Bertha acts up again...

October 28, 2007 6:53pm

Current Location: Columbus, OH
Next Destination: Louiville, KY
Miles Driven: 4200 miles

I'm currently in the Ohio State University's library in Columbus, OH. Nothing too exciting about this town Columbus except for crazy Buckeye fans and occasional crazy hot blonde blue-eye midwestern white girls. I'm staying with my friend's John's buddy from high school. Troy has been very hospitable and generous. I slept over at his place last night (he has one of the most comfortable couches I've ever slept on btw) and since Bertha is out of commission at the moment, he even let me borrow his car. Mucho gracias, Troy! Ok, let's see. Where did I leave off? Let's start with my drive from Minneapolis to Chicago.

So I left Minneapolis on Monday around noon and headed straight for Chicago, IL. I thought about skipping it and going to Michigan through Green Bay, WI but I've heard way too many good things to skip the Windy City, and it did live up to its expectations.

The drive from Minneapolis to Chicago wasn't anything unusually beautiful or crazy. In fact, it was a long rainy boring ride. I did take the major interstate freeways too so nothing too exciting there. The most exciting thing about that drive was probably throwing coins into those toll collecting machines. I've never done that before. I know...pretty wild, huh?

I got a hold of my buddy Tim on my way to Chicago to see if he had any friends or family I would be able to stay with. Of course, Timmy didn't let me down. He got me in touch with no other than his awesome mom, Susan who lived in a southern suburb called Bolingbrook, and she was such a wonderful hostess; I felt seriously at home the entire time staying with her. Thank you Susan! You were like a white mother who I never knew I had. Even though my stay ended up becoming longer than originally-intended 2 days, she really opened up her home for me. Much appreciation!

So.....as I was approaching Chicago, I noticed low-pitched vibration coming from Bertha's transmission. What now? It worried me a bit but not enough for me to stop driving. Moments later, I noticed that Bertha would buck pretty wildly right around 55mph. It really worried me now but I was only 10 miles from Susan's place, so I kept going. I finally got to Susan's place, parked Bertha in her driveway, talked with her for a bit, got some recommendations and directions on which shop to go to, and went to sleep with an intention of taking Bertha to a transmission shop first thing in the morning.

The next morning, I drove to a local transmission shop that was recommended by Tim's dad, Superior Transmission in Downers Grove. I spoke with the owner Frank for awhile about the problem I was having and took a test drive. Upon the test drive, we concluded that the problem was definitely coming from the transmission. In order to locate exact problem area, the only thing left to do was the internal testing which meant taking the transmission down and taking it apart, which also meant more dollars...a lot more dollars. Not a pleasant sound to my ears when I just spent $600 on a brake job in Minneapolis. But I didn't have much of a choice, so I gave Frank an OK to do the internal testing and headed into Chicago to check out the city. By the way, Frank is by far the most honest, professional, and customer-service orientated mechanic I've ever dealt with. Thank you for all the work you've done and making the whole process as painless and informative as possible. It's times like this I wish I knew more about cars. I mean, I'm no super gear head by any means but consider myself an ok weekend-warrior mechanic or at least have a pretty good idea on how cars work in general, but there are just some black boxes there and transmission is definitely one of them. I have absolutely no idea how transmission works. It's a shame. I need to learn more.

So I headed out to the city on a train which wasn't as exciting as I thought it would be. It was just as exciting as taking an Amtrak from SF to SJ. As soon as I got out to the city, I got a call from Frank with the final verdict on Bertha. My torque converter, solenoid block, and clutch were all bad and the whole unit needed to be rebuilt. It was a $2000 repair. I bought Bertha for $2800 and now I had to spend $2000 to get her back on the road. The previous owner told me that the transmission was rebuilt about 10k miles ago, and I'm not sure if he was lying or the shop he took it to did a lousy fix-up job, but according to Frank, the unit wasn't properly rebuilt or updated. I guess that's the risk you take when buying from a private source. Anyways, I didn't have much of a choice at this point. I had to get Bertha back on the road. As you can imagine, quite a bit of colorful language and kicking several planters later, I authorized Frank to go ahead with the repair.

After the terrible news, it was already 3 o'clock by the time I was ready to explore the city so I couldn't do a lot of touristy stuff, mostly going to the museums. I checked out the Navy Pier (not so cool during winter), went up on the Hancock building (the view was amazing but hella swanky and touristy lounge/restaurant was a turn-off), check out the contemporary art museum (art is one of those things that's just beyond my comprehension), ate a deep-dish pizza from Gino's East (one of the best deep dish pizza I've ever had but then again, I've only had a deep dish pizza maybe twice in my life....I realized I'm a much bigger fan of thin crust than deep dish), rode my bike around all different parts of the city before heading back to Bolingbrook. I contemplated staying out in Chicago at a youth hostel and bring back nostalgic memories of traveling through Europe, but it was $45. Bullshit! No hostel should cost more than $20. So I decided to head back to Bolingbrook and got on the train at 9:40pm.

I arrived in Downers Grove at 10:20pm, got directions from Susan on how to get back to Bolingbrook, and started riding my bike. My god. Due to missing a turn and riding through a different town, I ended up doing a 13 miles bike ride and by the time I got back to Susan's place it was 11:45pm. It all reminded me why I hate suburbia so much. It was designed and built so everyone drives. No one rides bikes, so not only is there no bike lane, everyone's concept of distance is based on driving. "You are really close....pass about 3 lights and make a right." Well turns out each light is like 2 miles apart. Bastards! Suburbia which is the fastest growing sector of urban growth in America is all designed for driving, and ironically, the public transportation is the worst in these areas, which forces everyone to drive. And yet, we wonder why we consume so much petroleum and why we Americans own average of 2 cars per household. Well, I won't go into it further. That's a whole new discussion for another time.

The next day was quite uneventful as Bertha was supposed to be done by the end of the day which meant if I headed out to the city, I would have had to leave by 2 to get back to Bolingbrook to pick up Bertha. So I sat around, read for a long time (I've been reading this book called "Sliding Home" by Ray Holan which is basically like the new testament on how to run cars on WVO. It's amazing how much time I can spend on this topic and not get bored these days. I'm turning into a such grease monkey.), browsed the internet, ordered delivery pizza, drank beer, and watched the rockies get their asses whooped ....basically just bummed around the house. Bertha ended up taking till the middle of the next day anyway. As uneventful as the day was, it was perfect. It felt so good to basically just be a bum for an entire day. There hasn't been a single day since I left on this trip where I didn't do anything. There was always something whether it be collecting oil, working on Bertha, hiking/biking, partying, drinking, and so on. But for once, I just sat around and did nothing for a change. I did absolutely nothing and it was everything I could've asked for.

The next day, I picked up Bertha, paid my $2000, and headed out to Chicago with Bertha this time. So when you rebuild a major part like engine or transmission, you gotta break it in slowly. It's just like a brand new car. You don't drive a car off the lot and get on the freeway and try to do o-to-60 under 4 seconds. Especially since Frank's shop didn't have a nationwide warranty, he suggested I drive Bertha as much as I could and bring her back to the shop for the final test before I head out just to make sure that if anything were to break, it would break where he can fix it for me. That's some customer service, I'm telling ya. Anyways, I headed out to the city and went to a sports bar to watch the game 2 of the World Series.

The rest of the night wasn't anything too crazy or unusual. First I went to a sports bar, watched the Rockies lose (Fuck Papelbon), met a local named Joe, went to another bar with him for a bit, took off to go check out a blues joint, and that's when I met Michelle and her friends in a dark alley way. I was talking to my friend John on the phone trying to get the phone number of Troy. I was riding my bike around this block while I was talking to John and I noticed a group of young people standing around in a circle in a dark alley way drinking beers and it looked like someone was passed out on the ground. A bit weird, but hey, we've all been to that point of inebriation at one point or another (ok maybe just me) but hey, I can understand. So I rode around the block couple more times talking to John and I see them setting this, what I thought was a person, on fire. WTF? Upon closer inspection, I learned that it wasn't actually a person; it was a pile of clothes they were setting on fire. Still a bit strange, but hey, booze and fire go hand to hand like sex and cigarettes. I rode around the block one more time and this time I see this girl completely bottomless (no pants, no panties) standing in front of the fire, and I've had enough of this strangeness. I had to go over there and find out what was going on. So I got off the phone with John and biked over to the circle to find out what the hell exactly is going on.

Much against my expectations, they were very open and inviting of me joining their half naked fire ritual. As I met everyone and started talking to them, I learned that one of the girls just caught her boyfriend cheating on her and she wanted to burn and piss on his clothes. A little extreme if you ask me, but hey, anger is a pretty irrational emotion. The funny part was Michelle, who was the one that was trying to piss on the fire, wasn't even the one who was cheated on. Katie was the girlfriend, but Michelle was doing the dirty deed for her friend all while trying not to burn her you-know-what. What a friend! After obtaining photographic evidence of crazy, hilarious, random strange fire ritual I just became a part of, they invited me into their apartment to have a drink, to which of course, I delightfully accepted.

We sat around, drank bunch of whiskey (well actually it was just me and Michelle), watched ungodly amount of music videos, and talked about music and bands for awhile. Music was these people's lives. They breathed metal and ate punk rock for breakfast. They were even bigger music geeks than I was when I was in high school. It was awesome though to be surrounded by such passionate music lovers. It reminded me of my high school days when all I knew was school and music and really made me miss playing music. More props to all you guys; keep it up. After hanging out a bit, it was time to go as it was approaching 3 am. Originally, I was gonna go hit up that blues joint that I was headed to in the first place (they stayed open till 5...god bless Chicago), but somewhere along the way, I decided to give Michelle a ride on my bike instead as she had to ride 3 or 4 different busses to get back to her place that was only probably 3 to 4 miles away.

So I had Michelle sit on the middle bar of my bike and starting pedaling toward her house. It was nostalgic riding to her house. It reminded me of my elementary and junior high days when I used to give friends a ride that way. Anyways, this would've been a pretty romantic ride and I most definitely would've put my moves on her had it not been that I got a girl and so did she. After riding to her place, she suggested that I stay and drink a bit more whiskey, to which of course, I once again delightfully accepted. But now that I think about it, I probably should have just gone home as 1. it would've saved me from a vicious hangover the next morning, 2. I think I caused some domestic drama between Michelle and her woman. When we got to her place, Michelle's lady was already asleep (it was probably 3:30 at his point), she had to come down to open the door to find her woman and some strange man who was gonna go drink some more whiskey. I can understand how this would've caused some mess. Anyways, we hung out on her front step, drinking more whiskey, talking about my trip, talking about both of us being drummers, etc. etc. etc....before I knew, it was way past 4. We made plans to go party in the city for Halloween the next night, bid each other good night, and I rode back to Bertha and just passed out.

I had parked Bertha on one of the major streets just outside of downtown Chicago, so I woke up around 10am to all these cars honking with a vicious Jack Daniel hangover. I loved you so much last night Chicago, but I hate you more than anything else in this world right now. Despite my hangover, I still had 2 museums, an aquarium, and a planetarium to check out before heading back to Bolingbrook.

The first stop was the Field museum. AMAZING! One of the best museums I've ever been to hands down. Just the sheer size of it is unbelievable. I was just skimming through yet it took me 4 hours to check it all out. I can't even imagine how long it would take if you were to thoroughly look at everything. The dinosaur exhibition there alone makes the admission worth it. The Field museum is where they have Sue, the world's largest and most complete preserved T-Rex ever discovered. I sound like such a nerd, but hey what can I say, I like museums especially if they have dinosaurs in them. Anyways, needless to say, after taking 4 hours to check out the Field museum I didn't have time to check out much else since all the museums stopped letting people in at 4. So despite the disappointment of not being able to check out all the other museums (damn you Jack), I headed back to Bolingbrook.

I just took it easy the rest of the night by watching couple TV shows with Susan. See what I mean by feeling so at home while I stayed with her? I don't watch enough TV for my own good these days, but I watched Ghost Whisperer and Moonlight with Susan for 2 hours. She kinda got me hooked on that show Moonlight now. It's this show about a vampire private investigator who has an ability to walk around during day time and has a fling with a human reporter.....well anyways...I'll spare you guys the misery of having to listen to me explain the whole concept behind the show...but hey it wasn't exactly the most educational or intellectual show, but it was a good show to watch while suffering from vicious Jack hang-over and sleep deprivation. Anyways, I probably wouldn't have gone out anyway, but Michelle was supposed to call to go out for Halloween but she didn't. This is another reason why I think I caused some domestic drama. Maybe it was the weather because it was raining...maybe she was just as hung-over as I was (even though you swore you don't get hang-overs Michelle....you just wait.....I remember my 21-year-young days too)...either way, if I caused any drama, I apologize. Thanx for making my experience in Chicago memorable.

The next morning, I took Bertha to Frank for the final check-up which she passed just fine. $2000 repair and 4 days later, Bertha and I were ready to leave Chicago and hit the road again. I came back, thanked Susan for all her hospitality, took some pictures with her, and headed out for Columbus, OH. Much thanx to John, I already had a place to stay in Columbus, OH.

The drive through Indiana was fairly a boring drive. A lot of corn field. Originally, I was gonna stop in Indianapolis, but decided to just keep going and that's when Bertha acted up once again. About 30 miles east of Indianapolis, Bertha lost all her power and basically just died. I pulled over, tried to start her again, but no dice. This was the first real break down since I left Berkeley. All the other times, it was either belt breaking, brake pad being worn out, over heating, transmission acting up, starter locking-up, air in fuel line, charging system failure...most of them were my fault anyway...but never complete loss of power. All the other times, I either knew exactly what was wrong with her or at least had a general idea of what could be wrong and how to go about finding out, but this time I really had no idea what could've caused the break down, and it really made me nervous and gave me knots in my stomach. Of course my brains makes me keep thinking about the worst scenario where there's a complete engine failure due to who knows what....water in fuel, piston ring by-pass, and god forbid engine failure due to veg oil use. That would really put a bad name on this trip and veg oil community in general, huh? Anyways, now I was stranded on the side of the road in Indiana about 116 miles outside of Columbus, OH without any clue on what was wrong with Bertha. Once again, I'm so glad I have AAA.

I called AAA, and had the hardest time locating a local towing company to tow me to Columbus, OH on a Saturday night. After about 2 hours on the side of the freeway, I finally got a tow truck out there. Seeing that tow truck pull up was one of the most relieving thing I've ever seen. After strapping Bertha onto the truck, the tow truck driver, Mike, and I headed out for Columbus, OH. I would've never believed it if you told me this at the time, but this ended up being one of the biggest missed opportunities on this trip yet.

It was a good 1.5 hour drive, so Mike and I talked for awhile and we got along right away due to our mutual love for cars. Mike reminded me actually a lot of my buddy Gabe initially....."initially" being the key word here. They kinda had the same fashion sense, they are both into hot rods (Mike has a 67 Chevelle and Gabe has a 69 Chevelle), they both spoke in that very foul-mouthed, blunt, honest manner. Anyways, as I got to know Mike a bit more, here's what I found out. Long story short, I learned that Mike is a 27-year-old amateur race car driver who dropped out of school at 14, worked in the car industry all his life and now owns a hot rod restoration garage and a towing shop in Indianapolis with a 3-year-old kid and a Hawaiian-tropic model/stripper girlfriend who he's been with for 6 years (he had his son with this girlfriend....they are practically a married couple except they don't believe in marriage) and lives with 3 other stripper friends of his wife who all indulge in open polyamorous life style with each other. And let's just say these girls feel real comfortable with their own and each other's nudity when they are in the house. He also told me when thing get too crazy in their house, his girlfriend's parents take the son away for the weekend, and they apparently get down to business. Are you fuckin' kidding me? I won't divulge into much more details about their lives due to the graphic nature of the conversation we had. Some of my audience might find the subject offensive, but hey ask me later, I'll tell you all about it. So I told you how this ended up becoming my one of the biggest missed opportunities on this trip, right? This is what I mean.

After getting to Columbus, OH, and dropping Bertha off in the parking lot of a local diesel truck shop, Mike learned the fact that the shop was closed till Monday. Turns out that his shop is open 7 days a week. These were his exact words: "Dude...why didn't you tell me they weren't open till Monday? I could've called one of my guys to come work on your car tomorrow morning. You could've stayed over at my place until it was all fixed. Kat's friends would've loved you. Well, I don't know if you would be able to handle all of Kat's friends...you have to be used to shit." EXCUSE ME? Did you just say I could've stayed over at your place? Did you just say that your girlfriend's stripper friends would've loved me? OH MY FUCKIN' GOD! Y'all don't even know how much I regretted coming to Columbus, OH. I seriously contemplated going back to Indy with Mike. Sometimes I just hate myself. The worst part was that I initially was gonna tow Bertha back to Indianapolis, but since AAA covered up to 100 miles and Columbus was only 116 miles away, I figured I would pay for the extra 16 miles and get to Columbus. Remember back in Seattle, how I said it's funny how a small decision could lead you to a completely different outcome. Funny.....real fuckin' funny! GOD DAMN IT! Well all in all, it's probably a good thing I came to Columbus cuz if I didn't, I wouldn't be able to meet up with Mark and Eton(sp?) who are flying into Columbus at midnight tonight to meet up with me, and also I'm sure it wouldn't have flied with my lady if I stayed over at Mike's place. But you know....there's always that what if's....ahhh....alright time to let it go.

After much kicking myself in the ass, Troy came to the shop to pick me up. Troy really has been a wonderful host while I've been in Columbus. I just spoke with him on the phone, and he's leting me, Neil, and Eton sleep over at his place while he's over at his girl's place tonight, and he said I could even use his car tomorrow if I can't get the car fixed in a day. He's pointed me to all these placed to go to for oil, gave me a map, and really made my life as painless and comfortable as it could get with what could've been a real difficult situation with Bertha not running, and having to pick up 2 friends from the airport, not having a place to stay, etc. Thank you so much Troy. You are the bomb!

After Troy picked me up, we went out to a local dive bar where they were having a Karaoke night. We shot some pool, drank some beer, watched/listened to people who should not have been singing....overall, pretty mellow night.....but after all that ordeal with Bertha tonight, I wasn't in the mood for crazy partying. Just kicking back a few beers to take the edge off, and going to sleep was everything I needed.

This morning, Troy and I had breakfast and I hit the town to see if I can collect some oil. I'm not desperate for oil as I stocked up pretty well in Minneapolis and I didn't have to drive from Indianapolis to Columbus, but I figured I might as well get some oil while I'm waiting for Neil and Eton to get in. It's not like there's so much touristy things to do in Columbus anyways. So I've been riding around Columbus (well north of downtown only actually) all afternoon but didn't have much luck though. I did find one place which I'm picking up some oil from before heading out of town and get a promise of oil from a Korean-owned Japanese restaurant (it's always delightful to run into my people in random places like Ohio...actually a lot of Korean students come to OSU to study from Korea) and an Indian restaurant but I'm not expecting anything more than 15 gallons. Restaurants in Columbus use some shitty shitty oil. I wish I hadn't seen some of their oil bins in the back.

Anyways, so now I'm here at the OSU library updating this blog before heading to the airport. By the way, Mark or Eton hasn't called me and Mark's phone is off. I just know they are getting in at midnight tonight separately cuz Mark is flying in from Canada but I don't know what airline or exactly what time they are getting in. I guess I should do some flight search before heading to the airport. Mark, Eton, and I are headed to Nashville, TN thru Louiville, KY for 2007 Net Impact Conference (For more information, check out http://www.netimpact.org/displaycommon.cfm?an=5) In case you haven't heard about this amazing scheme Mark pulled off, here it is. Eton makes documentaries. So he's brining his equipment out to make a short documentary of our adventures on veg oil road trip. Mark got $2500 from his school to do this "documentary" project, and we have a presentation spot at this conference, so we are doing a presentation on how to run cars on veg oil. Not that we are experts or anything so I guess we'll mostly be talking about our experiences of our travel rather than technical logistics, but hey if you we can get some investors or sponsors out of this, we might be able to pull off our next adventure paid for by sponsors. We just might become famous for this shit. See we are a film crew. Eton is the director/editor, Mark is the producer, and I'm the main character/story writer. This just might be our break....ha.

Anyways, I should wrap up here and head to the airport. I can't update my photo album from this computer. Well I could, it would take forever though. So just sit tight. The images are coming shortly. But just give you the highlight...here's one: