So, a long time ago I wrote an entry about the van I'd bought, and how it didn't really inspire me with confidence. I've been meaning to write something about that ever since but, being me, I hadn't. So now let me take the opportunity to explain what's wrong with my van, in chronological order.
There were some reasonably obvious problems with the vehicle when I first bought it. The windscreen is riddled with cracks, there's a fairly substantial piece missing from the front bumper, one of the brake rotors needed machining, so it shook when you tried to slow down. But it was large, it was maroon, it made me feel like a big man, and best of all, it was a GMC Safari van. What better way to travel North America than in a genuine American Van made by a Genuine American Van Manufacturer? Behind the wheel I was like some kind of cloned love child of John Wayne and Ronald Reagan.
The boost this van gave to my ego was well worth a few superficial flaws. However, it wasn't long before, like a cloned love child of John Wayne and Ronald Reagan, the van started to demonstrate some slightly alarming defects. First, the demister stopped working. In Australia, a demister (the thing that blows hot air onto the windscreen to stop it from fogging up) is a handy accessory to have in your car. In Canada in winter it's a way of life. When you have to scrape the ice off the outside AND the inside of your windscreen, you have problems. But at least you can reach the inside of your windscreen while driving. When the windscreen wipers started to die shortly afterwards, the van became even more dangerous to drive.
Then the power steering pump died. It turns out that Safari vans have a common problem where if the steering wheel is turned to full lock and you accelerate sharply then brake, the shaft of the power steering pump breaks. Incidentally, those are pretty much the exact instructions for getting out of snowed-in parking spot, so it wasn't long before that fairly critical piece of hardware broke. To compound matters, the power steering pump also runs the ABS brakes, so not only did I lose power steering, I also lost power assisted brakes and had to perform a one-legged leg press to bring the vehicle to a halt.
I drove the van for several weeks in this condition before taking it to a mechanic, partly because I was using it and didn't want it out of commission at the mechanic's workshop, partly because I didn't want to spend money getting it fixed, and partly because I'd just agreed to go climbing in July and figured that wrestling the van into parking spots constituted valuable upper body strength training. The mechanic fairly generously assumed that I had brought the van to him because it was undrivable (which, in a safety-conscious manner of speaking, it was) but in the end it was so expensive to get just some of the many problems it faced fixed that I opted not to have any work done.
Then it began to have problems starting up. These were especially devious, because it would start just fine when it was cold, but then stall shortly after starting when it was warm. This made driving to Silver Star quite scary, because when I stopped to clean the windscreen, the van didn't want to start up again. After a few moments of panic, I got it running and made it through that journey unscathed.
So you'll appreciate my relief to have made it safely to Silver Star, some 400-odd kms away, and back. And you'll appreciate my trepidation when setting out to Fernie to visit my friend Barrett last Monday night. I managed to make it into town safely, and even drove around town just fine until it was time to head home on Thursday afternoon. Then it died halfway down the highway that runs through town. Awkward.
And then a police car pulled up behind me about 30 seconds later. Awkward.
Then I didn't have my British Columbia driver's license with me. Awkward.
Anyway, the police officer was very reasonable. I figured that it might have just run out of fuel, since I knew it was pretty low, and maybe the petrol gauge had just broken, so he waited for me to get a jerry can from a nearby gas station and try to get the van started. It still wouldn't go (awkward), so realising that I didn't really want to pay for a tow truck, he kindly offered to push my van down the road with his car until I could turn off on a nearby street. He seemed slightly concerned about damaging my rear bumper, but I quickly laughed off his concerns. Rad, but awkward.
So that's how I ended up getting gently bumped down the main street of Fernie by a police officer. And, to increase the awesomeness of this moment, I managed to roll start the van. The coolest on-duty police officer I've ever seen drove off without any further concerns and I breathed an enormous sigh of relief that he never looked at the front of the van and the many non-roadworthy features it contained.
I assumed that perhaps the van really had run out of fuel, filled it up and managed to make it home (with Barrett driving behind me as an escort until his turn off back to the States). But I assumed wrong, and now it's sitting in a nearby carpark and won't budge an inch. However, it's downhill to Trail where I can get it scrapped, and if I make a few bucks I can spend them on hair gel. So, for the rest of this trip I guess I'm going to hitch. Hope I don't get molested!
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