Good times and bad times

Friday, September 6th.
Exterior.
A campground in the hills east of Charlottesville, VA. Towards the outskirts of the grounds a Ford Club Wagon is parked. In the dark, its presence is marked only by the erie light emanating from a laptop computer, and the light tapping of keys.

We slept in late today. Got up at noon and went out to lunch with Carolyn and one of her roommates. Then she showed us around the impressive University of Virginia campus, in part designed by Thomas Jefferson. When she left to go to class we headed back to where we'd parked the van, planning to head towards Monticello and then on towards Washington D.C.

Before we left we made a few phonecalls from a payphone on the street. We called the mechanic who'd worked on the van to hear why the cigarette lighter no longer worked (neither of us smoke, but we need it to power our laptop while on the road). And then we called Carol & Brent and left a message saying that aside from the cigarette lighter the van was running just fine! Well, what a way to jinx ourselves! :)

We payed our parking ticket and pulled out of our space. And the van stalled! It has a bad habit of doing that in tight, slow turns, but this time it wouldn't start again, and the steering wheel and key locked up completely. So we just sat there and blocked traffic. Finally one of the parking attendants managed to force the key to turn and we rolled the van back in its space. But it would no longer start. It would start up, run very irregularly for a while and then turn off.

We were right back where we'd been a week earlier.

That really killed our high spirits. After several unsuccessful tries we finally decided that we'd have to have it towed. Again.

We had to wait half an hour for the tow truck, so we wheeled out the couch and parked it next to the little booth were the parking guys (who were really nice and helpful) hung out. Our spirits lifted as the couch received respect and admiration from all the people that passed by. Everyone thought that it belonged to the guys at CPL (the Corner Parking Lot), since their friends used the lot as a hangout as well. "Oh, what an awesome couch!", "What's that Golden Wonder doing here?" and "Nice! Now all you need is a tv set!" were just some of the reactions.

After about half an hour the tow truck arrived. The driver, a nice black guy named Dale, got out and took a look at the van. He got it running enough to back it out of the space and hook it up to the tow truck. We offered the CPL guys money for the extra time we'd been parked there, but they wouldn't take it. They wished us good luck, and we cruised off with Dale. He told us stories of how he'd crossed the country with a buddy after graduating from high school in the early 70s. They had done odd jobs along the way and taken 7.5 years to cross every state in the country.

Dale suggested that we didn't go to the Ford dealership we'd called and instead he found a smaller garage that would work on it right away. Perhaps a tow truck driver recommending a garage should be a cause for suspicion, but he was such a great guy that we trusted him. And as he'd promised, the guys at the garage really did turn out to be "people-people".

The mechanic went to work on it right away. To our dismay he seemed to think that what the previous mechanic had done really hadn't done much of anything to fix the problem. And the van's performance seemed to support that statement. But he was able to diagnose the problem and got to work on it. He replaced the map sensor which fixed the problem with the fuel mixture that was causing the starting problems. While working on that he also discovered a leak in the engine cooling system which he fixed. Had that not been discovered it would have caused serious damage to the engine. And finally, he fixed the cigarette lighter for us.

So we were out another $260 for towing and repair. Which wasn't exactly a cause for jumping with joy. But at the same time we felt really good about the mechanic and the work he'd done on the van. We finally felt like the problem had been fixed and that things would start going better. And they did!

After rearranging our luggage in the back of the van, we headed out of town towards Monticello. We made it to the gate a little after 6pm, only to discover that it closed at 5. Hmm. Our bad luck continued, it seemed. We parked the van, deciding to take a sofa picture in front of the gate, to at least show that we'd been there. Right then a security officer pulled up in a pickup truck and looked suspiciously at us. So we felt we had to get out and explain our plan, and tell him that we'd be out of there in 5 minutes. "Take your time," he said, and drove off.

So we wheeled out the couch and got ready to take a picture. Then the park security officer came back, and pulled over to talk to us again. He was puzzled by our little setup, and inquired about the couch and what was so special about it. We were unsure of what he thought of it all, but tried explaining that it wasn't as much the couch itself as it was the plan of photographing it everywhere across the country. "Oh," he said, "...well would you like me to sit on it?" he asked.

Well of course we would! So we took a picture of all three of us on the couch. As we stood around chatting with him about being from Denmark and about his foreign ancestry two other cars pulled up and asked him directions for a motel. We talked to three nice ladies from Ohio who thought that our trip sounded like great fun and wished us luck. As they left a couple pulled up in a pickup truck. Charles and Martha, as they were called, thought we worked there, since we were hanging out with the security officer and seemed to be unloading furniture, so they asked us directions as well. We couldn't help them with that, but instead explained our trip plan to them. They loved the idea, and asked to take a picture of us on the couch. We let them do that, of course, and then took a picture of them on the couch afterwards. Turns out that they were from Winson-Salem. Small world. They got our website address, wished us the best of luck with our endeavour and drove off.

Following directions from the security officer we headed back down the highway and found a KOA campsite that we decided to make our home for the night. Not able to find any restaurants around, we stocked up on bread and cheese at a gas station and fixed our dinner from that. The campsite ran a showing of "Remember The Titans" on a big screen tv in an open shelter that evening. The shelter was lined with picnic tables, but we couldn't resist the urge to bring our own couch... :) So we did. We dropped it off up there, and made ourselves comfortable for the evening. After eating dinner and watching the movie (which is highly recommendable, by the way) we drove the couch back down to our lot and made our beds for the night.

Although we were about to abandon ship when the van quit in the parking lot earlier in the day we both agreed that luck had turned back to our favor again, and that it had been a great day.