So You Think You Need A Camper Van, Day 1
Mar. 12th, 2004 12:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
garoteI maneuver my body into the cramped airplane seat. Once I'm settled, I unroll the long black wire of my in-ear headphones and cram one into each side of my head. They're the kind that form an airtight seal, which reduces the ambient noise level drastically, but also makes every footfall I make resound with a deep thud in my skull. They're impractical for walks and exercise, but for sitting in a noisy place, they are perfect.
The iPod cues up Pete Namlook's 60-minute ambient piece titled "Autumn". It's a piece of music too bizarre to call 'New Age', and too attention-seeking to call 'Ambient', but other labels are even less appropriate. If you've ever gripped the end of a metal slinky between your teeth and twanged it, the alien sound that arrives to your eardrums through the bones in your head is what "Autumn" sounds like. Airports and plane flights are bizarre and they deserve a bizarre soundtrack.
I only managed five hours of sleep the last night, so after the takeoff from San Jose, which I spend glued to the window like always, I push my seat back and try to nap for a while. It doesn't work. I have the whole row to myself, but I can't spread across it because the armrests are locked in place. My destination is Texas, where it will be two hours later than my body expects, so if I want I can check in at a nice hotel and turn in early. But only if the van purchase goes smoothly.
I have a cashier's check for three thousand dollars in my wallet. That's the remaining balance on the van I'm buying. The man selling it has promised to pick me up from the airport in Dallas, and take me to the van for inspection. If I accept it, I give him the check. If I don't, he gives me back my deposit of $1400 and we part ways.
Yes, conducting this kind of business is risky. The transactions go fast, and only a some of them are reversible. The first question people asked me was, "Why are you going to Texas to buy a van, when you could get one in California and avoid a lot of hassle?" I replied that a used van, of any calibre, in almost any part of California, whether it's from an individual or a dealership, costs more money. Thousands more. And more on top of that, if it costs so much I have to finance it.
I'm not a genius when it comes to cars, but I know a few things. I know how a good engine is supposed to sound, and how a transmission should feel. I also have some smart friends, who can offer advice if something looks suspicious. So I'm flying to Dallas to purchase a 1997 Ford E-350 extended-body cargo van for $4500 cash. It's a retired fleet vehicle. I'll purchase it there, then drive it back to California.
A road trip adventure!
Couldn't I go a quarter of the distance up to Oregon and get a price almost as good? One word for that: Snow. Park a vehicle in snow for six years and the bottom rusts out. If I went to any Northern state I'd be running around dealerships and residential neighborhoods for days, only to find the bottom of every car has been flaked part-way off. Instead I'm going where snow is a lot less common.
Even without that restriction it's not easy finding an extended-body windowless cargo van, with double-doors on the side instead of a slider, not too old but not too expensive. And it also wasn't easy deciding that I needed one in the first place. I watched the "used vehicle" listings for camper vans for almost a year, biding my time to get a sample of what's around. I obsessed over which components a camper van really needs, then obsessed over how they should be arranged in a floor plan, then obsessed over the cost effectiveness of buying one new, or used, or buying a van and having it converted from scratch. Finally I settled on a conversion from scratch because I could get exactly the layout I wanted, and spend very little money. The van I'm flying out to retrieve in Texas matches my template.
At least, I hope it does. My plane ticket is one way. If the van truly sucks I can always take a train or a bus back I suppose, but I feel confident that I've got an honest seller. One who will at least try to make things right even if they don't start that way. I'll meet him face-to-face in about five hours.
In the meantime, all I can do is enjoy the flight. The mountains below me are stunning. Thousands of feet directly beneath the plane, a tiny road snakes through the snow-covered wilderness. I try to imagine driving along that spider-thread road, at the speed of this jet. I can't comprehend it.
The mountain peaks abruptly end as the plane descends into a broad, flat valley. My flight schedule listed a stop in Denver, Colorado, so I assume that Denver is the city below. It looks more spread out, and less forested, than I imagined. A cluster of tall buildings, what I assume is downtown Denver, sticks up incongruously from the middle of the plain like the Emerald City of Oz. I gaze at it until the plane bounces onto the runway.
All the other passengers get up and leave, to stretch their legs or catch different flights. I'm stuck on this one until it takes off again. I still can't sleep, so I stare out the window some more. A luggage train glides into view like a giant centipede, across the wedge of hot gray cement in my field of vision. A young woman in sturdy work clothes is perched at the console, with one heavy boot planted casually on the dashboard. Her coarse purple shirt is unbuttoned at the collar. Her smiling face is turned up to the sun. She flicks the steering wheel with one hand, and the luggage train coasts up to a conveyor belt that's been lowered from the bowels of the plane. The train stops, and she sets the brake, runs both hands up through her tousled brown hair and lets her arms fall limp onto the seat. She's taking a nap.
I stare at her for a while, wishing that I could be out there in the sun. Just another day of driving the centipede around on the tarmac. Actually, what I would really like, is her job for a few weeks. I need more time out of the house, and out of the office. It's probably one of the reasons this journey feels like the right thing to do.
Another woman drives up in a centipede vehicle with empty compartments, and the two women converse for a while. Below me, I see a wedge of white metal rise up. A large hatch has opened in the side of the plane. Below that I see a brown wedge extrude down towards the ground: A conveyor belt. A man wearing thick gloves walks into view and pulls a lever next to it. As items roll down from inside the cargo bay, he stacks them in piles on the ground. Both women dismount their centipedes to help. Then the man throws the conveyor belt into reverse, and they all unload luggage from the racks of the full centipede and feed it into the plane.
While this is happening, two men arrive in a gigantic rectangular fuel truck. They draw a weirdly thin red hose from a coil on one side, and attach it to the plane. Then an oversized forklift growls up to the front of the plane, and lifts a big metal box up to match the height of the crew area. One side of the plane wall folds up, and a door opens on the box, revealing a man wearing a kitchen smock. He's fussing over two long rows of metal canisters.
This man walks to the opening of his box and presses a button, and a thick ramp extrudes from it like a tongue and locks onto the side of the plane. He then grabs a wheeled dolly-cart, and kicks the rim under the stack of metal canisters nearest to the door. He yanks the cart back ward, taking the whole stack with him, and pushes it across the ramp. In a few seconds he brings the empty cart out again. The crew begins securing the canisters in place with hooks and netting while the man fetches more. As they're rearranged I get a look under a few of the lids and see they're full of ice, food, and soft drinks.
The chef finishes his delivery, retracts the ramp, and closes his doors. The forklift slowly lowers him back to ground level as the crew seals the side of the plane. The operators of the fuel truck detach their hose, leap onto their vehicle, and drive away. The two women finish loading the piles of luggage into the previously empty centipede, talk and smile a bit more, and drive out of view, in opposite directions. The conveyor belt slides back into the plane.
I lean back in my seat, thinking. Having a job programming computers really does make one miss physical activity. I don't see how my job satisfaction could ever be any higher than that of the brown-haired woman, taking a nap on top of her luggage train, in the crisp sun of early Colorado spring. If only I could put the manual labor back into the equation. Maybe I should hook an electric bike up to my laptop power supply.
I ponder this while the seats around me fill up with passengers again. A young black girl, about fourteen, stows her luggage and sits down next to me. She says hello, then resumes reading an R. L. Stine novel pressed open over one leg. It's the one about an evil amusement park, I think.
I attempt to sleep for the entire flight into Texas, and only manage a light doze.
When I arrive I feel refreshed by the overcast weather. I claim my luggage, then dial my van contact on my cellphone. This is it -- if he's a crook and his operation is a front, then he won't answer, and he won't be here at the airport. He'll just sit tight wherever he is, keeping my 1400 dollars. Right here, my plans could go straight into the ground.
He answers on the second ring. He's waiting just outside the gate in a large truck, which he describes to me. In a few minutes I've tossed my suitcase in the back, and am shaking his hand for the first time.
We swap stories about vans we've owned in the past, and about the fleet vehicle business, and about travel. He strikes me as an overworked but honest man. He's also got a lot of useful knowledge. As we drive, he explains to me that I can tell how old the tires in a Ford truck are by feeling the steering wheel as I drive. If it's wiggling just a little bit when I hold it on the lower right, then the right-side drive tire needs attention. Likewise for the left. And if the steering wheel is wiggling when I hold it at the top, both tires need replacing. I have no idea if it's true.
He says he could feel that wiggling when he test-drove the van that he's selling to me, and that's why he wanted two new drive tires put on it. However he didn't have the time to get the tires, so the ones on my van are still old. He offers to ride with me to a tire place, if one is still open, or to phone his credit card in to any place along the road if I decide to get new tires installed later.
(As an aside, he was true to his word. I received a check for the full cost of two tires shortly after faxing him the invoice when I got home. Good for him.)
Our first stop is the fleet headquarters, where the van is parked out front. I walk around it, seeing it directly for the first time. It's even bigger than it looked in the online photos. In fact, compared to the Honda Accord I usually drive, it's gigantic. I could fit a Honda Accord inside it. And probably haul it around town.
My seller reaches into his pocket, for the keys to his office. They're missing. He shakes his head in disbelief. For him, it's been "one of those days". "The experience with every buyer is different", he says. "They all have different schedules and different needs. Things can get pretty messy, and especially during evening pickups, it seems like something new goes wrong every time."
He calls his wife, who agrees to bring him a second set of keys. He then says he's going to zip around the corner and grab a soda, and offers me one. Why not? After he drives off, I take a bunch of pictures of the van and then unwrap some of the food supply that is the bulk of my luggage. When you're on the road and you're vegan, you have to think ahead. It crosses my mind that he may never return -- that I've been left in the driveway of an unrelated business by a con-man who likes to pointlessly confuse his victims -- but the idea refuses to make sense. All I can do is hang out and see what happens next.
My friend returns, and we chat animatedly about vacation trips and truck maintenance. He wants to do more of his business on the internet, so I offer him some advice. I describe my plans to convert the van and go driving through Alaska, and he leans back, gazes at the sky, and unrolls a practically Shakespearean monologue about how intensely he wants to go traveling around the country, seeing all the things he only heard about when he was young and preoccupied. The rest of his family has caught the travel bug as well. He steers the conversation sideways to tell me about his relative in South America.
"You know, he's a teacher down there, and one day he wrote us asking to send him all the little gadgets and doodads we could, so he could show them to his students and teach them about science and physics. Well, they thought he was a magician or something. They'd never seen silly-putty for example. And the adults, they were amazed too."
"So it turned into this game for us, we were trying to find all the neatest things to send him. And don't get me wrong, I mean, I love this country and all. We make some amazing things. But you know, we also make an awful lot of weird useless stuff, like slinkies, and glow-in-the-dark toys, and puzzles, and Rubik's cubes ... they'd never seen any of this stuff before."
It's an interesting story, and it also triggers a thought in my head: If I was hearing this story from someone in California, would that person also voice a disclaimer, affirming their love of this country? Am I hearing this disclaimer because I'm in Texas? Or because I'm talking to a good salesman, trained to avoid offense above all else?
I shrug inwardly. It's probably because I'm hearing this story from a salesman. An inexperienced tourist like me would come here expecting to find great shows of patriotism -- "Don't Mess With Texas!" -- and thus find evidence of it in every detail. But the popular west coast vision of Texans, as a bunch of well-armed flag-waving homophobes, is just as overblown as the popular vision of people on the west coast that Texans operate from: We're all a bunch of soulless thugs and creepy flaming queens.
Standing there, half-listening to the story of the South American teacher, I pull the thread a little more. It seems like there's an attitude that a community has, and then there's an attitude that a community projects, and if you don't live in that community, all that concerns you is the attitude it projects into yours. And looking at the west coast from outside, I have to admit, I can understand why people would be irritated by the ideas seemingly projected from places like Hollywood, San Francisco, and Seattle. For example -- why would a community of gay Texans be impressed by San Francisco's Gay Pride Parade? It often showcases men dressed and acting in a style known as "high camp," which outsiders may misinterpret to mean that all gay men are cross-dressers with effeminate mannerisms. Remotely distilled to that essence, it could serve to drive gay men farther into the closet, feeling that the only way to survive is to "pass", and that on the other hand, any man who acts effeminate or wants to cross-dress must be gay.
(It's important to note that, however much that might happen, it's not Pride Parade that should change. It's not there for the optics; it's there for the community. What should change, is the way it's covered in the press, and described by unscrupulous and bigoted community leaders - especially the in the church - who have axes to grind.)
Travel always puts interesting ideas in my head. I'm pondering all this with one arm leaning over the window of a Ford 4x4, while the salesman sits inside the cab sorting paperwork and telling stories. I hear the sound of an approaching engine, and realize I've been staring into space for the last minute.
Another truck pulls into the driveway, behind my salesman's. His wife has arrived with the keys. Now we can actually get into the building, and finish the paperwork around a desk. It's good to be inside. One of the papers I receive is a copy of the repair order for the van's transmission. Both the transmission and the torque converter were rebuilt less than a month ago -- one of the selling points of this van, to me.
I receive the keys, and start the van up. The engine sounds robust, with a fairly smooth idle. Needs an oil change though. I get ready to travel, by unfolding my laptop on the passenger seat. I have a small black lump of plastic the size of a tea cookie, with a magnet on one side, which I stick to the inside of the cab high on the wall over the door. It's a GPS receiver. A long wire hangs down from it, which I plug into the laptop. I launch an application and my position appears on the screen, within a map of the Dallas area. This is how I'm going to navigate home. I have six gigabytes of map data loaded onto the computer, including restaurants and hotels. It's a little more convenient than buying a stack of paper maps from a series of gas stations, and following road signs for hotels, and driving around randomly for gas and restaurants.
We complete our transaction and talk a bit more. I hop back into the van and start it up. The salesman heads for his truck. I reach for the seatbelt, pull it down, and notice for the first time that the seatbelt buckle is entirely missing. I kill the engine and flag the salesman down.
He looks at the seat, then brings a hand to his forehead and wipes it slowly down his face. "I must apologize, you know, my inspectors were supposed to notice exactly this sort of thing long before you got here." Luckily he has a mechanic on call. In less than ten minutes the mechanic arrives, for a total of three trucks and a van crowded into the parking lot in front of the office. Twenty minutes later he has attached a belt-buckle assembly scavenged from a similar van in the back lot. I don't ask whether he took note of which van supplied the buckle. Maybe he just passed this problem downstream to the next customer in a few weeks.
While they're testing the belt, they also test the brake lights and signals. Sure enough, one of the rear lamps is too dim. My salesman explains it like so: "Fleet vehicles are often used only during the day, so to save money when a lamp fails, a mechanic will grab any old bulb and stick it in the socket. A colored bulb in a taillight will be just as dim as a regular bulb during the day, but at night it will be useless. You'll wanna check for that. My inspectors were supposed to catch this too, but apparently they didn't, so we're fixing it now."
While this is happening, I ask for a tape measure, which the salesman produces from a pocket of his jeans. He holds one end, and I walk to the other end of the van, unrolling the tape. The van is 18 feet long from bumper to bumper. I over-estimated the length required on the Alaskan ferries by almost five feet. I wonder if it's too late to ask the ferry service for a partial reimbursement?
The mechanic tests a few other parts of the electrical system, then voices his approval to the salesman. I shake the mechanic's hand. "You know, they say a good mechanic is hard to find, but they must be wrong because you came right over!" He laughs, and drives off in his truck. Next I shake hands with the salesman and his wife, agree to call them if I have any concerns, and drive the van out onto the road.
This vehicle is even bigger than the Ford Aerostar I used to drive. Plus it has no rearview mirror, and no windows at all in the cargo area. It's a good thing the salesman insisted on helping me adjust the side mirrors before I left, because I really do need them.
I turn south, deciding to take the quicker southern route instead of the slower but more scenic northern route. Let's see how far I get before I feel tired. But first, I should fill up on gas.
I pull in at a Chevron, and after some head-scratching, I locate the gas tank cover. I'm still getting used to the idea that I own this gigantic vehicle. Gas is a full 70 cents cheaper per gallon here than in my home town. I watch the counter tick up, as almost 20 gallons of fuel pours into the side of the van. It's going to cost a lot to fill this thing up in California.
It takes a while to find a freeway on-ramp. They work a little differently in Texas. There's almost always a frontage road that runs next to the highway, and a ramp connecting the road to the highway at irregular intervals. Around the ramp is a strange 1.5-way configuration of stop-signs, so that people going onto the freeway, or barreling down off it, do not have to stop, and everyone else does.
I puzzle my way up one of these ramps and step on the gas. The first thing I notice is that the rattling noise of the shelving in the back of the van becomes absolutely incredible. I shout "HOLY CRAP THAT'S LOUD!" and I can barely hear my own voice. It sounds like 200 pounds of cookware falling down an endless flight of stairs. I have got to find a place to discard this shelving, as quickly as possible, or it's going to drive me bonkers.
In fifteen minutes I find another gas station, and buy an adjustable wrench and a pair of pliers from their meager display rack. I climb into the rear of the van and try turning the bolt on the inside of the nearest cabinet, down on the floor. It turns and turns, but doesn't get any looser. I was afraid of this. The bolts are secured with nuts, placed on the underside of the van. I'm going to need a second wrench, and some way to lock it in place, so I can unscrew the opposing nut with the first wrench. At least one wrench has to be a socket-wrench, too, or the operation will take forever to complete. Where am I going to get a socket-wrench at this hour? I've got to think of something, because there's no way I'm going to survive 1800 miles of Godzilla dancing around in a wrecking yard.
I decide my best bet is to find a gas station with a larger shop. It's close to 10:00pm, and I don't know what else would be open this late. With the van back on the freeway, the brain-rattling noise convinces me that I have to take more direct action. I pull of at the next gas station, and dig around in the van until I find a bolt that resembles the ones in the floor. I show the bolt to the woman in the station's booth, and ask, "Where can I get the tools to unscrew a whole bunch of these, at this time of night?"
"There's a Wal-Mart just a few miles down the road; you could try them."
"Really? They'd be open this late?"
"Oh, they're open 'till midnight I think."
She gives me directions, and I pull out to the frontage road again. I drive along it for about half a mile before I realize all over again that it's not an on-ramp, and unless I make a left turn I'll never actually reach the freeway. A police car pulls off a side road and tails me for a mile. I tool along at 50 and sing They Might Be Giants a-cappella, very loud, until the officer gets bored and turns down a different road.
This is a little bit of foreshadowing. For years, and years hence, the van is going to become a massive target for both cops and thieves. The cops will assume I'm a vagrant using the van as a house, and the thieves will assume the back is full of tools and hardware, and both will head right for it. Over and over, forever.
The Wal-Mart is still open, and busy. Even a neighborhood dog is trotting across the street to hang out there, ahead of me at the intersection. I hold the nut up again to the bemused looking greeter at the store entrance, brandishing it a bit like some giant thistle I just yanked out of my backside, and he points me to the tool department. When no one is looking I pry the sockets from each of the socket sets and look for a fit. The ten-dollar one matches. I purchase that, a gallon of water, and a bag of grapes from a stand by the register.
There are two sets of shelves to remove. The set on the driver's side is longer, and partially bolted to the security cage that divides the can of the van from everything else. The cage is supposed to have an access door, but some zealous mechanic has sealed it by driving a steel screw right through the lip of the door frame. The knob is locked for good measure, and I don't have a key. All this dead weight has got to go.
The shelves are held upright by bolts in the walls. These have real sockets, which are part of the frame of the van, however the shelves have vibrated with such force that the sockets have exploded, or torn out sharp ribbons of metal around themselves. Over the years, the loose-hanging shelves began to react to each bump in the road, swing back and hammering at the walls. For the intense beating that the walls endured, they actually look alright. The steel must be incredibly hard. All the chipped paint will be covered by insulation and paneling later on, so that's not a problem.
I unscrew the few bolts that remain in the walls, and drop them on a random shelf. The rest of the bolts are in the floor. I'm going to have to secure each bolt in place somehow, then crawl under the van and turn the nut from there. This ought to be fun.
While it's attached to a bolt, the adjustable wrench lays flat. So if I line it up against a vertical surface, like the inside wall of a shelf, it should press back on the bolt while I turn it the opposite way below. I pick the bolt nearest the door for my first attempt, set the wrench around it, and scoot under the van on my back. Carefully slide the socket wrench into place, little bits of rust and grit landing on my face, and turn carefully... Clank! Instantly, the wrench up in the cargo area pops off the bolt.
I need something to hold it in place. So I climb back inside and rest the tire iron on top of the wrench. Then it's back under the van, for another turn. The wrench still pops off. I try again. Same deal. Dirt and grease cover my hands. I pull the jack out from the ribbing of the wall, and balance that on the tire iron. I turn the socket wrench very hard, and get no movement, except when the wrench above leaps away, scattering everything. I recover a stout chunk of steel pipe from the garbage on the shelves, and add it to the stack. Back on the ground, I turn the socket wrench as hard as I can. The stack flies apart.
Now it begins to rain. Long droplets like spider threads fall silently over the parking lot, which is still busy with customers. Nobody is surprised to see a guy working under a car. My back gets wet from lying on the ground, and my pants get filthy from kneeling in the van. After wasting an entire hour trying to loosen that first bolt, I decide to skip it and try another. If the next is equally as hard, I may have to give up on the whole operation.
The second nut starts turning immediately. When I pull off the socket wrench to see my progress, the nut falls right off and hits me in my surprised face. I hurl it away. When I move the wrench apparatus to the third bolt, that one turns easily too. I remove seven nuts and bolts, one right after the other, in half an hour. The damn first bolt was cursed! In a better world, there would have been a peal of ominous thunder the first time I turned it, warning me.
Finally I can't find any more bolts, except for the ones that hold the cage panels in. I'm leaving the cage alone for now. I have no choice but to attempt the nasty bolt again. Just as before, it slips off with enough force to fling the wrench around the inside of the van. Finally, at long last, I get it locked in just the right position. Turning the socket wrench two clicks at a time, with exhausting effort, I get the nut unscrewed. Then I smash the bolt on the end with the wrench, driving it up through the van floor so I can pull it out, and hurl it angrily against the wire cage. I scream "YOU SUCK!" I don't care what the shopping Texans think.
My hands are a mess, so I rinse them under the water jug. I walk inside the Wal-Mart to use their bathroom. There I give my hands and face a thorough washing, relishing the warm water. The greeter by the door nods at me like an old friend as I exit. He knows what I've been up to out there.
The payphone just outside the doors is ringing. I look around, but don't see anyone else, so I mosey over to it and answer, "Yeeeeeessss??"
An adult southern woman's voice crackles into my ear. "Oh, ahm sorry, ah must have the wrong number."
"Nooo problem!" I say, with gusto. Frankly, I'm happy to be doing anything that doesn't involve bolts.
The woman pauses, then says "Would you mand telling me what phone this is?"
"Why, it's the phone outside of a Wal-Mart!"
"Oh hey, um, could you do me a really big favor? Do you see a big green truck parked anywhere in that parking lot? With a big toolbox on it?"
"Hmmmmm." I scout around for a while. "Nope, plenty of trucks here, ma'am, but none of them green."
"Oh... Oh well, thanks very much for your help anyway."
"Nooo problem!"
Weeks later, I tell the story to my housemates, and they clue me in. The wife is checking up on her man. He was probably either paged from that number, or she saw that number on their caller ID. Perhaps he went out to the Wal-Mart to meet his "hoochie", and the wife wanted to know if he was parked there making out with someone in his work truck. I can't help hoping it was with another truck driving man, and they were gay lovers, getting some manly action on the down-low.
... Or it might just be a missed call. Who knows? I jump back in the van. For a second I fear I've drained the battery, powering the cab light and the laptop, so it's a relief to hear the engine chugging away. Now I've got to find a place to dump these shelves. Perhaps in the back of this very same Wal-Mart. As I'm rounding the first corner of the building, the dog I saw earlier comes running out of the open-air section of the garden department. He probably peed on a dozen things in there. My little partner in crime!
The perimeter of the store is watched by security cameras, anchored to the tops of the walls. I notice, however, that there's a spot just beyond the loading bays that is stacked high with empty containers and recyclables, obscuring the view of the camera across the alcove. The camera directly above is facing down along the back of the store, instead of below. It looks like I've found a blind spot. If they can haul all these metal containers away, they shouldn't have too much trouble hauling some metal shelves away at the same time. I decide to leave them here.
(Now, if any investigating Wal-Mart representative reads this, be aware that my means are not as restricted now, as they were at the time. If you inherited any inconvenient costs from the shelving deposit pooped out the back of my van, and think it's worth it to track me down, then by all means... Send a picture of the shelves where you took them, and bill me for the disposal. I'll cover it!)
I wish I had my leather welding gloves for this process. The metal is not sharp, but the shelves are heavy, and some of the holes are raw from the erosion of endless rattling. I could cut my fingers anywhere on these. A foot at a time, I pull the largest shelf out by one end, then yank the other end off the edge of the bumper. It drops to the pavement with a tremendous bang, and makes an ear-piercing wail as I drag it over to the fence by the metal boxes, like a banshee having some kind of drawn-out accident in a saw mill.
That takes care of the large set. Now for the small set, on the right side. I leap back into the van, grab hold of the shelves, and give a stout yank to move them along. They bob forward, then pull back, rooted to their spot on the van floor like an eager dog on a short leash. I try a few more pulls, wondering if there's just something really heavy in the drawers, but no, something else is securing them. I let go and get down on all fours, then brush at the debris and caked rust along the inside rim of the bottom compartment. Well hell, there's another bolt here. More work to do.
I set my wrench-pipe-jack apparatus on the bolt, and get under the van and start turning steadily with the socket wrench. The bolt turns without trouble. My mind wanders. Suddenly I realize that I've been turning for five minutes. I pull the wrench off and look at the nut. It hasn't moved down the bolt. Did the wrench on top come off at the start?
I climb back in and re-seat the apparatus. Looks fine to me. I get down under the van and begin turning with the socket wrench. Same effect. What gives?
It takes me way too long to realize that there are, in fact, two bolts. Cursing under my breath, I stick the wrench on the other one. At least it comes off easily.
Now this second one - the one I've already turned uselessly for five minutes. No wonder I didn't see it. The head of the bolt is in a narrow gap between a bottom shelf and the floor of the van. To even get the wrench in, I have to bend the gap wider with the tire iron. This turns out to be a mistake because the metal around the bolt bows upward, following the expansion of the gap. Now the wrench has a hard time staying on.
I place the wrench-jack-pipe combination as best I can, and creep under my vehicle. It's raining heavily now, and the flannel jacket and t-shirt are soaked through on my back. More dirt and bits of rust fall into my face as I grapple with the socket wrench. On the first turn, the apparatus clatters inside the van, giving me no progress.
Twelve times, I sprawl on the wet pavement under the van, and turn the wrench handle very carefully. Twelve times, the wrench up inside pops off the bolt. I turn the handle at the very limit of my strength, but the bolt doesn't loosen. Angry, muttering under my breath, I step inside the van and push the shelves over. They bend at the point where the final bolt is, and smash to the floor. I lift them back up, and knock them over again. I kick them. Then, I notice the tire iron.
Dazed with exhaustion and cursing all things inanimate, I beat the shit out of the shelves with the tire iron. I have to rest a few times, but eventually I distort the metal so much that the shelves tear off, leaving just a scrap around the bolt. Not really caring about noise any more, I fling the shelves out into the parking lot, then drag them quickly over to the first set. This time it sounds like several banshees line-dancing through a trash compactor. I should probably leave soon.
I jump into the rear of the van to survey my work, slip, and almost fall over. There's a mess of steel components scattered across the floor. Screws, washers, bolts, spacers, alligator clips, fasteners, snips of wire, mounting plates, and weird metal widgets I can't identify. They must have come pouring out when I knocked over the cabinets. I kick a few piles out through the rear doors, and then kick those piles to the side of the building so other people don't get their tires chewed up. The eBay ad should have said, "Van: Comes with free hardware store inside!" I wash my hands under the water jug again, and then drive out of the Wal-Mart, to the freeway beyond.
The rattle is almost eliminated -- the difference, I think, is almost worth the effort. Almost. I'm dead tired and it's very late even in my own time zone. The cage separating the cab from the rest of the van still rattles, especially at high speed, but removing it would mean unscrewing five more bolts from underneath, as well as countless others from the interior, and I don't need that kind of stress. All I need now is a place to sleep.
I drive for about an hour like this before the next town creeps onto the GPS map. The main street is an L-shape tacked on to the side of the highway, and I creep about a mile down it before encountering a lonely, ugly motel.
I ring the night bell and a man with a middle-eastern accent and resting angry face buzzes me into the crude lobby. He's sitting behind a desk in a glass enclosure that divides the room in half. When I ask him for a little extra time checking out - since I'm coming in at 4:30AM - he allows me one additional hour, and then asks, "Where you heading?"
"Santa Cruz, California." I say.
"Long way from home."
"Yep."
"Beautiful country out there in California. I want to visit sometime."
"You should."
My flophouse room costs 37 dollars, which he charges to my card. The key he hands me doesn't open the lock, so I ring the night bell and get another one. When I fling open the door I get smacked by a huge block of odor, so strong I can almost see it pushing out into the parking lot like runaway dough from an oven. A pink oozy room-shaped blob of deodorant and cigarette smoke. The environment is bad, but I feel strangely comfortable in it. It's private and it's got a bed, and I won't be staying long.
I dump my unsorted luggage on the sloping floor. It's bitterly cold, so I wander into the bathroom to start a hot shower. The whole room seems to be carved from the inside of a gigantic cube of fixative and plaster, with layers like rings in a tree. I anticipate every fixture coming off in my hand and thumping to the floor, but remarkably, none do.
I use up all the hot water, which doesn't take very long, and then dash for the bed while the heat is still in me. The sheets are disappointingly thin, so I pile all my laundry on top of them to insulate myself. Then I eat ravenously from the food Sherrila packed me, and call her on the phone to wish her goodnight. The heat spreads into the mattress, then creeps out into the air. I can feel myself getting cold already. I bundle all the blankets tighter and listen to my Terry Pratchett audiobook, determined to get at least a little sleep.
The iPod cues up Pete Namlook's 60-minute ambient piece titled "Autumn". It's a piece of music too bizarre to call 'New Age', and too attention-seeking to call 'Ambient', but other labels are even less appropriate. If you've ever gripped the end of a metal slinky between your teeth and twanged it, the alien sound that arrives to your eardrums through the bones in your head is what "Autumn" sounds like. Airports and plane flights are bizarre and they deserve a bizarre soundtrack.
I only managed five hours of sleep the last night, so after the takeoff from San Jose, which I spend glued to the window like always, I push my seat back and try to nap for a while. It doesn't work. I have the whole row to myself, but I can't spread across it because the armrests are locked in place. My destination is Texas, where it will be two hours later than my body expects, so if I want I can check in at a nice hotel and turn in early. But only if the van purchase goes smoothly.
I have a cashier's check for three thousand dollars in my wallet. That's the remaining balance on the van I'm buying. The man selling it has promised to pick me up from the airport in Dallas, and take me to the van for inspection. If I accept it, I give him the check. If I don't, he gives me back my deposit of $1400 and we part ways.
Yes, conducting this kind of business is risky. The transactions go fast, and only a some of them are reversible. The first question people asked me was, "Why are you going to Texas to buy a van, when you could get one in California and avoid a lot of hassle?" I replied that a used van, of any calibre, in almost any part of California, whether it's from an individual or a dealership, costs more money. Thousands more. And more on top of that, if it costs so much I have to finance it.
I'm not a genius when it comes to cars, but I know a few things. I know how a good engine is supposed to sound, and how a transmission should feel. I also have some smart friends, who can offer advice if something looks suspicious. So I'm flying to Dallas to purchase a 1997 Ford E-350 extended-body cargo van for $4500 cash. It's a retired fleet vehicle. I'll purchase it there, then drive it back to California.
A road trip adventure!
Couldn't I go a quarter of the distance up to Oregon and get a price almost as good? One word for that: Snow. Park a vehicle in snow for six years and the bottom rusts out. If I went to any Northern state I'd be running around dealerships and residential neighborhoods for days, only to find the bottom of every car has been flaked part-way off. Instead I'm going where snow is a lot less common.
Even without that restriction it's not easy finding an extended-body windowless cargo van, with double-doors on the side instead of a slider, not too old but not too expensive. And it also wasn't easy deciding that I needed one in the first place. I watched the "used vehicle" listings for camper vans for almost a year, biding my time to get a sample of what's around. I obsessed over which components a camper van really needs, then obsessed over how they should be arranged in a floor plan, then obsessed over the cost effectiveness of buying one new, or used, or buying a van and having it converted from scratch. Finally I settled on a conversion from scratch because I could get exactly the layout I wanted, and spend very little money. The van I'm flying out to retrieve in Texas matches my template.
At least, I hope it does. My plane ticket is one way. If the van truly sucks I can always take a train or a bus back I suppose, but I feel confident that I've got an honest seller. One who will at least try to make things right even if they don't start that way. I'll meet him face-to-face in about five hours.
In the meantime, all I can do is enjoy the flight. The mountains below me are stunning. Thousands of feet directly beneath the plane, a tiny road snakes through the snow-covered wilderness. I try to imagine driving along that spider-thread road, at the speed of this jet. I can't comprehend it.
The mountain peaks abruptly end as the plane descends into a broad, flat valley. My flight schedule listed a stop in Denver, Colorado, so I assume that Denver is the city below. It looks more spread out, and less forested, than I imagined. A cluster of tall buildings, what I assume is downtown Denver, sticks up incongruously from the middle of the plain like the Emerald City of Oz. I gaze at it until the plane bounces onto the runway.
All the other passengers get up and leave, to stretch their legs or catch different flights. I'm stuck on this one until it takes off again. I still can't sleep, so I stare out the window some more. A luggage train glides into view like a giant centipede, across the wedge of hot gray cement in my field of vision. A young woman in sturdy work clothes is perched at the console, with one heavy boot planted casually on the dashboard. Her coarse purple shirt is unbuttoned at the collar. Her smiling face is turned up to the sun. She flicks the steering wheel with one hand, and the luggage train coasts up to a conveyor belt that's been lowered from the bowels of the plane. The train stops, and she sets the brake, runs both hands up through her tousled brown hair and lets her arms fall limp onto the seat. She's taking a nap.
I stare at her for a while, wishing that I could be out there in the sun. Just another day of driving the centipede around on the tarmac. Actually, what I would really like, is her job for a few weeks. I need more time out of the house, and out of the office. It's probably one of the reasons this journey feels like the right thing to do.
Another woman drives up in a centipede vehicle with empty compartments, and the two women converse for a while. Below me, I see a wedge of white metal rise up. A large hatch has opened in the side of the plane. Below that I see a brown wedge extrude down towards the ground: A conveyor belt. A man wearing thick gloves walks into view and pulls a lever next to it. As items roll down from inside the cargo bay, he stacks them in piles on the ground. Both women dismount their centipedes to help. Then the man throws the conveyor belt into reverse, and they all unload luggage from the racks of the full centipede and feed it into the plane.
While this is happening, two men arrive in a gigantic rectangular fuel truck. They draw a weirdly thin red hose from a coil on one side, and attach it to the plane. Then an oversized forklift growls up to the front of the plane, and lifts a big metal box up to match the height of the crew area. One side of the plane wall folds up, and a door opens on the box, revealing a man wearing a kitchen smock. He's fussing over two long rows of metal canisters.
This man walks to the opening of his box and presses a button, and a thick ramp extrudes from it like a tongue and locks onto the side of the plane. He then grabs a wheeled dolly-cart, and kicks the rim under the stack of metal canisters nearest to the door. He yanks the cart back ward, taking the whole stack with him, and pushes it across the ramp. In a few seconds he brings the empty cart out again. The crew begins securing the canisters in place with hooks and netting while the man fetches more. As they're rearranged I get a look under a few of the lids and see they're full of ice, food, and soft drinks.
The chef finishes his delivery, retracts the ramp, and closes his doors. The forklift slowly lowers him back to ground level as the crew seals the side of the plane. The operators of the fuel truck detach their hose, leap onto their vehicle, and drive away. The two women finish loading the piles of luggage into the previously empty centipede, talk and smile a bit more, and drive out of view, in opposite directions. The conveyor belt slides back into the plane.
I lean back in my seat, thinking. Having a job programming computers really does make one miss physical activity. I don't see how my job satisfaction could ever be any higher than that of the brown-haired woman, taking a nap on top of her luggage train, in the crisp sun of early Colorado spring. If only I could put the manual labor back into the equation. Maybe I should hook an electric bike up to my laptop power supply.
I ponder this while the seats around me fill up with passengers again. A young black girl, about fourteen, stows her luggage and sits down next to me. She says hello, then resumes reading an R. L. Stine novel pressed open over one leg. It's the one about an evil amusement park, I think.
I attempt to sleep for the entire flight into Texas, and only manage a light doze.
When I arrive I feel refreshed by the overcast weather. I claim my luggage, then dial my van contact on my cellphone. This is it -- if he's a crook and his operation is a front, then he won't answer, and he won't be here at the airport. He'll just sit tight wherever he is, keeping my 1400 dollars. Right here, my plans could go straight into the ground.
He answers on the second ring. He's waiting just outside the gate in a large truck, which he describes to me. In a few minutes I've tossed my suitcase in the back, and am shaking his hand for the first time.
We swap stories about vans we've owned in the past, and about the fleet vehicle business, and about travel. He strikes me as an overworked but honest man. He's also got a lot of useful knowledge. As we drive, he explains to me that I can tell how old the tires in a Ford truck are by feeling the steering wheel as I drive. If it's wiggling just a little bit when I hold it on the lower right, then the right-side drive tire needs attention. Likewise for the left. And if the steering wheel is wiggling when I hold it at the top, both tires need replacing. I have no idea if it's true.
He says he could feel that wiggling when he test-drove the van that he's selling to me, and that's why he wanted two new drive tires put on it. However he didn't have the time to get the tires, so the ones on my van are still old. He offers to ride with me to a tire place, if one is still open, or to phone his credit card in to any place along the road if I decide to get new tires installed later.
(As an aside, he was true to his word. I received a check for the full cost of two tires shortly after faxing him the invoice when I got home. Good for him.)
Our first stop is the fleet headquarters, where the van is parked out front. I walk around it, seeing it directly for the first time. It's even bigger than it looked in the online photos. In fact, compared to the Honda Accord I usually drive, it's gigantic. I could fit a Honda Accord inside it. And probably haul it around town.
My seller reaches into his pocket, for the keys to his office. They're missing. He shakes his head in disbelief. For him, it's been "one of those days". "The experience with every buyer is different", he says. "They all have different schedules and different needs. Things can get pretty messy, and especially during evening pickups, it seems like something new goes wrong every time."
He calls his wife, who agrees to bring him a second set of keys. He then says he's going to zip around the corner and grab a soda, and offers me one. Why not? After he drives off, I take a bunch of pictures of the van and then unwrap some of the food supply that is the bulk of my luggage. When you're on the road and you're vegan, you have to think ahead. It crosses my mind that he may never return -- that I've been left in the driveway of an unrelated business by a con-man who likes to pointlessly confuse his victims -- but the idea refuses to make sense. All I can do is hang out and see what happens next.
My friend returns, and we chat animatedly about vacation trips and truck maintenance. He wants to do more of his business on the internet, so I offer him some advice. I describe my plans to convert the van and go driving through Alaska, and he leans back, gazes at the sky, and unrolls a practically Shakespearean monologue about how intensely he wants to go traveling around the country, seeing all the things he only heard about when he was young and preoccupied. The rest of his family has caught the travel bug as well. He steers the conversation sideways to tell me about his relative in South America.
"You know, he's a teacher down there, and one day he wrote us asking to send him all the little gadgets and doodads we could, so he could show them to his students and teach them about science and physics. Well, they thought he was a magician or something. They'd never seen silly-putty for example. And the adults, they were amazed too."
"So it turned into this game for us, we were trying to find all the neatest things to send him. And don't get me wrong, I mean, I love this country and all. We make some amazing things. But you know, we also make an awful lot of weird useless stuff, like slinkies, and glow-in-the-dark toys, and puzzles, and Rubik's cubes ... they'd never seen any of this stuff before."
It's an interesting story, and it also triggers a thought in my head: If I was hearing this story from someone in California, would that person also voice a disclaimer, affirming their love of this country? Am I hearing this disclaimer because I'm in Texas? Or because I'm talking to a good salesman, trained to avoid offense above all else?
I shrug inwardly. It's probably because I'm hearing this story from a salesman. An inexperienced tourist like me would come here expecting to find great shows of patriotism -- "Don't Mess With Texas!" -- and thus find evidence of it in every detail. But the popular west coast vision of Texans, as a bunch of well-armed flag-waving homophobes, is just as overblown as the popular vision of people on the west coast that Texans operate from: We're all a bunch of soulless thugs and creepy flaming queens.
Standing there, half-listening to the story of the South American teacher, I pull the thread a little more. It seems like there's an attitude that a community has, and then there's an attitude that a community projects, and if you don't live in that community, all that concerns you is the attitude it projects into yours. And looking at the west coast from outside, I have to admit, I can understand why people would be irritated by the ideas seemingly projected from places like Hollywood, San Francisco, and Seattle. For example -- why would a community of gay Texans be impressed by San Francisco's Gay Pride Parade? It often showcases men dressed and acting in a style known as "high camp," which outsiders may misinterpret to mean that all gay men are cross-dressers with effeminate mannerisms. Remotely distilled to that essence, it could serve to drive gay men farther into the closet, feeling that the only way to survive is to "pass", and that on the other hand, any man who acts effeminate or wants to cross-dress must be gay.
(It's important to note that, however much that might happen, it's not Pride Parade that should change. It's not there for the optics; it's there for the community. What should change, is the way it's covered in the press, and described by unscrupulous and bigoted community leaders - especially the in the church - who have axes to grind.)
Travel always puts interesting ideas in my head. I'm pondering all this with one arm leaning over the window of a Ford 4x4, while the salesman sits inside the cab sorting paperwork and telling stories. I hear the sound of an approaching engine, and realize I've been staring into space for the last minute.
Another truck pulls into the driveway, behind my salesman's. His wife has arrived with the keys. Now we can actually get into the building, and finish the paperwork around a desk. It's good to be inside. One of the papers I receive is a copy of the repair order for the van's transmission. Both the transmission and the torque converter were rebuilt less than a month ago -- one of the selling points of this van, to me.
I receive the keys, and start the van up. The engine sounds robust, with a fairly smooth idle. Needs an oil change though. I get ready to travel, by unfolding my laptop on the passenger seat. I have a small black lump of plastic the size of a tea cookie, with a magnet on one side, which I stick to the inside of the cab high on the wall over the door. It's a GPS receiver. A long wire hangs down from it, which I plug into the laptop. I launch an application and my position appears on the screen, within a map of the Dallas area. This is how I'm going to navigate home. I have six gigabytes of map data loaded onto the computer, including restaurants and hotels. It's a little more convenient than buying a stack of paper maps from a series of gas stations, and following road signs for hotels, and driving around randomly for gas and restaurants.
We complete our transaction and talk a bit more. I hop back into the van and start it up. The salesman heads for his truck. I reach for the seatbelt, pull it down, and notice for the first time that the seatbelt buckle is entirely missing. I kill the engine and flag the salesman down.
He looks at the seat, then brings a hand to his forehead and wipes it slowly down his face. "I must apologize, you know, my inspectors were supposed to notice exactly this sort of thing long before you got here." Luckily he has a mechanic on call. In less than ten minutes the mechanic arrives, for a total of three trucks and a van crowded into the parking lot in front of the office. Twenty minutes later he has attached a belt-buckle assembly scavenged from a similar van in the back lot. I don't ask whether he took note of which van supplied the buckle. Maybe he just passed this problem downstream to the next customer in a few weeks.
While they're testing the belt, they also test the brake lights and signals. Sure enough, one of the rear lamps is too dim. My salesman explains it like so: "Fleet vehicles are often used only during the day, so to save money when a lamp fails, a mechanic will grab any old bulb and stick it in the socket. A colored bulb in a taillight will be just as dim as a regular bulb during the day, but at night it will be useless. You'll wanna check for that. My inspectors were supposed to catch this too, but apparently they didn't, so we're fixing it now."
While this is happening, I ask for a tape measure, which the salesman produces from a pocket of his jeans. He holds one end, and I walk to the other end of the van, unrolling the tape. The van is 18 feet long from bumper to bumper. I over-estimated the length required on the Alaskan ferries by almost five feet. I wonder if it's too late to ask the ferry service for a partial reimbursement?
The mechanic tests a few other parts of the electrical system, then voices his approval to the salesman. I shake the mechanic's hand. "You know, they say a good mechanic is hard to find, but they must be wrong because you came right over!" He laughs, and drives off in his truck. Next I shake hands with the salesman and his wife, agree to call them if I have any concerns, and drive the van out onto the road.
This vehicle is even bigger than the Ford Aerostar I used to drive. Plus it has no rearview mirror, and no windows at all in the cargo area. It's a good thing the salesman insisted on helping me adjust the side mirrors before I left, because I really do need them.
I turn south, deciding to take the quicker southern route instead of the slower but more scenic northern route. Let's see how far I get before I feel tired. But first, I should fill up on gas.
I pull in at a Chevron, and after some head-scratching, I locate the gas tank cover. I'm still getting used to the idea that I own this gigantic vehicle. Gas is a full 70 cents cheaper per gallon here than in my home town. I watch the counter tick up, as almost 20 gallons of fuel pours into the side of the van. It's going to cost a lot to fill this thing up in California.
It takes a while to find a freeway on-ramp. They work a little differently in Texas. There's almost always a frontage road that runs next to the highway, and a ramp connecting the road to the highway at irregular intervals. Around the ramp is a strange 1.5-way configuration of stop-signs, so that people going onto the freeway, or barreling down off it, do not have to stop, and everyone else does.
I puzzle my way up one of these ramps and step on the gas. The first thing I notice is that the rattling noise of the shelving in the back of the van becomes absolutely incredible. I shout "HOLY CRAP THAT'S LOUD!" and I can barely hear my own voice. It sounds like 200 pounds of cookware falling down an endless flight of stairs. I have got to find a place to discard this shelving, as quickly as possible, or it's going to drive me bonkers.
In fifteen minutes I find another gas station, and buy an adjustable wrench and a pair of pliers from their meager display rack. I climb into the rear of the van and try turning the bolt on the inside of the nearest cabinet, down on the floor. It turns and turns, but doesn't get any looser. I was afraid of this. The bolts are secured with nuts, placed on the underside of the van. I'm going to need a second wrench, and some way to lock it in place, so I can unscrew the opposing nut with the first wrench. At least one wrench has to be a socket-wrench, too, or the operation will take forever to complete. Where am I going to get a socket-wrench at this hour? I've got to think of something, because there's no way I'm going to survive 1800 miles of Godzilla dancing around in a wrecking yard.
I decide my best bet is to find a gas station with a larger shop. It's close to 10:00pm, and I don't know what else would be open this late. With the van back on the freeway, the brain-rattling noise convinces me that I have to take more direct action. I pull of at the next gas station, and dig around in the van until I find a bolt that resembles the ones in the floor. I show the bolt to the woman in the station's booth, and ask, "Where can I get the tools to unscrew a whole bunch of these, at this time of night?"
"There's a Wal-Mart just a few miles down the road; you could try them."
"Really? They'd be open this late?"
"Oh, they're open 'till midnight I think."
She gives me directions, and I pull out to the frontage road again. I drive along it for about half a mile before I realize all over again that it's not an on-ramp, and unless I make a left turn I'll never actually reach the freeway. A police car pulls off a side road and tails me for a mile. I tool along at 50 and sing They Might Be Giants a-cappella, very loud, until the officer gets bored and turns down a different road.
This is a little bit of foreshadowing. For years, and years hence, the van is going to become a massive target for both cops and thieves. The cops will assume I'm a vagrant using the van as a house, and the thieves will assume the back is full of tools and hardware, and both will head right for it. Over and over, forever.
The Wal-Mart is still open, and busy. Even a neighborhood dog is trotting across the street to hang out there, ahead of me at the intersection. I hold the nut up again to the bemused looking greeter at the store entrance, brandishing it a bit like some giant thistle I just yanked out of my backside, and he points me to the tool department. When no one is looking I pry the sockets from each of the socket sets and look for a fit. The ten-dollar one matches. I purchase that, a gallon of water, and a bag of grapes from a stand by the register.
There are two sets of shelves to remove. The set on the driver's side is longer, and partially bolted to the security cage that divides the can of the van from everything else. The cage is supposed to have an access door, but some zealous mechanic has sealed it by driving a steel screw right through the lip of the door frame. The knob is locked for good measure, and I don't have a key. All this dead weight has got to go.
The shelves are held upright by bolts in the walls. These have real sockets, which are part of the frame of the van, however the shelves have vibrated with such force that the sockets have exploded, or torn out sharp ribbons of metal around themselves. Over the years, the loose-hanging shelves began to react to each bump in the road, swing back and hammering at the walls. For the intense beating that the walls endured, they actually look alright. The steel must be incredibly hard. All the chipped paint will be covered by insulation and paneling later on, so that's not a problem.
I unscrew the few bolts that remain in the walls, and drop them on a random shelf. The rest of the bolts are in the floor. I'm going to have to secure each bolt in place somehow, then crawl under the van and turn the nut from there. This ought to be fun.
While it's attached to a bolt, the adjustable wrench lays flat. So if I line it up against a vertical surface, like the inside wall of a shelf, it should press back on the bolt while I turn it the opposite way below. I pick the bolt nearest the door for my first attempt, set the wrench around it, and scoot under the van on my back. Carefully slide the socket wrench into place, little bits of rust and grit landing on my face, and turn carefully... Clank! Instantly, the wrench up in the cargo area pops off the bolt.
I need something to hold it in place. So I climb back inside and rest the tire iron on top of the wrench. Then it's back under the van, for another turn. The wrench still pops off. I try again. Same deal. Dirt and grease cover my hands. I pull the jack out from the ribbing of the wall, and balance that on the tire iron. I turn the socket wrench very hard, and get no movement, except when the wrench above leaps away, scattering everything. I recover a stout chunk of steel pipe from the garbage on the shelves, and add it to the stack. Back on the ground, I turn the socket wrench as hard as I can. The stack flies apart.
Now it begins to rain. Long droplets like spider threads fall silently over the parking lot, which is still busy with customers. Nobody is surprised to see a guy working under a car. My back gets wet from lying on the ground, and my pants get filthy from kneeling in the van. After wasting an entire hour trying to loosen that first bolt, I decide to skip it and try another. If the next is equally as hard, I may have to give up on the whole operation.
The second nut starts turning immediately. When I pull off the socket wrench to see my progress, the nut falls right off and hits me in my surprised face. I hurl it away. When I move the wrench apparatus to the third bolt, that one turns easily too. I remove seven nuts and bolts, one right after the other, in half an hour. The damn first bolt was cursed! In a better world, there would have been a peal of ominous thunder the first time I turned it, warning me.
Finally I can't find any more bolts, except for the ones that hold the cage panels in. I'm leaving the cage alone for now. I have no choice but to attempt the nasty bolt again. Just as before, it slips off with enough force to fling the wrench around the inside of the van. Finally, at long last, I get it locked in just the right position. Turning the socket wrench two clicks at a time, with exhausting effort, I get the nut unscrewed. Then I smash the bolt on the end with the wrench, driving it up through the van floor so I can pull it out, and hurl it angrily against the wire cage. I scream "YOU SUCK!" I don't care what the shopping Texans think.
My hands are a mess, so I rinse them under the water jug. I walk inside the Wal-Mart to use their bathroom. There I give my hands and face a thorough washing, relishing the warm water. The greeter by the door nods at me like an old friend as I exit. He knows what I've been up to out there.
The payphone just outside the doors is ringing. I look around, but don't see anyone else, so I mosey over to it and answer, "Yeeeeeessss??"
An adult southern woman's voice crackles into my ear. "Oh, ahm sorry, ah must have the wrong number."
"Nooo problem!" I say, with gusto. Frankly, I'm happy to be doing anything that doesn't involve bolts.
The woman pauses, then says "Would you mand telling me what phone this is?"
"Why, it's the phone outside of a Wal-Mart!"
"Oh hey, um, could you do me a really big favor? Do you see a big green truck parked anywhere in that parking lot? With a big toolbox on it?"
"Hmmmmm." I scout around for a while. "Nope, plenty of trucks here, ma'am, but none of them green."
"Oh... Oh well, thanks very much for your help anyway."
"Nooo problem!"
Weeks later, I tell the story to my housemates, and they clue me in. The wife is checking up on her man. He was probably either paged from that number, or she saw that number on their caller ID. Perhaps he went out to the Wal-Mart to meet his "hoochie", and the wife wanted to know if he was parked there making out with someone in his work truck. I can't help hoping it was with another truck driving man, and they were gay lovers, getting some manly action on the down-low.
... Or it might just be a missed call. Who knows? I jump back in the van. For a second I fear I've drained the battery, powering the cab light and the laptop, so it's a relief to hear the engine chugging away. Now I've got to find a place to dump these shelves. Perhaps in the back of this very same Wal-Mart. As I'm rounding the first corner of the building, the dog I saw earlier comes running out of the open-air section of the garden department. He probably peed on a dozen things in there. My little partner in crime!
The perimeter of the store is watched by security cameras, anchored to the tops of the walls. I notice, however, that there's a spot just beyond the loading bays that is stacked high with empty containers and recyclables, obscuring the view of the camera across the alcove. The camera directly above is facing down along the back of the store, instead of below. It looks like I've found a blind spot. If they can haul all these metal containers away, they shouldn't have too much trouble hauling some metal shelves away at the same time. I decide to leave them here.
(Now, if any investigating Wal-Mart representative reads this, be aware that my means are not as restricted now, as they were at the time. If you inherited any inconvenient costs from the shelving deposit pooped out the back of my van, and think it's worth it to track me down, then by all means... Send a picture of the shelves where you took them, and bill me for the disposal. I'll cover it!)
I wish I had my leather welding gloves for this process. The metal is not sharp, but the shelves are heavy, and some of the holes are raw from the erosion of endless rattling. I could cut my fingers anywhere on these. A foot at a time, I pull the largest shelf out by one end, then yank the other end off the edge of the bumper. It drops to the pavement with a tremendous bang, and makes an ear-piercing wail as I drag it over to the fence by the metal boxes, like a banshee having some kind of drawn-out accident in a saw mill.
That takes care of the large set. Now for the small set, on the right side. I leap back into the van, grab hold of the shelves, and give a stout yank to move them along. They bob forward, then pull back, rooted to their spot on the van floor like an eager dog on a short leash. I try a few more pulls, wondering if there's just something really heavy in the drawers, but no, something else is securing them. I let go and get down on all fours, then brush at the debris and caked rust along the inside rim of the bottom compartment. Well hell, there's another bolt here. More work to do.
I set my wrench-pipe-jack apparatus on the bolt, and get under the van and start turning steadily with the socket wrench. The bolt turns without trouble. My mind wanders. Suddenly I realize that I've been turning for five minutes. I pull the wrench off and look at the nut. It hasn't moved down the bolt. Did the wrench on top come off at the start?
I climb back in and re-seat the apparatus. Looks fine to me. I get down under the van and begin turning with the socket wrench. Same effect. What gives?
It takes me way too long to realize that there are, in fact, two bolts. Cursing under my breath, I stick the wrench on the other one. At least it comes off easily.
Now this second one - the one I've already turned uselessly for five minutes. No wonder I didn't see it. The head of the bolt is in a narrow gap between a bottom shelf and the floor of the van. To even get the wrench in, I have to bend the gap wider with the tire iron. This turns out to be a mistake because the metal around the bolt bows upward, following the expansion of the gap. Now the wrench has a hard time staying on.
I place the wrench-jack-pipe combination as best I can, and creep under my vehicle. It's raining heavily now, and the flannel jacket and t-shirt are soaked through on my back. More dirt and bits of rust fall into my face as I grapple with the socket wrench. On the first turn, the apparatus clatters inside the van, giving me no progress.
Twelve times, I sprawl on the wet pavement under the van, and turn the wrench handle very carefully. Twelve times, the wrench up inside pops off the bolt. I turn the handle at the very limit of my strength, but the bolt doesn't loosen. Angry, muttering under my breath, I step inside the van and push the shelves over. They bend at the point where the final bolt is, and smash to the floor. I lift them back up, and knock them over again. I kick them. Then, I notice the tire iron.
Dazed with exhaustion and cursing all things inanimate, I beat the shit out of the shelves with the tire iron. I have to rest a few times, but eventually I distort the metal so much that the shelves tear off, leaving just a scrap around the bolt. Not really caring about noise any more, I fling the shelves out into the parking lot, then drag them quickly over to the first set. This time it sounds like several banshees line-dancing through a trash compactor. I should probably leave soon.
I jump into the rear of the van to survey my work, slip, and almost fall over. There's a mess of steel components scattered across the floor. Screws, washers, bolts, spacers, alligator clips, fasteners, snips of wire, mounting plates, and weird metal widgets I can't identify. They must have come pouring out when I knocked over the cabinets. I kick a few piles out through the rear doors, and then kick those piles to the side of the building so other people don't get their tires chewed up. The eBay ad should have said, "Van: Comes with free hardware store inside!" I wash my hands under the water jug again, and then drive out of the Wal-Mart, to the freeway beyond.
The rattle is almost eliminated -- the difference, I think, is almost worth the effort. Almost. I'm dead tired and it's very late even in my own time zone. The cage separating the cab from the rest of the van still rattles, especially at high speed, but removing it would mean unscrewing five more bolts from underneath, as well as countless others from the interior, and I don't need that kind of stress. All I need now is a place to sleep.
I drive for about an hour like this before the next town creeps onto the GPS map. The main street is an L-shape tacked on to the side of the highway, and I creep about a mile down it before encountering a lonely, ugly motel.
I ring the night bell and a man with a middle-eastern accent and resting angry face buzzes me into the crude lobby. He's sitting behind a desk in a glass enclosure that divides the room in half. When I ask him for a little extra time checking out - since I'm coming in at 4:30AM - he allows me one additional hour, and then asks, "Where you heading?"
"Santa Cruz, California." I say.
"Long way from home."
"Yep."
"Beautiful country out there in California. I want to visit sometime."
"You should."
My flophouse room costs 37 dollars, which he charges to my card. The key he hands me doesn't open the lock, so I ring the night bell and get another one. When I fling open the door I get smacked by a huge block of odor, so strong I can almost see it pushing out into the parking lot like runaway dough from an oven. A pink oozy room-shaped blob of deodorant and cigarette smoke. The environment is bad, but I feel strangely comfortable in it. It's private and it's got a bed, and I won't be staying long.
I dump my unsorted luggage on the sloping floor. It's bitterly cold, so I wander into the bathroom to start a hot shower. The whole room seems to be carved from the inside of a gigantic cube of fixative and plaster, with layers like rings in a tree. I anticipate every fixture coming off in my hand and thumping to the floor, but remarkably, none do.
I use up all the hot water, which doesn't take very long, and then dash for the bed while the heat is still in me. The sheets are disappointingly thin, so I pile all my laundry on top of them to insulate myself. Then I eat ravenously from the food Sherrila packed me, and call her on the phone to wish her goodnight. The heat spreads into the mattress, then creeps out into the air. I can feel myself getting cold already. I bundle all the blankets tighter and listen to my Terry Pratchett audiobook, determined to get at least a little sleep.
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Date: 2022-12-29 09:15 pm (UTC)El Paso is an interesting city. It's up against the US border, and Ciudad Juárez is smashed up against it right on the other side. They were obviously one city at first. Now they're divided by this really crazy no-man's-land. Ain't no one gonna float down that river in an inner tube for some summer fun. (Like we do in Sacramento.)