Keeping Cool on a Road-Trip

Or, How We Managed to Cross the United States Without Blowing a Gasket.

The mission? To rescue Johnson..from Texas.

Well, not exactly. Johnson was in Texas, alright, spending the summer with his family, but as he was attending classes at the fabulous Washington State University ("Go, Cougs'!"), he needed to get from A) Dallas-Ft. Worth to B) Pullman, Washington (Home of WAZZU) by the time classes started in the fall.

He could have flown, but he didn't want to fly. Too expensive.

He could have driven himself and that would have been o-kay, but he'd have driven half-way across the country by himself and that didn't sound like much fun.

No. An elegant solution for getting Johnson home from Point A to Point B, keeping the costs down and the fun and frivolity high presented itself in one very simple concept. Two Words.

Road Trip.

And so, in August of 1976, FarmerScott and Yojimbo (as we're now known) took it upon ourselves to recue Johnson by travelling half-way across the country (and back again) in the most round-about way possible, seeing friends and sights along the way, and as much of that as possible while still getting Johnson to school by fall term (FarmerScott's comments are in green type-face, mine are the usual dullish-grey).

Elaborate plans were made. We would be travelling in FarmerScott's truck--a sturdy blue beast with a nice camper arrangement that fit very nicely in the bed to provide shelter and protection over the course of the trip. Our roundabout route took us down the west coast to Los Angeles and Disneyland (in Anaheim) where we would stay a couple nights at our buddy Joel's apartment on Sepulveda. Then we'd cross the desert to Las Vegas, Hoover Dam, the Grand Canyon and on to Texas.

We'd stay a couple days in Texas, whisk Johnson away, drive up through Oklahoma, and gradually make our way north by way of Yellowstone National Park, up to South Dakota and Mt. Rushmore, through the Badlands, Montana and to the WAZZU campus...at which point, Johnson hits the ejector seat...and FarmerScott and I return to Seattle.

A fairly complex scenario--lots of of pins on the map--but we were young, ambitious and there was a lot of roads we hadn't seen yet. It was a great trip with lots of stories to tell (and we do manage to tell a couple of them).

But the subject today is Scott's truck and the act of desperation it engendered.

Blue and bulky, Scott's truck with the removable shell made a comfy home away from home, even with a 6ft. 4 inch Johnson inhabiting it (which is a punch-line if ever I've heard it).

But Scott's truck had a problem. It wasn't a problem, really, in rainy Seattle. But it had an eccentricity under the hood. It's radiator was one size too small for the gross weight of the truck. Again, not a problem in Seattle where the weather was more wet and temperate than that experienced by the rest of the country. But by the time we got out of Oregon and began our trek through California, it became a big factor in our travels. We were travelling in August, so the truck would, of course, get hot. But once we were in California, the radiator would overheat. In fact, it would boil over. We'd have to get water and constantly refill the radiator, then before getting too far, we'd have to stop again.

At the Universal Studios Tour, "Bruce" the Shark from "Jaws" kind of just hangs out at the lake by the Bates Motel from "Psycho."

Always Faithful at Yellowstone National Park

In California, we spent a few days with Joel, had a fun long day visiting Disneyland (staying until Officer Goofy threw us out), Universal Tours and the dregs of society that habituated Hollywood. I remember while Joel was attending classes at UCLA, hanging out at the vast UCLA library and being shocked to see Professor Kingsfield...er, John Houseman strolling the aisles. Then, we tackled Death Valley. But as it was a hot day, we didn't travel too far before we had to stop and fill the radiator and let it cool down. It was in the high 90's and we had to stop more than once. We were about to cross a hundred miles of desert, and the worse that could have happened would be for us to be stranded in the middle of it with no water.

We decided on a new game-plan: we'd sleep for the rest of the day and then drive by night in an attempt to cross the desert without a stop. So, we pulled into the parking lot of a gas station off in the shade (like it mattered in that heat) and slept in the back. Now, this was a 90° day. Imagine sleeping in a metal shell that acted very much like an easy-bake oven. It had to have been 110 degrees in there. In fact, it was so hot, I don't think we got much sleep. But we got enough, so that when the blistering sun went down, we headed out, crossing the desert in the middle of the night.

FarmerScott standing heroically on the very edge of the Grand Canyon.

Somebody feed this child a burger!

We drove through Vegas at night (the best way to see it! Especially for the first time! Seeing the glow in the sky from miles away in the desert was spectacular), drove over Hoover Dam (which, given my fear of heights was preferable) and skirted the Army missile range, where we watched the oddly mesmerizing flashes just over the foothills, and reflexively stepped on the accelerator to get way, way past them. We took turns driving and sleeping though I don't think FarmerScott got much sleep with me singing at the top of my lungs to keep myself awake. Here's a couple of photographs from our first night at Grand Canyon National Park,* one of the most beautiful sights I've ever seen--the canyon at sunset. lightning illuminating, from within, the dark clouds across the way. It was a dramatic show that just struck me dumb.

"Magic Hour" at the Grand Canyon

Well, I'm not getting to the point of the story. When we got to Texas, it was hot..and humid. Indoors A/C's constantly ran, and outdoors sweat ran consistently the moment you walked out the door. I was fond of saying you couldn't breathe in Texas--you had to cut a piece of air and gnaw on it for awhile. But it didn't seem to matter in a place where a significant percentage of restaurants had sawdust floors. Still it wasn't all that welcoming to truck-driving with a smallish radiator.

What to do? Back in the day, folks used to hang bags of water in front of their radiators. The airflow through the bags as it moved forward would provide additional cooling and prevent steam blow-outs. For any over-heated radiators in the 1940's anyway. Research into finding anything like that while we were on the road in the disco-70's wasn't producing any results even in the reddest of red states. (Where was Al Gore and his Internets when you need it) (Tennesee, probably. But only Bob Dole calls it "Internets")We would have had an easier time of it finding button-shoes. So there we were: an overheating truck, a hot August and half a country to drive. We were sweating it (but in the Texas humidity, who'd notice?)

An overcast day at Mt. Rushmore

Johnson and FamerScott check out all the hot-spots at Yellowstone National Park

We set out for Washington State (in Washington State) by way of Yellowstone with one eye towards the thermometer outside and the other on the temp gauge inside the truck. As long as temperatures didn't reach a certain level we'd be fine to drive during the day, but once temperatures got in the 90's we were sunk. We made it to Yellowstone with no problems and experienced a dramatic temperature change camping in the Park. As we tramped around Yellowstone, avoiding the sulphurous mud-pots and gazing at geysers, the temperature was a balmy 80°. We slept in the camper and overnight the temperature dropped below freezing, our breath frosting up the insides. Rain and clouds kept us going into South Dakota and a visit to Mt. Rushmore, but by the time we hit the Badlands the temperature hit 90 and we had to do something. You’ve got the map a little skewed here. We went due north through Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, a quick trip across the Mississippi River (to be as far east as possible on that trip) to Soiux City, Iowa (finding a $20 bill on the sidewalk and seeing Logan’s Run--In Ft. Worth we visited a water-garden where they'd filmed the finale), then the Badlands in South Dakota (too cheap to pay to drive through them, being a National Park, we stopped by the side of the road and climbed up a hill to see into the park and it’s pink striped landscape). After that we turned left to Mt. Rushmore and on to Yellowstone.

So, we improvised. If we couldn't have those nifty radiator bags we had to find a way to get cool water to the radiator. A trip to the hardware store in I’m pretty sure it was Kansas. The outside temperature was low enough until then that we weren’t overheating too much provided us with two squeeze-bottles, a considerable length of plastic tubing and duct tape. It was plastic tubing – I had it in my toolbox for years after we got home. We emptied out the bottles and fastened the tubes to the outside of the truck and to the front of the hood with the duct tape. We then snaked the tubes through the wind-windows in the cab. We had a substantial water cooler to keep our steady diet of pop frosty, thanks to a constantly replenished supply of cubed ice. As the radiator got hotter, we would fill the squeeze-bottles--one on the driver-side and one on the passenger-side--with ice-water from the cooler. Then as the gauge creeped into the red, we'd squirt, sending a pressurized stream of cold water into the radiator.

Damn, if it didn't work, and like a charm. Within moments of spraying, the truck's temperature would fall, guaranteeing us a few more miles of daylight driving. The problem was that it was kind of messy. We had to fill 2 small bottles from a gallon jug while driving in an old truck with old springs. It kept us going across the Badlands (to the mysterious and oasis-seeming establishment of Wall Drug) and on through Montana, Idaho and, finally, to Pullman, Washington to the Home of the Cougars and Alma Mater of Edward R. Murrow, Washington State University. And we did it with a couple days to spare. That was approximately the time we stayed. Then we made our way home, never again needing to turn to our improvised cooling system.

That's our story. We're sticking to it.

FarmerScott's truck with the tubes trailing under the hood.

What's your story? Did you have a vacation crisis that led to inspiration?

Share, share.

Thanks to Bobby Z for the shot of the mythical water-bags!

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* What's funny is I didn't know until just recently that the Grand Canyon was created by the Great Flood and it's only 5,000 years OLD! Thanks to the scholars at the Bush Administration for making it official. Here's a report.