEA and narcotics.

Anyway, I bid farewell to air travel with my new camper.

These shots were taken in Mansfield, MA hours before the Radiohead show. I am now the proud owner of a 1986 Chevy Camper. Upon entering the show I was immediately escorted to the camper section of the parking lot and entered a new mobile home road warrior culture that I only feared existed. My camper does _not_ have a shower, toilet or fridge but it’s got more muscle than most out there. It has a Diesel 6.2 Litre engine with military specs. With a few modifications from Diesel Mike it runs at 20-22 MPGs. It’s not a grease mobile yet but maybe down the road it will be.

I will be touring across the country starting in Boston and ending? I don’t know where yet but leaving that open certainly allows for more possibilities.

Nobody did notice our upside down flag, which is actually a distress signal, but was also our little statement about the distress of the country and ass backword state of affairs going on today. Maybe the wind wasn’t blowing hard enough but it was our mark on how upside down, yet great! this country is. That being the swirl and downfall of economies, the housing market roller coaster, inflation, devaluation of the dollar, recession, political scandals, food price increases and oil prices that are the ever dead horse that continues to get beat. I won’t recount events here but will in future posts as I travel across the country.