Oklahoma blows...hence all the wind farms

We are on the road heading through Oklahoma, where tomorrow we will have our first day of climbing. Last night we stayed at a Wal-Mart in Conway, AR (near a place called Toad Suck). 

We got in a little later than planned due to a delayed start out of Nashville. It was hard to leave Pete’s parents’ house with the comfy beds, hot showers, and home-cooked food. That and we were having trouble starting the van yesterday morning. By having trouble, I mean that it took 7 or 8 attempts and some “tinkering” with the engine to get it going. As reliable a method as that sounds, it was not very practical since the engine is in the back, underneath all of our heavy climbing gear. To access the engine, we first had to prop up the trunk door with a length of 2x4 because the bike rack makes the door too heavy to hold open on its own. Then we have to remove all our climbing gear that we store in the back –so a bit tedious.

So Pete calls his trusty Vanagon guy, who luckily answers his phone on Memorial Day. With a plan in mind, Pete and his Dad head off to autozone to buy a new fuel pump. A couple hours later, they have it installed and the engine is starting up the first time easily. So that was a success. Now, I’m wondering why we sent the transmission away to be rebuilt. Clearly, Pete could have been talked through that process too.

Not surprisingly, we got even further delayed as there was a car accident on I-40 just outside of Memphis. Moving at a crawl for about an hour and a half was not good for the temperature of our engine. Fortunately, Pete knew of a trick to keep the van from overheating during that time. Unfortunately, it involved turning the heater on full blast to pull the heat out of the coolant. At some point during that process, we reached equilibrium where it felt like we and the engine were at the same temperature.

Around midnight, we finally made it to Wal-Mart, which was a 24-hour super-center and quite nice actually. We did not run into Clarence Thomas, but there were a couple other RV’s in the parking lot.

We will send another update after our climbing excursion tomorrow. For those of you familiar with Stone Mountain, it’s your typical run-out, slab climbing. So it wouldn’t be our first choice, but it is a nice way to break up an otherwise 3 days straight of driving. There is a climb (that we are not doing) that says to climb 65-feet to clip into your first bolt.


Here are some random photos from Pete's Dad that don't really fit with the narrative:

The smoke goes away soon....