Happy Father's Day, Part Deux - The Curse of the Car Guy

So remember how I talked yesterday about the air conditioning in our mini van quitting outside of Springfield, MO?  And how our children managed to ride for 6.25 hours without air conditioning without complaining at all (the best father's day gift ever)?  Well, Amy and I made an executive decision last night and we decided that we were going to have to have the air conditioning repaired no matter what it took.  Although we both secretly hoped it would just be a hose or a belt that was the culprit, from my own experience I was afraid it would be the compressor.

Let me preface this by saying that one of the things my family loves to do whenever we're riding in the car on the weekends is to listen to the NPR program "Car Talk" which is hosted by the brothers Tom and Ray Magliozzi, otherwise known as "Frick and Frack".  We've heard so many different diagnoses over the years that I was pretty sure I knew what was going on.  On top of that I had my own experience with cars to support me.  Amy always refers to me as a "car guy" and I really can't claim to be a true one.  Yes, I like old cars and I have owned a few really cool cars in my time (69 Karmen Ghia, 67 Mustang, 68, 69, 71 Volkswagen Beetles to name a few) and on almost all of them I did my own work - oil changes, tune ups, brake replacements, timing chain/belt replacement, rebuilding carburateurs (once on the side of the road, another time in the middle of my living room) and yes, replacing a compressor for the car air conditioning.

But that was before the advent of computers and how you can't even diagnose the problem with your car without a computer.  But I just knew, you know.  So the quest was to find a trustworthy car mechanic in  Clinton, OK the very first thing in the morning with the hope that we could get back on the road by noon.  I was on my way to Goodyear when I saw Zane's Auto Repair so on a hunch I stopped by.  He just happened to be opening up and told me to come back in ten minutes.  He and mechanic Scott took a look at it and told me what it was - the compressor was shot.  He also told me it would be about $1,080 to fix!  I didn't doubt that the cost was right, I was just upset that it would cost so much.  But it had to be done so I took my bike off of the rack, and headed back to the Super 8 we were staying in.  The hightlight was actually cycling on part of Route 66 on the 3 miles on the way.  Three hours later I called and he said it was ready to pick up!  We were right on schedule.

And then we got hit with the second punch of the morning.  One of the tires was completely worn on the inside edge so that some of the metal radial lining was showing - it had to be replaced.  They were great in the office about letting me pay for almost half of the bill with a myriad of Visa gift cards we had and I headed off to pick up Amy and the kids.  I then broke the double whammy of bad news to her - the cost of the compressor and I needed to go get a new tire.  So, with other errands to attend to, I dropped them off at the local KMart (yes, THE big shopping store in town) and headed off to get a new tire.

An hour and a half later and TWO tires later (the other one was worn out as well) we were on our way - at 3:30 in the afternoon - only three and a half hours late!  But, after the first tire was replaced at Goodyear I started to drive to pick everyone up and the car was pulling hard to the right.  So I had to go back and have them check it out and they showed me the left front tire was so worn down it was causing the car to pull - it had to be replaced as well.

But $226 later we had two new front tires and I could go get Amy and the kids!  The good thing about all of it was that at both Zane's and Goodyear they didn't charge us tax because we are operating as a charity event and we were able to save almost $100 off of the cost of all the repairs.

We finally got back on the road with the idea of just driving as far as we could get.  That ended up being Santa Rosa, NM but not before I had the chance to revisit a bit of my childhood on the way when I say glowing in the distance a sign that said;

Yes, the famous "Eat at Stuckey's and Get Gas Too!"  Well, we got gas but we declined the eating part.  It was still fun to wander about the grounds of one of the old stores and to revisit the sights and smells of my childhood when the Connor family used to make yearly summer pilgrammages from Fort Ord, CA to Gastonia, NC and back.  There was so much I wanted to buy but I refrained - although a beaded belt may still be in my future - there's still a long time to go!

And the kids FINALLY got to visit Texas!  It was only for a few hours, but they got to be in Texas!  We whooped and hollered, talked trash about the Giants (much to Amy and James' chagrin - but they gave it right back) and we in general had a great time despite the heat and being behind.

And we continued to push as long as we could until we finally realized it was getting dark and we couldn't go much further.  So tonight we stopped in Santa Rosa, NM and we had a FANTABULOUS dinner at the Santa Fe Cafe.  I had the most amazing Chimichanga and I was in total Mexican food heaven.  This is going to be a great time in the Southwest for me!  Because to be honest, my favorite food is Mexican food and, to be honest, as the Bowling for Soup song says, "The Mexican food sucks north of here anyway."  And so for your musical dessert (and much less fattening than flan or gelados fritas) I bring you a song we listened to during our brief stint in Texas;



Well, it's late and its time for sleep so I'll leave you all for now - we're getting closer!

Stay well and I'll write more from the road!

Happy Father's Day - I'm A Hardcore Carnivore!

Okay, so I'll warn you now that this one is going to be fairly short becuase its almost 10:00 at night and I'm exhausted after a long day of driving and exploring America.  Okay, honestly, not so much exploring as watching it pass by the window.

The day started out brilliantly as we found ourselves waking up in lovely Greenville, Indiana.  At breakfast, enjoyed at the wonderful Super 8, my family gave me cards and made me feel like the luckiest Dad in the world!  And it was only 8:30 in the morning!  I was then given the best gift ever - I was granted the power to choose the restaraunts and movies for the day!!!!  Its good to be the king;

We then piled into Vannikan Roadwalker and headed West!!!  We kept  going and going and going - passing St. Louis (we crossed the Mississippi), we saw the grasslands, we visited Indiana (briefly) and then we found ourselves in Missouri and hungry!  Since I was in charge, I started looking for Bar-b-que because I was in the mood for meat!  And then outside of Lebanon, MO I saw the signs for this place;

And when I also saw the billboards advertising "Kids Eat Free" and I knew where we were going - hey we're eating away for 74 days so we have to keep the budget down!  Bottom line ended up being we ALL had a great lunch, there was free ice cream for desert and we were good to go!  The only low point was when Sarah was standing outside eating her ice cream and she was dive bombed by a kamikaze bug.  That poor bug gave its life for a moment of creamy heaven.  It was so funny it almost made Sarah shoot ice cream out her nose  that would have been the best Father's Day present ever!

And then the day started to go South (so to speak) as our air condition decided to stop working just outside of Springfield, MO!  We managed to keep going with the windows open for another 764 miles before we finally decided we had to stop for the night.  To get a perspective, it looked like this;


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It was hot, it was disgusting and we had deadened derrieres by the time we finished!  It felt like a rolling Swedish Sauna at times and the wind was unbelievable.

But through it all the kids were great and never complained in the least.  And that was truly the best Father's Day Present of all!  But there was more presents for today!  My children (and my beautiful, loving wife Amy) had conspired to buy me a t-shirt from Dickey's and they presented it to me at dinner tonight and what does it say?  - Hardcore Carnivore!  And all I can say is, "Yes, yes I am".

And now its late at night, things are getting blurry and tomorrow I have to go out in search of a mechanic in Clinton who can fix our air conditioner and hopefully get us back out on the road by noon.  Ahhhhh, the life of the travler.  But it was a great Father's Day!

And on yet a separate note, we have the first to add to our list of what Sarah has dubbed "Random Refuse".  This is all the bizarre things we see on the side of the road that we would collect if we had room for it in the van.  We're not talking your every day items such as cans, bottles or other recyclable items.  These are the things that you really can't believe someone just abandoned on the side of the road.  Today as we pulled out of Greenville we saw a pontoon boat on a trailer abandomed on the side of the road - actually it was in the middle of the entrance circle as we were pulling on to the highway.  Then later in the day we saw another boat on a trailer abandoned by the side of the road.  So, the Random Refuse Count thus far is two boats on trailers.  We've decided that we're going to save the "Flattened Fauna Report" for the actual ride back, in the car there were just to many to see and they're sometimes too difficult to identify at 70 miles an hour.

Stay well and you'll be hearing more from the road!

And We're Off!

Well as you'll notice from this blog the entry is a lot shorter.  Mainly becuase we are now OFFICIALLY ON THE ROAD!!!!!!  We left yesterday afternoon at 4:30 (only 2.5 hours later than we had originally planned) to the rousing cries of bon voyage from Phil Rosenberg and his camera.  As you may remember from a previous blog, Phil is filming a documentary of our journey and he has spent the past week putting together interviews of me and the family for the pre-journey footage.  He came at 2:00 (we originally hoped to be out by 2:30 at the latest) to film our departure but with all the last minute trauma (we just couldn't get ourselves together and kept having to go back and get/pack things we had forgotten about) we didn't pull out until 4:30.  We didn't have anyone see us off, I guess that's our own fault for not making more of it to everyone we know.  It would have been nice to have some folks see us off.

And now, as is my wont, I am going to go off on a tagent just for a moment because I need to vent.  You see, my wife has been working so hard on this project.  The kids have given up a lot (particularly their summer with friends) to do this.  I have been training hard (900 miles ridden in the last month alone) to get ready for this and yet we can't see to get any media exposure.  We were able to make an incredible connection with a woman named Gina Nemo who is a relative of our friends Hilary, Jaime and Scott.  She has been a godsend and in just few days seems to have gotten us some media bites.  It's just very frustrating that no Long Island news media wanted to cover this event.  Now, don't get me wrong, I AM NOT DOING THIS FOR MY OWN PUBLICITY.  I've had enough of my own accolades in my life.  But the publicity would help us get the word out about Sunrise and the more people hear about it, the more likely people mighyt be to give, and for yet another child to go to Sunrise.  So, if you're reading this, please spread the word - we truly need all the help and connections we can get.

Okay, enough of the soap box for now.  You want to know what has happened to us since we left the starting gate.

Well, to begin, since we left at 4:30 we hit HORRIBLE traffic!  It took us almost two and a half hours to get to the rest stop on the Jersey Turnpike.  We had dinner and prepared to head out and then we realized we had gone the wrong way - we were 60 miles or so off course.  Sooooo, we pulled up the trusty GPS (thank you Magellan) and we headed onto our route.

And here is where it took the real road trip feel - instead of checking into a motel for the night we slept for a few hours at a rest stop in Pennsylvania and drove through the night.  I wish there was lots to share about what we did today but the bottom line is we drove, and drove, and drove and just because we could, we drove some more.  The kids have been great troopers and they have handled it with such excitement and patience, I sometimes have to look at them closely to make sure they really are our kids and not some cruel trick played on us by alien doppelgangers.

So tonight we find ourselves in the bucolic setting of Greenville, Illinois!  Yes, we managed to cross NJ, Pennsylvania and MOST of Illinois before we finally stopped.  It has been a great adventure and I have to admit that much to my chagrin (and a credit to Amy's patience) I slept most of the day today.  I was just completly wiped out from last night's drive that when I wasn't driving I just slept. 

As a result I missed a bit of what the family experienced such as - wind farms, mountain passes, rain (yes, I slept through the rain) and most of the license plate game!

But we've now made it almost a quarter of the way to San Diego and we're a bit closer to starting the ride to change the lives of some children fighting the hardest battle of all!  And don't forget - if you want to give, even a little, just go to the Connor's Army Ride Across America event site and make a donation - even $5 will make a difference!

Stay well and I will write more from the road very soon!

Rising From the Ashes

Throughout time many cultures have had a myth about a creature, usually a bird, that had the ability to become reborn after death.  In many cultures such as the ancient Egyptian, Arabian, Chinese, Japanese, Russian and Native American this creature was a bird.  In Egypt it was referred to as the Benu or Bennu.  In China it was called the Feng Huang, in Japan the Ho-OO.  In Russia the name of this particular creature is the Zhar-Ptitsa and the Native Americans called it the Thunderbird.  What the creature in all of these cultures seemed to have in common is the idea of rebirth.

In the Arabian version it is described as a bird with a colorful plumage and a tail of gold and scarlet (or purple, blue, and green according to some legends). It has a 500 to 1000 year life-cycle, near the end of which it builds itself a nest of twigs that then ignites; both nest and bird burn fiercely and are reduced to ashes, from which a new, young phoenix or phoenix egg arises, reborn anew to live again. The new phoenix is destined to live as long as its old self. In some stories, the new phoenix embalms the ashes of its old self in an egg made of myrrh and deposits it in the Egyptian city of Heliopolis (literally "sun-city" in Greek). It is said that the bird's cry is that of a beautiful song. The Phoenix's ability to be reborn from its own ashes implies that it is immortal, though in some stories the new Phoenix is merely the offspring of the older one. In very few stories they are able to change into people.

The town of Phoenix actually took its name for its own ability to create life out of the ashes, so to speak.  The naming of the city is attributed to a spurious English “Lord” named Darrell Duppa.  Duppa was a well-educated world traveler who, it was rumored, was given a substantial allowance by his wealthy English relatives to remain permanently at large.
His raucous lifestyle, highlighted by epic bouts with dipsomania was, no doubt, a source of embarrassment to his relatives and contributed to his banishment to Arizona. It was said “Lord” Duppa was fluent in seven languages. Unfortunately for his listeners, the erudite eccentric spoke all seven in the same paragraph.

Duppa was a member of a committee chosen to select a name for the new settlement on the banks of the Salt River one sunny October day in 1870. An intrepid group of entrepreneurs led by Jack Swilling had cleaned out some prehistoric canals dug by the now-vanished Hohokam people; an irrigation company had been organized and plans were being made to develop farms. Soon the arid valley would grow crops to supply the military post at Fort McDowell and the mining camps throughout the Bradshaw Mountains. Now they decided it was time to give the place a name.

Swilling wanted to call the new settlement “Stonewall,” after his hero, the late “Stonewall” Jackson. Another member chose Salina for the Salt River. Still another wanted Pumpkinville for the wild pumpkins growing in the area. When Duppa’s turn came, he arose and waxed eloquently on the ancient civilization that had once flourished on the land where they stood. He predicted the rise of another great civilization on the same site. In his inimitable elocutionary style Duppa compared the phenomenon to the mythical Phoenix bird in Egypt that lived 500 years, then rose from its own funeral pyre to flourish again. Needless to say, Duppa’s proposal carried the day and the Phoenix we know today is certainly flourishing with transplated octogenarians seeking the fountain of youth in the sun.

We'll actually be traveling to Phoenix on our Ride Across America.  Although we will be staying in Wickenburgh (the from which Jack Swilling had ventured in his fact finding mission) we hope to visit Amy's friend Matthew who is the artistic director of The Actor's Theatre of Phoenix. 

While I'm riding through the desert and trying not to let my brains fry like the mythical egg on a sidewalk



I'll be carrying with me a particular picture in my head;

  

You see, this past Sunday I had my entire outlook changed by the amazing gift of song and support shown by a group of ACT alumni, current ACTers, their parents, friends and family as they put together a Musical Cabaret to benefit Sunrise to help the Connor's Army Ride Across America.  It was a much needed shot of love and confidence that I sorely need at this point.

In the last few months I've really been feeling as if this quest to ride across America for Sunrise Day Camp has been nothing but a midlife crisis and it has now spiralled into something that is going to be a miserable failure and put my family through hell for no good reason.  Because of all the crap that's gone on this past year with vindictive parents, I had really been feeling that I was doomed to not be able to raise any measureable funds simp due to the fact that my main base of support had been severed from me.

All that changed this past Sunday as these amazing alumni and their parents put together a benefit and raised a couple of thousand dollars (figures are still coming in) for the kids of Sunrise.  I was abashed, humbled and touched by the love and support given to me by all of these young people.  More than anything else it has been a reminder that the journey  my family and I are about to embark upon IS important, that people believe in us and that we can do it.  My spirit has been renewed and I feel as if I CAN do this!  I can rise from the ashes of this blue funk and make it happen - I have too many people who believe in me and I can't let them, or the kids of Sunrise down.

And now, a couple of musical interludes to share this theme of rising from the ashes the first from Crowns Club;



And now, in the words of Monty Python, time for something completely different - Annihilator;



That's all for now, time is ticking down and we're getting close.

Stay well and I'll see you on the road!

It's The Final Countdown - Five to Go!

I have been promising for a while now to start blogging daily and to be honest I had the best of intentions starting last week after the amazing event thrown for Sunrise Day Camp by the ACT Alumni.

However, my once carefully crafted plans went awry and with all the preparations for our departure this Friday I wasn't able to get that going until this past weekend.  But to say we're only six days away from seemed sort of anticlimactic so I decided to wait until today so I could say we only had five days to go! 

Now this is not to be confused with the group Five for Fighting whose single "100 Years can be seen here;



Of course to be hquite honest, after 74 days in a mini van, we may have to rename the Connor Clan to "Five for Fighting"!  Its already getting a little tense around the household as we realize we are nowhere near as ready to do this as we had thought.

I don't mean the cycling part.  I've been logging hundreds of miles a week since the beginning of May in order to get myself fit.  I've been riding in all sorts of weather - including the rain - to get myself in condition.  The bike is tuned up and supplies have been purchased to make sure Pearl is ready to go.  Its all the other things that need to be done and as the clock tickes inexorably closer to departure, we find ourselves (okay, just Amy and me) sleeping less as we wake up in the middle of the night remembering things we need to do, staying up much later trying to pack or plan or reroute and generally realizing that we have no idea how to live in mini van for a summer.

This past weekend was pretty much spent doing all the little chores that should have been done a long time ago.  For instance, I finally fixed the sink in the downstairs bathroom.  Its been leaking for a while but if you twist the handle to the left just right it stops.  Well, since we have someone house sitting for us (another source of stress that was finally relieved as we FINALLY found a wonderful young lady who will be taking care of our cat with the magical purr) who won't make this action an automatic reflex, I had to fix the cartridge that was inside.  But on Saturday I got the wrong part, so EARLY Sunday morning I had to go to Home Depot and get the right one.  Once that was finally finished (which entailed taking the one upstairs apart to see how the model went back together because I couldn't remember where all the little parts went that I took out) I tackled drywalling the ceiling of the upstairs bathroom, yes, the same drywall that has been living on my porch for two months when I first started THAT project.

After enlisting Amy and then first Marci and later our friends Rita and Carla, two sheets of drywall were finally screwed to the ceiling of our upstairs bathroom.  And it was 8 o'clock at night - where did the weekend go?!?!  So much for separating all of my bike tools into what is going and what gets left behind.

And the other problem has been trying to book all the hotels/hostels/motels/friends' houses where we'll be staying where we'll be staying this summer.  Amy has pretty much spent most of her time since Saturday morning trying to take care of this task and she's only a quarter done.  And yes, we both realize we should have done this earlier.

I guess we were both living in a state of denial and disbelief that this would finally take place as a family project.  Up until about a week ago when we found someone to take care of Lily , we were sort of thinking I would have to do this by myself in an unsupported fashion.  Although I am so relieved and happy to say that won't be the case, I guess we didn't really plan for all the things we should have if we had just been planning on it all along.

So we leave in five days and we are feverishly trying to take care of all the little things.  I'll keep you updated as to how that is going!

The other part of this blog post is to tell all of you who have been expressing an interest in following us that this will indeed be the place where you can stay aprised of our journey.  Starting with tomorrow's entry, I'm going to start paring down my verbage to a basic update of the day's events, hight points, perhaps include some photo or video of our journey and that will pretty much be how it evolves.  For those of you who have enjoyed my stream-of-consciousness meanderings, I thank you for your support and I'm glad if they entertained you in some small part.

Even though the new entries will be a much more straight forward log and record  of the day's events, I hope to still keep your curiosity (especially those of you who have the morbid kind) piqued by engaging in two logs that will be updated at the end of each blog entry.  One we are calling "Flattened Fauna" and, per my environmenatlly conscious daughter's suggestion, through it we can keep track of the particular migratory challenges faced by particular species as they "try to cross the road".  Sarah figures this will be a great record of what wildlife is native to a certain area and perhaps see if roads have made incursions into their natural habitat, thereby causing a danger to their survival.



The other log we will be keeping we don't have a cool alliterative term for.  If any of you think of one, let us know but here is what we are tracking - the unuusal household objects we find abandoned by the side of the road.  Think of all th things that fall off of the tops of cras, the backs of trucks, off of scooters, what have you that just get left there - sofas, mattresses, refrigerators, chairs, etcs.   The idea being to see what we could have brought back to Long Island had we been pulling a trailer and loaded it up with all of this ecologically damaging stuff.

So that's it in a nutshell - I've already used up my allotted time to update this blog and my cruel taskmistress is wanting me to go back to work - there is lots to pack before we leave, and lots to pack before we leave (with apologies to Robert Frost).

Aaaaannnnddd, being a child of the 80's, here is the song that keeps playing over and over in my head;



Stay well my friends and I'll see you on the cross country road soon.