October 18, 2007 7:52pm
Current Location: Minneapolis, MNNext Destination: Green Bay, WI or Chicago, IL
Miles Driven: 3507 milesSo it's been awhile since I've blogged. I've had the most influential, life and my perception changing 10 days of my life since I left Spokane, WA, so prepare yourselves. This is gonna be a long crazy post.
I'm currently typing this from my sister's best friend, Hitasha's place in Uptown Minneapolis. Unfortunately, she broke her toe and is having a surgery tomorrow. Consequently, she's staying with her parents in Bloomington, and she was gracious enough to leave me her apartment. So here I am with an apartment all to myself in the middle of Minneapolis typing this in my boxers drinking a beer while watching the game 5 of ALCS. Life isn't so bad. So let's see...only way to accurately describe everything I've been through last 10 days or so, is for me to do it day by day...so that's precisely what I'm gonna do.
October 9, 2007So I spent a night in Kalispel, MT and headed up to Glacier NP first thing in the morning. The sun was out, the sky was blue with small pieces of clouds, it was a perfect day to spend on the mountain. Originally, I was gonna drive on the road that went through the park from the west to the east and get off at certain points to hike and/or bike then I found out that the middle of the road has been closed for the season due to storm repair. Only the first 16 miles of the road from the west side of the park was open. Shitty! After carefully studying the map, I found a good hiking trail that took you up to the top of the glacier ridge at about the 15 mile marker. Since it was cheaper to enter the park on a bike too, I decided to just bike it to the trail and hike the rest of it. So I parked Bertha at the West entrance of the park, got on my bike and started pedaling into the park. This was at 11am in the morning.
That bike ride was surprisingly easy and most absolutely gorgeous. It was by far the most beautiful places I've ever biked through. I took so many pictures than y'all ever cared to see so I'll spare you of the misery. Anyways, after biking through 15 miles of rolling hills with glacier mountain ridge background and color-changing trees, I arrived at the trail head. You weren't allowed to take the bike on the trail so I parked it right at the trailhead and started hiking this 5.7-mile trek.
5.7 miles ain't that bad, I thought. I've done longer hikes before. Oh how I've underestimated this mountain. I swear to god...out of 5.7 miles, about 1/2 mile wass either flat or downhill. The rest was constant uphill. I was sweating so bad, within first half an hour of starting the trail, I took off my sweatshirt, gloves, and the beanie. I was hiking in jeans and a t-shirt. Yeah this was in the middle of October at one of the most northern parts of Montana. By the way, I learned my lesson. Don't ever h ike in jeans. When you start sweating, they restrict your movements and they are hella uncomfortable. Anyways, even though I wish I was in better gear and was huffing and puffing, I loved every second of it. The air was so fresh, I could hear all these birds and animals, and the scenery was jaw-droppingly beautiful.
So I just kept hiking and hiking. By the time I hiked the first 4 miles, I was out of water, sweating alot, out of breath, and my legs were starting to cramp up so I had to take a break and stretch out my legs sporadically. I could tell I was getting higher cuz it was starting to get a little colder, the air was getting thinner, and I was starting to see snow on the side of the trails. I hiked another half mile or so and encountered the first group of people I've seen since I started the trail. They were an old couple. They looked like they were in their 50's or 60's and I also noticed that they had all the right gear for the hike. They had the hiking sticks, camel bags, waterproof hiking boots, etc. Here I was in my jeans, t-shirt, tennis shoes, and a back pack about to rip apart from years of use. The guy told me that I was only about a mile away and to be careful cuz the snow gets pretty deep up top. I didn't really take that advice to the heart and thanked him for looking out and just kept hiking.
Right after the old couple, I came across this stream of clear water that seemed so life-giving and thirst-quenching. Being extremely thirsty and out of water (I had packed some snow into my water bottle for it to melt, but it just wasn't melting fast enough), and being only about a mile away, I decided to take a break and get some water from the stream. The water wasn't deep at all...about calf deep, maybe knee deep at its deepest, so I thought. I went to go collect water from the side of the stream and saw all these algae flowing around, which is a good sign that the water is clean and not contaminated, but I didn't want bunch of algae in my water so I decided to get from this miniature waterfall a little higher up on the stream. Bad move! So mentioned algae, well where else do you think they would grow besides the side of the stream. Yeah, you are right, on those rocks. Well I wasn't thinking that far cuz I was just so damn thirsty. So while trying to climb these rocks to gather water, SLIP...here I go into the water. Now here I was in a waste deep glacier melted frigid water. That shit was clodest fuckin' thing I've ever put my body in. My legs started cramping up instantly so I couldn't even get out of the water. I had to bend down (put more of my body into this frigid water) and stretch out my legs so they would uncramp so I can get out of this fuckin' water. Finally, they uncramped and I jumped out of the water as fast as I could, and what happened next was just a straight up survival move. I guess watching Baer Grylls on Man vs. Wild on Discovery for years finally paid off. I didn't even make a conscious decision about this, it was just an automatic thing. I stripped all my clothes off....I stripped down to my bare ass in the middle of this trail and started doing push-ups to raise my core temperature. Yeah you heard me right. Here was in the middle of this trail, butt-ass-naked doing push ups. Ladies..cover your ears...well actually, cover your eyes is more like it but dudes, the shrinkage was like nothing I've ever experienced. (Yeah yeah yeah, here comes the are-you-sure-it's-not-because-you-are-Asian jokes.....like I've said for year, it's not about the size of the boat...it's all about the motion of the ocean.) But dudes...seriously....it was gone. I mean all I could see was the eye of the snake. Anyways, sorry for being so graphic but it was some serious shit. Anyways, after a minute or two, I started calming down and things started to come back to normal. I gained my cool back, squeezed the water off my clothes as much as I could and put them all back on.
So here came a big decision moment. I'm less than a mile from the summit. Do I turn around or just hike the rest of it despite the wet clothes? And this is the exact testestrone-driven thought that came to my head at that moment. "Yeah I'm wet (and maybe it was because of all the adrenaline, but I didn't feel that cold at the moment), but if that old 60-year-old couple summitted this trail and I turned around now being less than a mile from the top in my 26-year-young age, I might as well cut off my balls right now suffocate myself with them." So I headed uphill. Next mile turned out to be the longest and most miserable mile of my life.
So I told you how I didn't take that advice of the old man to the heart about the deep snow. Well, he was right. That last mile must have taken me an hour to hike. At some points, the snow was literally about knee deep. And this is on the backside of the mountain so there's absolutely no sun light. So here I was hiking the last mile of this trek with snow up to my knees, on the brink of hypothermia (it was cold..let me tell ya....it was fuckin' freezing...I was chattering my teeth the entire time), both feet of mine were already completely numb and I couldn't even feel them, my legs cramping up pretty regularly at this point, and not once did I want to turn around. I swear to god, my stupid testestrone is gonna be the cause of my death one of these days. Even if you told me that I were to lose my toes from frostbites, it wouldn't have mattered. There wasn't a god damn thing in this world that was gonna stop me from summitting that mountain. I was committed. I mean, I was only about half a mile away from the top at this point. So I sang a song to get me inspired and to get me up to the top, and this is gonna sound funny, but I sang a Korean military song and the national anthem. That's right! It's the Korean blood in me and that shit got me up to the top.
SERENITY NOW! Being on top of that mountain surrounded by glacier and snow covered rocky faces of mountain ridges, thick green forest down below, and a sliver of lake you can see in the far distance (that's where I started this whole adventure that day.)....I felt a presence of higher power. I've never been a believer of creationism but my god, there was no way all that was put together by sheer coincidence in nature. Someone couldn't have painted a more perfect and beautiful picture than what I was seeing. Oh by the way, hiking up to here was probably the best idea. When I was up on the top, it was so warm from the sun light. You know, how you see those pictures of people on Everest in their shorts and t-shirts even thought they are thousands of feet in the elevation. I've always wondered how it could be so warm up there, but now I understand it. When you are closer to the sun and there's nothing between you and the sun but just thin air, all that heat comes straight down on you. So I stripped again. I hung all of my clothes to dry by the sun and sat there drank that water that almost killed me earlier (well maybe I'm exaggerating a bit but it definitely kicked my ass), and ate an apple all while admiring the natural wonder before my eyes. And that water was the most revitalizing, life-giving thing I've ever consumed. I felt so energized and just simply good, I felt like I was on a drug. So between facing my physical limitation (all the cramps), conquering this mountain, admiring this natural wonder, and getting revitalized from the water from this mountain that nearly killed me (once again a little exaggeration but it makes the story more exciting), I had a moment....a life-changing moment. (To quote Pulp Fiction: I had a moment....what alcoholics refer to as a moment of clarity.) I found my purpose and meaning of life while I was standing there up on top. This is gonna sound so hippie but I'm here to dedicate myself to preserving this earth. No matter what I end up doing in this world, I'm gonna change the way people think about mother earth so our children, and the children of our children can strip down naked in the middle of a trail and hike a mountain and have a moment of clarity like I just have. Everyone deserves the chance to feel the presence and power of mother nature because it can and will change your life forever. After I had my moment, I put my clothes back on and headed back down the trail.
Coming down from the top was much easier and faster than going up since it was all down hill. The entire time all I could think about was, as geeky as this sounds, how to design the next industrial revolution that would renew itself. Our first industrial revolution put us in the technological advancement as we know now, but it's failing....failing miserably. None was designed with renewable sources in mind. Look at climate changes that's happening globally. Look at the amount of landfill we generate. Look at how much we rely on non-renewable fuel. Yeah, recycling, supporting local farmers, eating organic, driving cars on veg oil...they are all good things...but it's not the solution. We need to re-design the whole system and regenerates itself. Anyways, I won't bore y'all with all this but it's about time we all seriously start thinking about the environmental impact. If any of you are interested, I highly recommend a book called "Ecology of Commerce" by Paul Hawken. I've only read the 1st chapter so far, but he's got some good shit to say in that book. Check it out. Alright enough on my hippie ideaology....let's keep going with my adventure/mishaps.
So after coming down from the top, I rode the bike back to Bertha. By the time, I got back to Bertha it was 7:30pm and completely dark. As soon as I got off that bike, I guess all that adrenaline and stress just kinda crashed down on me, I was just drained. I mean yeah I just did 32-mile biking and 11.4-mile hiking over 8.5 hours today but man, my entire body had never felt that heavy. I ate some food, drank some tea, admired the star filled sky (it was the first time I've actually seen clear Milky Way), and just crashed, and boy, I've never slept so well. The next morning, I said good bye to a place that allowed me the experience that changed my life forever and headed for another place that I was so excited to visit: Yellowstone NP.
October 10, 2007Left Glacier NP, and headed for Yellostone NP in Wyoming. Along the way, I stopped at this Biodiesel station in Columbia Falls, MT right outside of Glacier NP. You can hardly call it a station. It's a big corner lot with a half finished building that has a pump on it. But hey, at least it's there. I was proud to see that someone was brining a biodiesel movement into such a remote area like Columbia Falls, MT. Anyways, I bought the most amount of biodiesel I've bought since I left Berkeley: 45 gallons. I didn't have much WVO left and I knew I wasn't gonna come across a lot of big towns so I figured, in the worst case, I could drive on biodiesel. Well in the absolute worst case, I could pump regular diesel but I definitely didn't want to do that so I just forked up the money and bought 45g of biodiesel. After fueling up, I headed for Yellowstone.
I went through Missoula, Butte, took a little detour and visited Anaconda (By the way, Sandhya, thanx for the offer but there's no fuckin' way I'm gonna live in Anaconda even if it means living in a lake-front cabin for free....there's nothing there.....the drive was beautiful though), and by a sheer luck of the draw, I blew my vacumn pump belt as I was passing Bozeman, MT. Oh Bozeman, MT. This eneded up being one of the best towns I've visited on this trip.
So with no vacumn pump, anything on your car that requires vacumn all stops working. Wow, it took a genius to figure that one out! Anyways, in Bertha's case, her brakes went out. So here I was crusing somewhere around 65 and 70 and all of a sudden, POP, no more brakes. I had to drive on the shoulder, gear down, use the emergency brake....it was fuckin' sketchy. I'm so lucky that there was no car in front of me otherwise I would've rear ended the shit out of it. I'm also so lucky that it happened right when I was passing through Bozeman, probably the 3rd or 4th biggest town in Montana, instead of in the middle of Yellowstone or even worse while I was coming down from Yellowstone. Can you even imagine what could've happened coming down a hill with no brake considering the amount of weight Bertha is hauling around? I get chills just thinking about it. I seriously might have had to jump out of a moving vehicle if that happened. Anyways, so I pulled into a gas station and parked Bertha. Lucky for me, I found out that NAPA auto parts store was only 2 blocks away. I rode my bike there, and no luck, it's closed for the day. So I had no choice but to spend the night in Bozeman now.
For the rest of the day, I went around restaurants trying to gather oil, and had no luck. I went to this restaurant called Famous Dave's BBQ to eat dinner and had one of the best BBQ I had. It was St. Louis style BBQ with vinegar-based sauce rather than molasses based sauce that E&J used to use. (By the way, apparently the owner of E&J, Dorothy Everett, died of kidney failure. That's fuckin' crazy. I saw her on the day I embarked on this trip. She wished me luck and told me to come back and see her when I get back. As much of a pain in the ass boss she was, she was a good woman. RIP Dorothy!) Anyways, the ribs, I thought E&J had it hands down but the links....I don't know....sorry E&J but Famous Dave's might have it there. Either way, I ate one of the best BBQ, drank some local beer, watched an exciting game of football between Navy and Pittsburgh where they won it in 2 OT, and made friends with some locals. Overall, a good night. I didn't hit up the town that night cuz I wanted to get up early and fix Bertha so I can get down to Yellowstone ASAP. See I'm getting wiser these days.....
October 11, 2007I hit up NAPA first thing in the morning. I added some coolant while I'm at it and replaced all 4 belts on Bertha. I've never replaced belts before but it went relatively smoothly, so I thought. I put all the new belts on and Bertha had her brakes back. So when you put on new belts, you are supposed to run it for 5 to 10 minutes and re-tension them since they expand as they are used. Well after running it for 10 minutes, I went back to re-tension all the belts. As I was cranking on the alternator to tighten the alternator belt, CRACK......the ear on the alternator that bolts it in place broke off. FUCK! Now I needed a new fuckin' alternator. So I found out where the closest Checker (same company is Kragen) was in Bozeman and drove there since I had a lifetime warranty on that alternator. If y'all remember, that's the alternator that I bought and installed in Eureka, CA.
So I get to Checker, take out my alternator, brought into store to get a new one. I spoke with Jim Bowen, the store manager. He looked and sounded like a straight-shooter with no bullshit from the gecko. He ended up being one of the most helpful person I've met in Bozeman. So of course they don't have the alternator in stock. Most places would've just told me that they can order it and it'll get here tomorrow or you can drive to this Checker and they'll have it. But what did Jim do? He called one of his competitor auto part store in Bozeman since there was no other Checker in the area, and had one of his employees go buy one from them with money out of his own pocket and bring the new alternator back to me. He said they'll just request a rebate from the Checker HQ. I wasn't even buying this alternator. It was a warranty, and he went all that length to get me the part I needed to get back on the road. Who does that? If you know of any other auto part store that would go that far out of its way to satisfy the customer, you let me know. What a great, professional man! If it wasn't for Jim, I'm not sure if I would've ever made it to Yellowstone. (I was contemplating skipping Yellowstone at the time cuz I was behind schedule.) Oh and my saga with Jim doesn't end there. Just wait, you'll hear more about him later. So after installing this brand new alternator for the 3rd time on this trip, I took off for Yellowstone.
The drive to Yellowstone from Bozeman was one of the most beautiful drives I've ever done. I entered the park through the West entrance. I wasn't sure if I should go through the park or jsut skip it and go to Denver. Oh yeah, so I had a big change of my itinerary and decided to go down to Denver to see Gabe, and kinda be stationed for a couple of days to restock up on oil and fix a thing or two on Bertha. And since I was behind schedule, I contemplated whether I should just drive staright down to Denver or go to Yellowstone. After much thinking...well more of just an impulse actually, I just decided to go to Yellowstone. I've been wanting to go to Yellowstone for so long, if I came all the way over here and didn't go, it would've been a damn shame. So I paid my fees ($25, by the way) and entered the park.
At this point, it was already 5pm and I knew I didn't have much time that day. So I just decided to drive straight down to Old Faithful Basin. That's where the famous geyser is that the Yellowstone is known for. As I was driving down there, I already saw so many wildlife, I felt like I was riding through some sort of safari. Bisons, elks, ducks, deer, you name it. I saw so many fly fisherman too. It was really a gorgeous site watching all these animals roam around freely in their elements and humans fly fishing up and down the river and steams from geysers shooting up in the background. It was just cool. It actually made me want to learn how to fly fish. So I made it to Old Faithful Geyser just 15 minutes after it's erupted already. Of course! The Old Faithful erupts on an average of 92 minutes. So I had over an hour to kill. So I decided to go check out this historical inn called "Old Faithful Inn" (wow...did you think of that all on your own?) and wow, this place was something else. The architect who designed the building built a replica of his treehouse that he had when he was a kid, insdie this inn. You walk in, and you see this gigantic fire place and everything is made from big logs, and there's this intricate spiral of stairs with this tree house on the top of the ceiling. There's 3 floors or balconies with reading benches and couches, so people were sitting around drinking wine or whiskey looking down on what's going on on the main floor. There was this old pianist there too who were playing all these great classical songs like Canon in D major. (That was the only one I knew the name of..everything else I recognized but didn't know the name of it...actually he did play a twinkle twinkle little star for a little girl at one point...I knew that one). It was a beautiful building. If any of you ever get a chance to go to Yellowstone, check out this building. It's awesome.
So it was getting close to the eruption time, so I went outside and sat on one of the benches around the geyser and waited. It was so cold out there. I was shivering the entire time while I was waiting and finally I started hearing some noise then the geyser started to spew its hot water. I've never seen a live geyser before and it was a cool sight. This hot water shooting up 60-70 feet up in the air with hot steam coming out everywhere...it looked like earth was unleashing its fury. I've only seen it on TV but seeing it in person was definitely cool. I snapped some photos and recorded on camcorder and that was all the excitement I could take for the night. I went back to Bertha and spent the coldest night of my life. Oh hearing all these elks and other wild life howling and crying at night was a cool experience. Anyways, I wore 2 sweaters, a beanie, and even socks to bed (yeah..socks...i never wear socks to bed). Yellowstone, you win. You were colder than the Pink house.
October 12, 2007 I spent this whole day exploring Yellowstone. I woke up on this frigid morning. It was the first time I saw frozen windshields since I left Berkeley. I decided to bike and hike around the geyser basins (there are multiple geyser basins in Yellowstone. The Old Faithful is the most famous one but it's not the biggest one in Yellowstone. It's the most regular and predictable one. In fact, I thought some other geysers and pools were much cooler than the Old Faithful). After checking out Old Faithful basin, I biked over to the next basin, the Biscuit Basin and hiked to the top of the mountain that was surrounding all the basins. Basically, when the volcano erupted, it created this huge flat land with all these geysers, and I hiked up one of the mountains that was surrounding the flat region to get a view of all the basins. The hike itself was cool, saw a water fall and crazy small squirrels that kept following me, and definitely didn't have to strip down to survive, but what made it hike special was Led Zeppelin II. Courtesy of my sister, she gave me her iPod to take on the trip with all kind of music and I picked Led Zep II to be my soundtrack to this hike, and dude, it was seriously a spiritual experience. Highly recommend it. Anyways, getting to the top and looking down on these geysers, it just reinstated my earlier purpose and meaning of life I found. It was just so....majestic. Actually, that's a good word to describe Yellostone. It's just so majestic. This huge flat valley, full of geysers shooting steam and water, and a river flowing through it with fly fisherman, and all these wild animals at its wildest. Being in Yellowstone makes you feel so small and a part of this big natural cycle and system.
After the hike, I drove from the Old Faithful basin to Canyon Village which is what they call the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. By the way, Yellowstone is humongous. To drive from one village to the next, it's about a 20 miles drive and there are about 6 of them through out the park. In fact, when you are in Yellowstone, it doesn't feel much like you are in a park. It feels more like you are just driving through this crazy countryside where animals just roam free. I can't even tell you how many times I had to stop because either a herd of bisons or elks was crossing. Anyways, I stopped along various points at Canyon Village and snapped photos. It's a completely different landscape than geyser basins. Now here you were at this huge valley where the geological elements were exposed, just like Grand Canyon but at a much smaller scale, and there is this gorgeous waterfall you can literally walk right up to the brink of breaking. Great picture spots. Yellowstone in general is probably a wet dream for photo enthusiasts.
After Canyon village, I headed up to Hot Mammoth Spring and North Eastern part of the park where the wild life is most abundunt. On that drive is when I started noticing the voltage of my batteries draining. No fuckin' way. I had the exact same problem back in Eureka and Crescent City and it was fine after I fixed it. But it came back. So as I was driving through the north, my batteries were draining and it was starting get dark. And to add an insult to the injury, I was gonna exit the park through the North East entrance and head down to Denver. Well, I drove 25 miles just to find out that the North East entrance was closed for the season. Sometimes I have the best luck but sometime, the whole fuckin' world is against me. So now I had to back track 25 miles with my batteries almost drained and now it was starting to get dark.
I drove 25 miles back to Hot Mammoth Spring and drove to the nearest town called Gardiner, MT just right outside of North entrance of the park to see if I can find a shop where I could work on Bertha. I found out that the shop was closed for the night already and wasn't open on weekends (it was friday). I decided to drive back down to the Old Faithful, which was about 50 miles away, cuz at least there was a gas station with a very minimal repair shop there. So I started driving toward Old Faithful which is at the opposite end of the park. At this point, my batteries were almost completely drained so I didn't really have headlights or tailights. So as I was passing through Hot Mammoth Spring, I noticed police lights flashing behind me. Greeeeaaaattt......I thought. Here was my first encounter with the police since I left Berkeley.
It wasn't a cop, it was a park ranger but I guess park rangers can exercise same power as police within the park. Ranger Briana Rogers told me that my tailights weren't working, obviously because Bertha has no power, and asked for my license and registration. So I completed my classes before I left and my suspension is over but I never checked with DMV to make sure that all my record was straight. Besides, Hannah told me that I was supposed to go to DMV and pay fees and everything to get off suspension, which I obviously didn't do. So I was hella nervous about giving her my license and see what will come back on my record. In fact, I was scared. She didn't come back for 20 minutes and I was pretty much shitting my pants at this point. There's gotta be something wrong for her to not come back for 20 minutes. I'm going to jail for driving on suspended license. These were the thoughts that were going through my head. She came and asked if I had any restrictions or suspension on my license, so I told her that I completed the class, my suspension is over, and everything should be off my record but I didn't check with the DMV to make sure everything was clear. She left again to check with the HQ and at this point, I pretty much accepted the fact that I was going to jail. I was quietly saying my good bye to Bertha for a good run so far. The Yellow Green Excursion comes to its end in Wyoming...that's what I was thinking. She came back, returned all my documents, and said that everything checks out and my suspension is over so I was free to go. Thank you! It was the best thing I've heard. So I guess I still have restriction on my record (Only to and from work and classes) but my suspension is over. I guess I'm gonna have to call the CA DMV the first thing on Monday. So as I was ready to leave, she recommended me to drive back down to Gardiner cuz the repair shop in Old Faithful was also closed and offered to give me an escort down to Gardiner and to the local AAA supplier. So after all the bullshit, I ended up getting a full police...or I should say Park Ranger...escort down to Gardiner. I felt like some sorta VIP coming down that mountain. After we got down to Gardiner, Ranger Rogers gave me a breathalizer test just to make sure which I passed of course, and she let me go. Even though the whole experience had me worried and scared, she was by far the nicest and the most polite cop/ranger I've ever met. Thank you Ranger Rogers! So I spent the night in the lot of this shop called "The Tire Iron" and hoped for the best the next day since I knew there was no auto part store in town.
October 13, 2007I called AAA 1st thing in the morning. God bless AAA, by the way. Their roadside assistance is the shit. This was the shortest wait time I've ever had too. I got a call back from James, who was the owner of the Tire Iron where I spent the night, and he said he would be there in 30 minutes. Cool. Long story short, James showed up exactly 30 minutes after I got off the phone with him, he charged my batteries enough for me to make it back to Bozeman, showed me tricks on how to tension belts easily, and charged me $10 for his service. Right on. It all went much smoother than I expected. I thanked James for his service on a Saturday morning and headed back to Bozeman.
I pulled into Checker parking lot in Bozeman with both my batteries completely drained. I pulled in, took the alternator out for the 4th time on this trip, and took it into the store to test it, and what do you know! The alternator is just fine. Then what is it? Did I blow another wire? Is my regulator bad? But I replaced the regulator back in Eureka, it couldn't have gone bad. I tinkered and played around with Bertha for a couple of hours and just could not figure out what was making her charging system fail. Jim Bowen, the manager of the store who helped out greatly couple days ago, to the rescue! He came out and tinkered with Bertha with me for another hour or so and we both couldn't figure out what was wrong with her. In the end, we decided it had to be the regulator, so I took out the regulator that I just installed 2 weeks ago and installed a new one to see if it would work, and what do you know. Bertha is back in her full stride, and Jim, the customer service master, once again didn't charge me anything for the regulator. Just for your information, the regulators do not come with any warranties. He said, that's it's bullshit that a 2-week-old part would go bad gave me the new regulator for free. It's a $40 part. God bless that guy. I once again thanked Jim for all his wonderful services and drove out of that Checker parking lot for the last time on this trip.
While I was changing out the alternator, I also noticed that my vacumn pump belt was frayed. This is the belt that I put in 2 days ago. I decided to go back to NAPA where I bought the belt from and ask for an exchange. Well NAPA was closed for the day and was opening back up at 10am the next day. It was about 4:30pm at this point anyway. So I figured I would just spend the night in Bozeman and drive out after replacing the belt in the morning. I parked Bertha in a parking lot of this auto body shop next to NAPA and plugged into one of the outlets to recharge my cellphone, iPod, jump starter, camcorder, etc, and rode my bike to MSU campus to use their shower and library.
I get to the MSU student gym and as I was about to enter, I hear highly-reved car engine noises coming from behind the building. It sounded as if someone was racing a motor cycle or something. So I went behind the building to check it out and what do you know, there were a bunch of dudes driving this little race car around a course they made out of cones and hay bails. It looked like a lot of fun. I decided to go up to one of the guys and ask them what they were doing. This is how I met Eric. I started talking to Eric and found out that it was MSU Formula SAE team. (for some of you who are not familiar, this is what Kirk used to do at Cal. But trust me, these lads were much cooler than Feldkamp. Formula SAE is a team of mechanical engineer students who build a race car from scratch and race it against another Formula SAE team from another university) Cool dude! I started telling Eric about my trip on veg oil and he said I should come over and talk to the rest of his buddies. So we went over and I met the rest of the team, and that's how I met, Patric, Ryan, Kyle, and Chris. Actually, I didn't really meet Ryan till later that night but he was there. All of us being car geeks, we were instantly asking each other questions about each other's cars. They were asking me about Bertha's fuel line and how it works, and I was asking them about their pneumatic gear shifter...blah blah blah...you get the picture. After talking to them for awhile, I snapped a photo of all of us with the race car, and headed for the gym to shower. As I was walking away, Patrick came over and I believe his exact words were "Do you want to party or something?" Do I want to party? You really twisted my arms on that one, Pat. I gladly took him up on his offer, he gave me his number and told me to call him later. Done. I went to the student gym and took the longest shower of my life. I haven't showered in over a week and I've been hiking and biking through parks for the past 5 days. I felt reborn after the shower. After the shower, I went back to Bertha since the library was already closed, and mapped out my route. I decided to skip Denver (Sorry Gabe), since I was already a bit behind schedule, and now that I made my way back up north to Bozeman, it didn't make a whole lot of sense for me to head south to Denver just to head back up to Chicago. After I was set with my route, I got a text message from Pat that read "we are getting a keg." I can't even count how many times in my life I've heard those 5 words together but man, it sounds good everytime I hear it. So I called up Pat, figured out where they were, got on my bike, and headed out for what turned out to be the most drunktarded night on this trip yet.
I got to Eric's house and this was a college student's dream house. As soon as I entered his garage, I saw people playing beirut, shooting pool, standing around the bar and I immediately knew I was in my elements. Now for the rest of the night, I can't tell you exactly in what order these things happened or what caused what or who said or did what but these are some of the things that happened. Ryan and I were the 4 time reigning champions on the Beirut table, Pat and I had a high mark competition where we were putting our heads through the drywall to see who can leave a higher mark (Pat kicked my ass by the way and we had a cut on our faces the next morning), I mortified this girl by slapping the shit out of her ass multiple times (no one to this day knows who this girl was by the way), learned my lesson from Eric that if you eat a habanero pepper and cum in a chick, she can feel it, tried to write a nice message on their wall but was so drunktarded it turned out looking like a some retarded 2nd grader wrote it, passed the camcorder around during the party and all I got was like 10 minute footage of these girls' titties, broke a pint glass by smacking it over Ryan's bed post (I still don't know why I did that), went to Perkin's at 4 in the morning (Perkin's is like Denny's) and ate a pancake that was soaked in ice water (I don't even like pancakes), tried to get our butch waitress to say something on the camera and called her a guy accidentally, and tried to get this high school girl to say something for the camera while zooming in on her titties. There's plenty more to that night and all of it is on video. We watched the video the next day and my god, I was even embarrassed and y'all know me...I don't ever get embarrassed. I wasn't even making any sense, I had such a thick fobby accent I couldn't even understand myself, I realized why white people call Asians slanty eyes after watching that video. My image of myself when I'm drunk is so much more wholesome and in control than what I looked like on that video. I highly recommend all of you to go film yourself while you are wasted, you will be surprised at what you see. It's a sobering experience. Maybe not. Maybe y'all are better drunks than I am. Either way though, I had an awesome time and thanx Pat, Eric, Ryan for your hospitality and shenanigans. I will forever have fond memories of Bozeman because of ya fellas. If any of you ever make it out to Cali, give me a holla. I'll show you how it goes down on this side of the Rockies. After getting back from Perkin's, I passed the fuck out on Eric's couch.
October 14, 2007Needless to say, we all woke up with a vicious hangover. We actually finished off that keg last night, and there were maybe 20 people at its peak, so you can all imagine why we did things we did last night. We drove out to this brekfast joint called "Stockyard Cafe". If any of you ever comes through Bozeman, this is a must. I sound like a fuckin' local now. This place opens only on Sundays but not all Sundays. They open pretty much whenever they feel like it only on Sundays, so you gotta take your chances, but they have some good simple breakfast with an eccentric flair. They have their own rules outline on their menu which I found quite comical. For example, Rule #2 is "if you have a fork, you don't need a spoon to stir coffee." Not something you would expect to hear at a restaurant normally, but it's so true. Anyways, a very good place after a night of heavy beer drinking. After loading ourselves with some much seriously needed hang-over breakfast, we head out to the parking lot where I met everyone, to drive the race car.
Eric and I were the first ones there so we set up the course and waited for the race car to arrive. Finally, we hear the engine and the car pulls up around the corner. I really tried to be cool and calm about the whole thing but man, I was so excited. I love cars and I love driving, what can I say? So after they did a warm up run, and adjusted the shocks and everything, came my turn. I suited up in a blue race suit, put on a helmet, parked myself into that car, strapped in and I was ready to go. I slowly let go of the clutch and gave a little gas, and no love. I stalled. I had trouble getting the car going at first because I wasn't used to the car's clutch yet...a lot more sensitive than I expected or was used to. I finally got her going and did my slow warm up lap just to familiarize myself with the track, and after that I just started driving it as fast as I could. Man, I must have knocked over pretty much every fuckin' cone that was on that course. I just drove the shit out of that thing. I spun out several times, busted donuts for a bit, and peel edout of corners. I really should've used its brake more but I didn't care, I just wanted to drive it as fast as I could and lost control. I had so much fun...when I got out of the car, my heart was pounding, my hands were shaking, my arms were all tired from steering, basically my adrenaline at its full rpm...it beat the hell out of driving bumper cars. And honestly, I wasn't even going that fast.....30...35 maybe?....I can't even imagine racing one those NASCAR cars. That must be so awesome. Alright...man...I've been in the midwest for way too long. Anyways, after driving the car, I went out to hunt down some grease to power Bertha.
I hit up several restaurants in downtown Bozeman and was only able to get grease from 1 restaurant. Most of them were willing to give away the oil, but as usual, they had really poor quality or overused oil. Fortunately for me, I got a hold of Paul House, the owner of Bozeman Biofuels. I thought I would just go buy some veg oil and biodiesel but meeting Paul turned out to be one of the most inspirational moment on this trip yet.
So I go over to his "station" to fill up. It's basically a small operation out of his garage and it doesn't look like much of anything at first. In fact, it looks a little scary in there: 3 big tanks, a boiler, a pump, and bunch of random tools and whatnot laying around but man this guy had a sweet system. Paul's been tinkering and experimenting with WVO for about 3 years now. He uses 3 heated tanks to settle/filter/dewater the WVO. Not only does he run his cars on WVO but he has a boiler that runs on WVO that provides heat for his house and hot water. How fuckin' awesome is that shit? He basically has a radiant heating system using a huge loop of hose full of glycol around the baseboards of the house and in the hot water tank, and he heats up the glycol using the WVO boiler. He's even got a thermostat installed in the loop so it automatically shuts itself on and off. Unbelievable! Converting...ahem...I don't like using that word....upgrading cars to run on WVO is just the beginning. I realized there are just endless possibilities as soon as you start thinking a little outside the box. This guy had the system beat, and he wasn't stopping with WVO. His next interest lied in electric vehicles and solar power as using WVO as a fuel isn't a panacea to our fuel problem. There is no single biofuel source that could meet our ever-so-rapidly-growing fueling needs. It's just a temporary solution until we design a better system where we reduce our need for fuel as opposed to a system where our appetite for fuel keeps growing and we are just scrambling to find more resources to accommodate our needs.
After fueling up, I spent good time asking him questions about his set-up (I felt like a little kid asking him questions about all different parts of his set-up), talked to him about Bioneer Conference, different books to read, what kind of set-up he uses in his cars, what his next interest was and where he's going with the whole veg thing, etc. It was just so refreshing, exciting, humbling yet inspirational to meet someone like Paul. People talk about policies and dick around with politics and get no where. Don't get me wrong. I truly believe governmental involvement is critical in making this world a more green place, but to meet someone like Paul who was tired of waiting for the whole world to change and decided to go out and take his own initiatives and experimented with pretty much, at the time, a dark-side-of-the-moon material for 3 years to design and build his own set-up to free himself from the fossil fuel addiction and to truly beat the system, was truly and absolutely an inspirational and enlightening experience. Thanx Paul for taking the time out to talk to me about everything. You've seriously changed my perception/attitude and it was my genuine pleasure to meet ya and talk to ya. Best of luck to ya on everything!
After fully stocking up on veg oil, I called up Pat and met up with him at the parking lot where we were driving the race car earlier. I decided to spend another night in Bozeman and Pat was gracious enough to house me in at his place. We didn't go out party and get crazy or anything but it was everything I needed at the time. I needed that recovery night from last night. We went over to his place, played games of horse balls (I gotta bring this shit back to CA. In CA, we play dominoes. In MT, they play horse balls. Well, I'm not sure how widespread this game is really throughout MT, it just might be Pat's backyard as a matter of fact. Well, it's a thrilling game where you set up a rack of PVC pipes and throw ropes with golf balls attached to each end of it, and it's got this elaborate scoring system...it's hard to explain....it was a lot more fun than I had originally expected it to be, let's just put it that way), watched dudes carve pumpkins and ate freshly roasted pumpkin seeds, watched some TV and passed out cold. The next morning, I took a shower, bid my farewell to Pat and left Bozeman, MT with many fond memories I'll cherish forever.
October 15, 2007This day was originally gonna be all about driving. Since I ended up spending more time in Bozeman than I expected, I need to make some ground so I was gonna try to drive at least half way though South Dakota by the end of the day. Everything went smoothly for awhile until my fuel filter for the WVO clogged up. No big deal. It's expected. I changed the filter. My last filter lasted me about 1500 miles. I kept driving and everything was running smooth right about when I was passing through Boyse, MT.
Bertha started sputtering again. No way, I just changed the filter. I checked, and the filter is clogged again. After 200 miles? You've got to be joking me. See...it was way too cold in Yellowstone for me to pump WVO into my tank (WVO gets thick as it gets colder), so I poured the grease straight into the tank without filtering it with the 70 micron mesh I have on my pump. The grease was from the Cha Taqueria in Portland, so I figured it was safe to pour in after over 2 weeks of settling, well it wasn't. I learned my lesson. So now the filter is clogged again after 200 miles cuz it wasn't filtered down to 70 micron first as I normally do and I was down to my last filter. I pulled over and drained crud from the water bowl on my filter (apparently you can't drain it while the truck is running still, I learned my lesson), and during the process, I ended up introducing quite a bit of air into my fuel line and stalled the truck. No biggie, I've had to deal with air in fuel line several times. I thought I could bleed the air through by cranking the engine and it usually works but there was just too much air in the line. I should've just loosened the injectors and even possibly the fuel inlet to properly bleed it but I was too lazy, so in the process, I basically burned out my starter, or so I thought. I saw some smoke come out of my starter, not a good sign, so I gave it a rest, this time loosened the injectors like I should've done in the first place, and cranked the engine over again. CLICK! and no cranking. I tried again. CLICK! and no cranking once again. My starter wasn't responding at all. FUCK! This was a bad place to break down. Not only there's no big town in a 100-mile radius but this was in the middle of no where in Eastern Montana, a truly white ranching region. If I was gonna get a taste of ignorant white racism, this is where I was gonna get it, or so I thought.
So just to give you an idea of what Boyse is like...the entire town consists of 6 buildings, a post-office, small convinience mart, a house, and 3 barns. There's absolutely no cell phone reception and the nearest town, Broadus, MT with a population of maybe 500, is about 20 miles away. I went around and looked for someone in Boyse. There were cars parked, the barn doors were open, but there wasn't a single soul in that town. Kinda creepy. It felt like a scene out of some crazy fucked-up horror movie like Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Anyways, I figured someone would return to their car at some point, so pretty much just decided to wait until there was a sign of another human being. Lucky for me, just 5 minutes later, I saw this car of 2 ladies pull up: a mom and a daughter. Yeah yeah yeah...I've seen a porn start that way too. They were just in Spearfish, SD for a doctor's appointment and grocery shopping, and the daughter was headed to Broadus cuz that's where she lived. Bingo! The daughter was nice enough to give me a ride back to Broadus (she actually used to live in CA as I found out...well thank you lady I can't remember the name of) and droped me off at Powder River Tire & Lube which runs the local towing service and that's where I met one of the kindest and most generous man I've ever met in my life, Steve. Also, spending time in Broadus turned out to be one of the most self-realizing moments of my life.
Steve is this crazy 68-year-old local gear head who runs Powder River Tire & Lube by himself with a help from his wife, Leanne, for the office and receptionist work. Steve is the only one with tow trucks in the 50 miles radius. So Steve and I hopped in his flat-bed two truck and drove out to Boyse to pick up Bertha. On the way out, I learned that Steve is originally from Virginia, used to live out in CA for a bit, worked in the oil field in Montana for 20 years, was a commercial truck driver for 7, 8 years and have been up and down California, and actually used to live and work in Porterville, CA. What gives...it's hard to find people in California who know where Porterville is, let alone, some random guy I met in Montana used to live and work in Porterville? When my family first came to America, that's where we lived. In fact, I got my first diploma in Porterville, CA from Barlett Junior High School after attending it for a month. Anyways, porterville is right by Bakersfield for some of you who are curious....it's out in the fuckin' boonies. Well, we picked up Bertha and towed it back into Broadus, MT. Steve let me park Bertha in his shop's lot and told me that no one will bother me here if anyone does, just tell you talked to Steve, he said he would have some coffee ready in his shop tomorrow morning, and told me I could work on my truck as long as I needed to in his lot. What a kind old man! I thanked Steve, ate some dinner, and went to sleep early to get ready for a day of getting a lot of motor grease under my finger nails and covering myself with biodiesel and WVO fuel.
October 16, 2007I woke up and it was a cold morning. I could see frost over my windshield, on the ground, on the tires...it was cold. I walked into the shop and people already knew who I was. They were all like, "you are that guy traveling on cookin' oil, right?" I could tell this was a small town right away. Everyone knew everyone else in town and the news traveled fast in this town. For the rest of the day, every person who came into the shop came up and asked me about Bertha and my trip. Anyways, I said hello to Steve, and drank some coffee he's made for me while talking to them about my trip and running cars on WVO. After talking to Steve and Leanne for awhile about running cars on veg oil and about my trip in general, I got to work.
It took me awhile to figure out how to take out the 3rd bolt on the starter. Any of you who ever gets a chance or misfortune to work on early 90's Ford truck starters, use the extensions. There's maybe about a 4 inch room to play with and it's no fun taking that out, but it can be done. Anyways, I took it out, took it to the local auto part store, Car Quest, to test it and make sure that it was bad. The starter turned out to be just fine. Well good cuz I didn't have to buy a new starter which runs about $200, but now what? So I walked back to Bertha, scratching my head, trying to figure out what else could be wrong. I was so sure it was the starter. I tested the wired for burn-outs, I tested the relay, and everything checked out just fine. I just did not know what else could be wrong, so I asked Steve for his opinion. He did some testing himself and didn't see anything wrong either so he suggested that I just put the starter back and try it again and if it still doesn't work, there was a good diesel mechanic in town who could give me some advice. So that's exactly what I did.
I put the starter back in, which by the way isn't any more fun than taking it out, but I noticed something while I was putting it back in. See...I'm not sure if I broke this while trying to put it back in or if it was already broken the first time, but I noticed that the connector for the solenoid wire was broken. Well I replaced the connector and wired the starter back into the circuit. I got out from underneath Bertha, jumped into the driver seat, put the keys in the ignition, and crossed my fingers as I turned the keys. The starter jumped back into life as if there was nothing wrong with it in the first place. Weird..why wasn't it working yesterday? I'm pretty sure I broke that connector while working on the starter so the connection was good the whole time....maybe it was just locked up (fyi, starters do lock up time to time...usually just a good bang with a hammer will solve the problem....so next time any of you has no cranking with your car, give your starter a good kick, it just might free itself and crank the engine over), and by me taking it out and putting it back in, it freed itself? I don't know. Either way, I was just glad that it was back in a full working order. The trouble was far from over though.
Now that I got my starter back, I still had that big air pocket in my fuel line I had to bleed out. Since Bertha died while running on WVO last night, I wasn't able to purge out the fuel lines with biodiesel before shutting her down. (You are supposed to start and stop the car on regular diesel or biodiesel. It's nearly impossible to start the engine on WVO especially in Montana's cold weather because the oil is way too thick.) So now, not only did I have to bleed out the air, but I had to figure out a way to clean out solidified veg oil out of the fuel line. Shit...nothing's ever easy!
I opened up the fuel inlet, switched over to the biodiesel tank, cranked the engine over for a bit (being careful not to burn out the starter again) until my biodiesel started spewing out of the fuel line. Good. That was hella easy to clean out the veg oil out of the fuel line. I connected the fuel line back into the system and tried to start the truck. No love. I opened up injectors to bleed air out of injection pump, I filled fuel lines with fuel, etc....I did everything I could and I just could not get the truck started for the life of me, and I was stuck. I've tried everything I know and I can't get it started so I asked for Steve's opinion again. He couldn't figure it out either, so he called his brother-in-law, John, who's now the town's deputy sheriff but used to have his own garage for classic car restoration, to come over and help me out. Oh by the way, while I was taking the starter out, Steve let me use his shop as if it was mine. I borrowed all kinds of tools, used his towels, water....you name it...he let me use it. So John came over and we tinkered with it for over an hour and tried everything I knew and still no life in Bertha. John called up his friend Bill who's apparently the best diesel mechanic in town, I talked to him for a bit and he suggested that I plug in my block warmer to melt any solidified oil and try it again. (Bertha has an engine block heater that you can plug into an outlet to heat up the engine before starting. One of the downfalls of a diesel engine is that it's really hard to start is when it's cold, so these block heaters do wonders on cold nights. It's amazing how easily the engine starts when it's been plugged in for a couple of hours.) Why didn't I think of that earlier? So I plugged Bertha upto an outlet and went to lunch for a couple of hours. I had one of the best sandwiches I've ever had in my life here in Broadus, MT. If you are passing through, you have got to try to sandwich joint. Amazing!
After lunch, I came back and tried starting Bertha again. She struggled a bit at first but after a couple of tries, she was back to life. Hearing her start was seriously the best and more relieving thing I've ever heard in my life, and that's when I understood the joy and excitement gear heads feel when they hear their machines breathe into life. Anyways, I purged air out of veg line with not too much trouble and Bertha was ready to hit the road once again. At this point, it was 5:30pm. I pretty spent the whole day brining Bertha back to life, but hey, at least she's back in it. Instead trying to drive through the night, I just decided to spend another night in Broadus and head out first thing in the morning.
After I packed up all my tools, Steve came over and asked me come join him for dinner at the local restaurant and of course, I gladly accepted. We cleaned up his shop, drove Bertha to his house and parked it in his lot, he showed me all his cars in his lot and this old school 1953 Chevy and a Cushman bike he restored, and I could tell this guy loved his cars. After washing up real quick and changing into some clean clothes, we drove to the restaurant, right across the street from his house. I'm not exactly sure why we drove to this day.
I walk in and the place is full of hunters and local ranchers. Needless to say, I stuck out like a sore thumb in there. I could see everyone turning to the door to see who this little Asian man was walking in with one of the old locals. Whatever, I didn't care too much. Steve and I both ordered steak (we were in the mid west in a ranching town, of course steak is the way to go) and the food was delicious. They had probably one of the best gravy I've ever had. It was out of this world. Anyways, during dinner, Steve and I talked about his family, my family, his kids, his trucking days....really started to get to know this old man. After dinner, he offered to drive and show me around town. As I mentioned before, Broadus isn't anything to look at for us urban snobs, me included, but I really appreciated his gesture. Here I was getting a town tour from one of the most respected old local in town. (Everyone in town knew who Steve was. Steve might not know everyone in town but everyone knew him.) We drove from one end the town to the other and that's when I learned what a crazy guy Steve used to be. Steve hasn't drank since 1975 but has 26 DUIs in 40 different states over his drinking career (this is back when DUI was like a civil infraction like J-walking...they just paid $100 and it was all cool...there was no central computerized record system, so they had no idea if he had a DUI in different states. I think Steve said he had about 20 different state licenses that got taken away...it's crazy...if you had 26 DUIs now, you would be spending the rest of your life in jail...not even jail.....in pound-me-in-the-ass federal penetentary), worked in the oil field for 20 years drinking a fifth of whiskey and smoking a half bag of pot before his night shift, and he settled in Broadus all just by pure random coincidence.
After living in CA for a bit, Steve decided to go back to Virginia, his home state, so he and his buddy decided to drive across county, kinda like what I'm doing. This is back in 1968. Steve had the car, his buddy had the money, and that was the deal. His buddy had 2 brothers who living in Broadus at the time and they decided to stop to visit them. After visiting them, his buddy wanted to stay for 2 weeks and Steve said fine. One night while he was drinking at the bar, he met one of the guys who owned an oil field around Broadus. Apparently, there was a huge oil boom in Montana around that time. The guy was short handed and asked Steve if he would be interested in working for him. Steve told him that he was leaving in 2 weeks but if he didn't mine, he would work for him for 2 weeks to make some money for the rode. The guy said fine, and Steve started working in the oil field. 2 weeks of time flew by and it was time for Steve and his buddy to leave, so Steve told his boss that he was leaving out of town the next day, and the boss said he will get him the pay check in the morning. On the day they were supposed to leave Broadus, the boss gave Steve his paycheck for the 2 weeks, and it was the most amount of money Steve's ever made in 2 weeks of his life. So he told his buddy go on to East Coast on his own (Steve hasn't seen him since then. I think his exact words were "He's one of those fuckers I don't really care if I ever hear back from him. He's that kinda guy.") cuz he was gonna stick around a little longer and work in the oil field. Well that's how Steve settled in Broadus. That little longer became 20 years. A year later, he married Leanne and now he had a family in Broadus. He worked in the oil field for 20 years and when the oil fields shut down, he got himself a big rig and commercially drove trucks around country for 7,8 years, and bought this Tire business and that's how he is where he is now. Funny how a small decision can just change the outcome of your life forever. If Steve and his buddy didn't stop in Broadus at that time, who knows where he would've ended up. All because of 2 weeks they spent in Broadus, Steve is now well respected town local and a resident of Broadus for almost 40 years. Crazy!
Anyways, after the tour of town, we went back to Steve's place where he offered me his shower and of course I gladly accepted. Oh I almost forgot. Before I used the shower, Steve and I smoked a little bowl out of this metal T-fitting he had in his shop. (Thanx to that nug of dank Jeff gave me back in Seattle) Ha! I thought it was only appropriate that we smoked a bowl with this cool-ass crazy Montana gearhead out of a T-fitting. I will never forget that. I broke him off some weed too before I left. It was the least I could do for all the kindness and generosity he's shown me. So after showering, we sat there and talked for a bit more, he showed me pictures of cars he's restored, the magazine he gets from Cushman bike club, his new wood pallet stove (shit is awesome by the way...not as cool as WVO heater but it's pretty nifty), told me his life story, and I really bonded with Steve. He was truly a good respectable humane man with the kindest heart for his fellow mankind but also one tough son of a bitch who takes no shit from anyone. After a bit of conversation, it was time to hit the sack. So I went back to Bertha to sleep and maybe it was some of that weed getting me all emotional and pensive, but on my walk back from his house to Bertha, I got teary eyed.
Here I was in the middle of Montana completely expecting to meet some white ignorant racist hill-billies and totally judging the book by its cover, I totally stereotyped these people that I saw in town today who were wearing cowboy hats and boots and hunter outfit. Yet everyone I met in past 2 days especially Steve has been some of the friendliest, kindest, most generous and warm-hearted people I've ever met in my entire life. These are people who go out of their ways to help other fellow human beings not because they would feel bad if they didn't or because they felt obligated. They helped each other because that's what they do. It was like the 2nd nature to them. These are small town folks who have to rely on each other for survival. It gets 40 below 0 in this part of the country and if you see someone broken down on the side of the road, you pull over. You do whatever you can to get that person out of that situation. If you didn't, people will fuckin' freeze to death out in these elements. In fact, Steve told me a story about these 2 hunters he picked up in the middle of winter in the middle of no where couple years back cuz their car broke down. They took the tires off and started burning them to keep themselves alive. By the time Steve got there, they had gone through 2 of them already and was throwing in the 3rd one. Imagine what could've happened if Steve hadn't been there. I mean, that's some serious shit. Anyways, these are small town folks who might not have a lot, but have zeal for life and just keeps going when the going gets tough. As the old saying goes, "When going gets tough, the tough gets going." These were some tough people. Yet here I was stereotyping them into these ignorant, racist, white, red-necks....you know what...I realized I'm the fuckin' ignorant, racist one...not them. They have been nothing but wonderful to me. I was so touched by Steve and everyone's generosity and kindness, I seriously got teary eyed walking back to my camper. In fact, I'm getting teary eyed writing about it right now. Alight sorry for all the mush shit, but it deserved the mentioning. You can be sure that I'm gonna be writing them a Christmas card from now on. Anyways, I went to sleep with this heavy heart and self-realization and had one of the most peaceful nights of sleep yet on this trip.
October 17, 2007I stopped by Steve's shop before I took off to say good bye and thank him for everything he's done. I drank coffee with him and his wife, snapped a shot of us in front of Bertha, bid my farewell, and took off for Minneapolis, MN. Thank you so much and God bless you Steve and Leanne. Good things are gonna come your way. When you guys sell that business and start traveling and come through CA, you give me a call anytime, alright? It's my turn to show you guys around the town.
So this day turned out to be the longest day of driving yet. Not so eventful cuz I pretty much just drove all day. One incredibly unfortunate thing happened though. Due to all these detours, delays, mechanical breakdowns, and mostly poor planning, I ended up running out of biodiesel so I had to fill up with..oh god forbid...regular #2 diesel. Yup, my goal of travelling around America without a single drop of petroleum fuel was shattered. Well actually it was shattered long time ago. The biodiesel stations I've been to in the past, the best grade they had was B99 which is actually 99% biodiesel and 1% diesel. But still.....I had to put that despicable #2 diesel into Bertha. Sorry for contaminating your healthy organic diet, Bertha.
Anyways, I drove straight from Broadus, MT to Minneapolis, MN. The weather was shitty too. It rained pretty much the whole time. By the way, there ain't shit in South Dakota. Actually, correction. There's a lot in South Dakota. A lot of sunflowers, wheat, and corn. I've never seen such vast fields of aformentioned crops. There were parts of SD, that was literally completely flat all around. Not a single elevation change for as far as I could see. No wonder kids here start having sex at age 10. What else is there to do in this place? I can't even tell you how many town I passed with a population under 50. I got a true taste of the mid west plains and it was pretty much everything I expected: boring.
Well 850 miles and 15 hours of straight driving later, I pulled into Minneapolis, MN at 12:30 at night. I also crossed over the time zone so now I'm only an hour away from the Eastern Time Zone. Much easier to talk to ya now, Beatrice. I was supposed to connect with my sister's best friend, Hitasha but couldn't get a hold of her, so spent the night in Bertha. I was so drained after 15 hours of flat land driving, I just crashed.
October 18, 2007I woke up and connected with Hitasha first thing in the morning. She was still little drugged out from codeine she had taken earlier and wanted to sleep it off for a couple more hours. Fair enough. So I hit the town.
I rode my bike around uptown Minneapolis looking to gather some oil, but wasn't very successful. I saw one grease bin with a dead squirrel in it. It was pretty gnarly. I did get a good feel for the uptown Minneapolis and you know what, I like this city. For some reason, I always though Minneapolis was this really white, no culture, midwest city even though 2 people I know from Minneapolis are Chinese and Indian. Well this place is hella diverse, full of young people, a lot of restaurants and bars, clean, and not as crazy crowded as SF. I got a really good impression of the city. A lot of Asian population...there's even a small Korea town in St. Paul. I'm gonna have to make a stop there to see my peeps.
After unsuccessful attempt at gathering grease, I drove to Bloomington to meet up with Hitasha. While driving over there, I noticed this hideous metal scraping noises coming from my brakes everytime I came to a stop light. I knew instantly that I wore our my brake pads last night coming into town. I probably didn't notice cuz I was blaring Led Zeppelin so loud. I probably should've stopped driving right a way but I thought "eh...30 more of driving, it can't do that much damage"....oh how wrong I was!
I screeched up to Hitasha's place with this hideous noise, jumped out, rang the door bell, and came out this familiar face. Poor girl! She was using a cane and was gimping around, but god damn, I was so happy to see a familiar face in a random place like Minneapolis. I gave her a hug and we stood and talked for a bit. She was gonna stay out in Bloomington for the surgery the next day so she gave me the keys to her apartment. Thanx Hitasha. You are an angel. I mean you were already alright in my books and you already knew that you are welcome at my place anytime, but especially after this trip, you are like a VIP in my books. I picked up the keys, drove back to her apartment, made some food, and hit up Nicollette street, which is knows as the eat street in Minneapolis, to gather oil.
The first restaurant I went to, Rainbow, had this asshole of a waiter. I went through my routine of asking them for my oil, and he was like "we don't know anything about that so stop bothering us, alright?" I wasn't even talking to him at the time. I was talking to the bartender who was trying to help me out. See the difference between small town folks and the city folks? What a fuckin' dick! They had shitty oil anyway. I hit up the 2nd restaurant, Quang's, and found the mother load. They had a 225 gallon grease dumpster full of nice, fluid, clear oil. JACKPOT! I went inside, told the guy I'll be back the next day to get it which he said was fine, and left. God I get so excited about good grease these days. I was so excited, I rode my bike back to Hitasha's place as hard as I could. It was raining too actually. I got my heart rate up and it felt really good by the time I got back to Bertha. So I put the bike in and went for a jog around the Lake Calhoun. (There's alot of lakes here. In fact they call Minnesota the land of 10000 lakes.) It was raining, it was a bit chilly, but man that was a great jog. I felt like some character in a movie, running by the lake through the rain. After the jog, I came back up to Hitasha's place, took a shower, watched the game 5 ALCS game and started writing this post, and that was 2 days ago already. This has been a long post. It took me 2 days to write all this. Oh yeah, I got a hold of Vinnie Gowrish as well. I haven't seen that guy in ages, but before I left Berkeley, he sent me an e-mail saying he was in Minneapolis these days. So I called him up and turns out he lives literally 5 minutes away from Hitasha's place. We didn't meet up that night though. We made a plan to meet up the next day and hit up the town on a Friday night. I pretty much spent the rest of night, watching baseball, updating blog, doing research online for biodiesel stations and bucket heaters to heat up the oil, etc. Nothing too exciting, but it was good to be able to relax (literally I was watching the game and typing this blog in my boxers) and wind down and do some research in a comfortable heated space. Thanx again Hitasha.
October 19, 2007I spent pretty much all day working on my brake and gathering oil from Quong's. So I drove to the nearest Checker, parked in their lot, and removed the passenger side wheel to inspect the condition of the brake. A little worn, but fine. No metal to metal contact. So I took of driver's side wheel and checked the brake pads. Gone. Completely worn down to the metal. The previous owner must have replaced brake pads on the only one side of the car. Now you know. Always replace your brake pads on both sides of the car. Well remember how I told you earlier how driving for extra 30 min turned out to be a terrible idea. My rotor was so scraped up. I've never seen rotor that ugly. It clearly needed to be replaced. As I was changing out the brake pads, I also realized the brake calipers needed to be replaced too. Some of these things, I just wish I never knew about them. Knowing how bad of a condition it's in, there's no way I can't replace them now which means dollars....a lot of dollars.
I spent about $100 in parts at Checker to replace brake pads, engine oil, and buy some other tools I needed. I've never taken a rotor off of a 4-wheel drive and as defeated as this sounds, I honestly didn't feel comfortable taking apart the 4-wheel drive hub all on my own on the road with a schedule to stick to because I know absolutely nothing about how 4WD locking hubs work. If this was back at home, where I didn't necessarily have to get to anywhere and I had time to fuck up and figure shit out, I would've totally gone for it, but since I didn't have that slack, I had to hand Bertha over to other dirty mechanics to get their hands all over her. I hate having other guys' hands all over my lady, but this time, it was for the better of both of us. So I only replaced the brake pads and decided to take Bertha into a shop.
Before taking her into a shop, I stopped by Quong's and picked up 50 gallons of this wonderful grease. I didn't have time to be able to pump more before the shops closed so I'm only half stocked but I'll be back before I leave. I went to 3 different brake shops just to be turned down cuz either they are not open tomorrow or they don't have tall enough shop doors to fit Bertha through. God damn it! After trying a couple more, it was 6pm and all the shops in town were closed so I had to drive Bertha back to Hitasha's wich still aching brakes.
I did some research online when I got home and found some Midas shops that are open on Saturdays and made an appointment to take her in first thing in the morning and that's where she is right now as we are speaking. I'm getting both calipers and driver's side rotor replaced with a full brake fluid flush for $600. Ouch! I might have to each spuds and cabbage for the rest of the trip. I talked him down from $775 though so I'm getting pretty good value for my money but still. It would've cost me about $450 anyway to replace the calipers myself so for about $150 more I'm getting probably more quality parts, a full flush and new fluid, and precious time. Not a bad trade-off but that $600 is gonna put a big dent in my budget. It is yet the most extensive and expensive repair I had to do on Bertha since I left Berkeley. So let that be a lesson to ya all. If you hear metal scraping noise from your brakes, STOP DRIVING! It's a lot easier and cheaper to replace just the brake pads than the whole rotor. That was one expensive lesson.
Anyways, after making an appointment, I met up with Gowrish. Who would've thought. Of all places, I would've never thought I would see Vinnie in Minneapolis. He's out here for a job and he's living the good life. He got a new BMW, lives in a luxury condo until next to a lake....V is doing alright. And the best part is all that at probably the half the cost of what it would've cost him in SF. Fuckin' Midwest. Gotta love the price of living here. Anyways, he met up and drove out to downtown to meet up with his buddies.
We get there and no sign of his friends. A quick phone call later, we find out they are out in uptown where we just came from. We ended up rolling back to his friend Luke's pad before heading out. We drank some beer, ate chili, chicken, and papaya and headed out for bars. By the way, liquor stores close at 10 here in Minnesota and you can't buy liquor on Sundays. Are you kidding me? That almost sounds like some sorta human right violation, doesn't it? I thought California drinking law was strict, but fuckin' a. Anyways, we headed out this joint, (I can't remember the name of it) that's a latino/sushi fusion food restaurant/bar. Interesting mix, huh? Oh Vinnie bought me their shirt as a souvenir and it is the funniest/most un-PC shirt I've ever seen. It says "Ah, Phuket!" in front and in the back it's got this drawing that looks like an Asian dude with slanty eyes and if you flip it over, it looks like a Middle Eastern guy with a turban and on each side are the words "Latino" and "Chino". Sushi is Japanese first of all, and the drawing looks nothing latino or chino. I guess that's the Midwest humor for ya. Anyways, I met some of Vinnie's friends, entertained them with my stories of travelling on veg oil, met one of his co-worker Chrstina who Vinnie refers to as "C-hag" cuz she's 42. I enjoy V's crude sense of humor. However, you would never guess that this woman is 42. She looks like she's in her early 30's. Well she's half Korean and half German, it's that Asian blood in her, I'm telling you. We Asians age well, what can I say? Well I talked to her for awhile about her background, learned that Minneapolis had the highest rate of Korean adoptees in American in 1970's, and learned where the small K-town is in St. Paul. It was a trip though. I had to keep reminding myself that she was 42. She felt like just another one of us just a little order but in fact she was over 10 years older than us. Crazy. Anyways, I didn't even realize it was that late but before I knew it was already past 1am, and bars close at 2 pm just like CA. So we took off and Vinnie and I decided to to White Castle for some drunk munchies.
Riding to White Castle felt just like a scene out of Harold and Kumar go to White Castle. Here's Vinnie, the Indian, here's me, the Korean, we are talking about smoking some dank before getting down on these burgers. I found it quite comical. I've never been to White Castle before, so I was pretty stoked to try it. We got 10 of those burgers with 2 drinks and 2 fries. At first I didn't it was gonna be enough but I'm glad we didn't get more. I gotta admit, Vinnie did give me a fair warning about how terrible they are and it's gonna have some massive attack on my digestive system, and........he was right!
We got back to his pad, smoked a bowl out of a cucumber (yeah that's right...we all went to Cal), and went to town on those burgers. They was pleasantly surprised. I mean it tasted like fastfood burgers but I thought it was better than McDonald's. Yeah the patties looked like they were made from some unidentifiable animal parts and the burgers smelled like they made in the labs not in the kitchen. But what fastfood burgers don't? I enjoyed them. It was good drunk munchies. My first White Castle experience was a pleasant surprise. With my belly full of those mini burgers, Vinnie drove me back to Hitasha's place and I passed out at 4 in the morning.
October 20, 2007FINALLY! I'm all caught up on the blog. This is today!
7:30 am. I woke up to my cellphone's annoying alarm clock and had to take Bertha to Midas. I wasn't that tired per se but my stomach...my god. Who great idea was it to go eat White Castle last night? There was some sorta war going on in my stomach. Every time I would burp, I would taste those little bastards I consumed drunkenly last night. Not the best taste in your mouth, first thing in the morning. Midas is about 10 miles away, not bad. Originally I was gonna drive there and ride the bike back but there was no way that was happening this morning. So I called up Vinnie, who he offered to drive me this morning anyway,
dragged his ass out of the bed and had him drive me to Midas. Thanx buddy! It was painlessly smooth. Left Bertha there, got back in Vinnie's car, drove back to my place, was originally gonna go back to sleep but for some reason, I was wide awake, so I've been blogging ever since then. So now we are at NOW. Hitasha is coming over from her parent's place, we are gonna go watch the Cal game with Vinnie once she gets here (GO BEARS!) and Vinnie is taking me out to this some fancy steak place in town tonight. You are fuckin' spoiling me here V, one of these days, I'll get you back. Anyways, there you have it. If you actually read everything in this post, you have entirely way too much time on your hand. Some of you have been asking me to update my blog already counting the days since my last entry. Good to hear I've got some fans of my journey out there. Bertha should be up and running by end of today, and I'm most likely gonna head out of Minneapolis tomorrow morning and head to Chicago. I've never been to Chicago so I'm pretty excited. Thanx Vinnie and Hitasha for all the hospitality. My stay here in Minneapolis has been wonderful and I'm off to Chicago next. Good bye Minnesota!
So I have way too many pix for me to upload them one by one on here, so instead, check out:
http://picasaweb.google.com/wschang950
