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Sunday, September 18, 2005
Truck Inn 
| | Well,  I made it to Los Altos, where I'm picking up the furniture I'll be taking back to Santa Barbara later today. I did not, however, get here in the same truck I left Santa Barbara with. About a hundred miles after I wrote this post, the truck lost power and began filling the road behind it with thick white smoke. The oil pressure and temperature guages read normal, but clearly something was Very Wrong. So I killed the engine and hoped I'd have enough momentum to make it to the gas station at the first exit for King City. I got most of the way up the ramp before coming to a halt on the shoulder about 80 feet from the intersection at the top. By then the truck had produced a cloud of smoke so thick I could barely see back down the ramp in the rear view mirror. The fist thing I saw, looking like a scene out of some movie, was a police officer walking toward me through the smoke. I had no idea he had been behind me. (Though I shouldn't have been surprised, since King City is among California's more notorious speed traps — and one I had escaped once before.) |
| | He was friendly and helpful, however, and called AAA for me. About half an hour later, the mechanic with the tow truck agreed with me that the truck had probably blown a valve (or a pushrod, or a rocker arm, or something that left a valve open). Judging from the quantity of oil splattered and dripped all over the place, concentrated around the blown left valve cover gasket of the V8 (it's an '88 Chevy Silverado on its third engine, with 238,000 miles), it was probably a valve problem. So we towed the truck and its trailer to the Chevy dealer, dropped me off at the U-Haul place (where my wife had kindly hired me a 10-foot straight van), hopped in the rental and pressed ahead. Later this week, after the truck is fixed, I'll drive up with Cliff (from whom I borrowed it) to bring it back home. |
| | Right now I'm borrowing somebody's open Wi-Fi connection, but can't send mail (though I can receive it). So this post is for those of you who wonder whether I made it. I did, and everything's fine. |
| | [Later...] It's now 11:45am and I'm hitting the road back home. |
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