The Days of Dodgy
The days of Dodgy are slowly coming to an end. Today, the passenger side window rolled down two inches before it moved no more. At our next stop for gas we bought a roll of duct tape and covered the…
Category Dodgy
Dodgy was our first car that opened the road to us. While the tan paint with brown gradient stripes might be misleading, it is a 3500 ’86 Dodge Ram van. Despite its age, Dodgy took us across the country and back multiple times.
Read MoreThe Days of Dodgy
Furnishing the Van
With our travels relaunched, we thought it was time to make Dodgy a bit more homey. Thus, we visited that center of all things domestic, IKEA. After extended debate over the best balance of frugality and comfort, we settled on…
Perfection, Enemy of Good
Dodgy's journeys have not been the easiest, and with each mechanical trial arises a new quest: to find a mechanic that will actually fix Dodgy's problems. For most people, a matter of a broken brake light or air conditioning unit is simply remedied by a trip to the nearest mechanic, yet Dodgy has already visited three mechanics. After the second explained that our business was not worth the time and effort it would take to find replacement parts, he referred us to a shop specializing in car electrical work. Despite both the mechanic calling ahead and us scheduling an appointment to drop off the car, we found ourselves cajoling Mechanic #3 to take on the project.
Some Like It Hot
Some days just seem rough. Try as one might, it seems like nothing can quite go right and the world is conspiring to derail what one has invested so much time and sweat to achieve. As Robert Burns observed in…
Disaster Strikes
Driving a car that is over 30 years old almost guarantees that something is going to go wrong.
Restocking
We had to loop back to Grass Valley to pick up a few last items we had left with friends. With a few lessons learned, we laid out the back of the van in a more thoughtful way with rugs, a mattress on the floor, plastic storage drawers as dressers, and a cooler, easily accessible in the back. I guess the means we are ready for the first leg of our real trip...
Los Angeles
I know some people might baulk if I were to say that we were "trapped" in Los Angeles. Maybe I'll say that we were detained? There was a small matter of a broken break light and air conditioner that led us to entrust our beloved Dodgy to one of the few mechanics in LA that would even touch a car from the 80s. Good man that he was, finding replacement parts for an '86 van is no small feat and what we had anticipated as a stay of a few days in LA turned out to be two weeks. In the end, while there was still more work to do on the air conditioning, we liberated the van from the shop so that we could continue our trip...with the windows down.
The Car
The car is a '86 Dodge Ram. But don't let that fool you. The engine is from '93. Ancillary parts are from...some time between '86 and now. I currently call it "Dodgy." That name is subject to change.
A Beginning
I have never been a fan of cars. When I turned 16, getting a driver's license was the furthest from my thoughts. When I left home, it was to live in cities as a pedestrian. And yet, here I am. In a car.