Regular readers will recall the story of my van, which was originally known as Trevor, but was born again as Larry after raising from the dead. When the time came to leave Rossland way back in April, I placed my faith in the miracle of Larry's resurrection and drove him north, to Golden to go ski touring, then west to climb, then further west for a hot date, then back east to climb some more, then further east to sit for a portrait, then back west to climb, then further west to pick up Rohan from the airport, then between Vancouver, Victoria and Squamish a few times, then back east again to continue climbing. Since leaving Rossland, Larry and I have travelled over 4000kms on a journey that Google Maps thinks would take 59 hours and consumed a conscience-shattering quantity of fuel.
On the whole, life with Larry has been good. It became apparent way back in April that Larry wouldn't start in the rain, which made some legs of this journey (including a speedy exit from Maud's Hot Sister's house) more difficult than desired. When Larry pulled this stunt in Squamish, Rohan and I made use of some tools from our host's house to access the engine (which is done by dismantling the part of the console between the driver and the passenger's seats within the van) and dry it out with a hairdryer. When Larry refused to co-operate in Victoria we again burrowed our way to the engine to find a spark up to several centimetres long forming across the top of the ignition coil. Don't worry, I don't know anything about cars either, but I suspect this spark represented electricity that was supposed to be going into the engine and was instead escaping. We fixed that problem by spraying rather flammable WD40 onto the offending component. It turns out that in this case spark + flammable material = success, which was vastly preferable to setting the engine on fire, and Larry has started reliably since that day.
But there is more to being a successful automobile than just starting. After a great day spent climbing Yak Peak just off the highway in the Fraser Valley, we loaded up the van to drive to the base of Mt Gimli (a few hours further east) for another long climb on our way to the main objective for the trip, the granite spires of Bugaboo Provincial Park. About 70kms from Kelowna, the biggest town in the region, Larry began to make what experts refer to as "a horrible noise". Worried that this noise might be a sign of problems to come, we quickly pulled over to the side of the highway. When Larry starts to malfunction, it is almost impossible not to view any problems through the interpretive lens of all the other things that are already wrong with Larry. We figured it was a problem with the brakes, and followed the directions in the manual for unsticking the rear brakes: Reversing the vehicle and applying the brakes sharply.
This did the diametric opposite of work.
In fact, this caused the vehicle to seize up completely. The engine was clearly working, but something was jamming the wheels and stopping us from moving forwards or backwards. Still convinced that the brakes were at fault, we simply revved the car hard enough unstick whatever was stuck and were able to continue driving again, albeit with a new and slightly worse version of the aforementioned horrible noise. Figuring Larry might need a break, we waited for a couple of hours on the side of the road and, after this had no effect, resumed our drive, hoping to reach Kelowna and find a mechanic. We rolled into Walmart in the evening and googled the shit out of our car problems, which by the time we had reached town, were extensive. At low speed, Larry had developed an alarming clunk which could be heard and also physically felt shaking the car which we managed to determine was coming from the front differential. Further inspection confirmed that the diff was leaking oil, and the situation was grim.
Larry in the Walmart carpark. The dirtbag equivalent of the Last Supper.
The next morning drove Larry to the mechanic, a 500m long white-knuckled journey of clanking and shaking. It didn't take long for the mechanic to tell us that all hope was lost. They even hoisted Larry up to show us how the front drive shaft could be shaken a good 5cm or so by hand. To compound our woes, they refused to do anything to the front diff unless they were also permitted to fix the power steering pump and brakes (since they were in unroadworthy condition), which they priced at over $4000.
Some people say you can't put a price on love, and they might be right that I couldn't give a precise number for how much I was willing to spend to fix my beloved death defying van, but I could definitely give un upper limit, and $4000 was well outside that range. After all our adventures, I could not afford to fix Larry.
But, Rohan and I reasoned, Larry had already defied death once. Perhaps the clunking noise was just that, a clunking noise. Perhaps it wasn't a sign of impending catastrophe. Perhaps if we could just get Larry as far as Revelstoke (a mere 200km away) he would make it all the way. After all, what do mechanics know about cars? And so it was that with a sense of fragile optimism we drove out of Kelowna while the drivers that overtook us looked at us in concern and alarm.
As the banging and shudderring in the car worsened, our optimism quickly faded. With a collective background in physics and chemistry, we were acutely aware of what happened when heavy objects moving quickly suddenly broke or jammed, or what happened when friction made car components hot enough to catch fire. As Rohan raised his voice over the increasingly load and frequent thuds from under the floor to describe the occaisionally horrific consequences of car parts catching fire, we decided that perhaps even Revelstoke was a bridge too far and turned back towards Kelowna.
We grudgingly hired a new set of wheels from the concerningly named Rent-a-Wreck, a car about as different from Larry as you could get without decreasing the footprint or age of the machine and set about squeezing a van's worth of gear into a sedan's worth of space. Our new ride, dubbed "Abe" took us south to Penticton to dodge more bad weather and we left Larry and all my ski gear in the hire car parking lot.
Abe (and Larry in the background). And yes, that sign really does say "Darky's Pawn".
This was one sequel with a sad ending. After cheating death once, Larry had fallen short just two drives from the end of our trip. Vale old friend.
No comments:
Post a Comment