I Made It! - Account of my X-Country drive

[Dave]

Hey gang, I made it!!!!! I’m now officially a resident of Nashua New Hampshire (about 30 miles north of Boston). I’m guessing I’m the only SR20-DET roadster in all of New Hampshire, if not all of New England. That’s pretty cool.

Anyway, the trip was a good one. Not without incident though. Here’s how it went down….

Thursday Afternoon – Finished loading the 26 foot Penske truck. The largest they have. I thought for sure I would only use ½ that truck. Looks like I was wrong. Good thing I got the big daddy!

http://www.311s.org/phpBB2/album_pic.php?pic_id=114

My girlfriend’s parents swung by the house and helped me drop my Subaru off at the transport company, then helped me prep the roadster. We hooked the trailer up and drove the roadster up onto it, securing it with the built in front tire straps and a couple of monster 3 inch ratchet straps around the rear axle. Also wrapped a safety chain around the rear axle. This proved to be a mistake, but I’ll get to that later….

We then began the process of mummifying the car. I had a 300 foot long by 24 inch wide roll of bubble wrap I got from my work’s shipping department. We cut, fit, and taped together what amounted to a custom car cover, made of bubble wrap.

http://www.311s.org/phpBB2/album_pic.php?pic_id=115

My regular car cover then went over the top of that. Then, we took a 2000 foot roll of industrial strength saran/pallet wrap and went around and around. Side to side, top to bottom, under and over, covering every square inch of the car, even the entire bottom!

http://www.311s.org/phpBB2/album_pic.php?pic_id=116

Then, we located every single seam where one layer of the saran wrap overlapped another layer and taped over the joints with duct tape to prevent the wind from lifting up those leading edges. Finally, we laid down bands of duct tape around the whole car, every foot or so. Picture the metal bands around an old wooden barrel. That way, even if a section of wrapping was torn away, it would only peel back until it hit one of the bands, then stop. All said, we used 300 feet of bubble wrap, 500 feet of duct tape, and 2000 feet of saran wrap!

http://www.311s.org/phpBB2/album_pic.php?pic_id=117

Friday AM – I hit the road! I stopped after about 20 miles of freeway driving to check the wrapping job on the car and tighten down the straps. Everything looked A-OK so I pressed on. Just as I was exiting Oregon and heading into Idaho, near disaster struck. In the middle of a very heavy rainstorm, my windshield wiper motor decided it was a good time to die! I crept along the shoulder of the highway for a couple miles to the next exit and after several stops, found a Wal-Mart and a bottle of Rain-X. God, I love Rain-X! I borrowed an overhang at a local gas station, grabbed a towel out of the back of the truck, dried the windshield, applied the Rain-X, and hit the road. That stuff works soooo well! I was barreling along when a guy in a pickup truck pulled up next to me shouting and waving his arms. I couldn’t hear him but I could see this was a “pull over now!� situation. Images of an empty car hauler and roadster bits strewn across the highway filled my head and I pulled over and ran to the back of the truck. The roadster was A-OK. Still strapped in, still wrapped tight as can be. Was he just messing with me? Trailer tires looked good, lights were on. Huh. I turned to walk back to the truck and that’s when I noticed the roll up loading door on the truck box was wide open. Crud! Luckily, all my stuff was still in there. I must have not got it latched correctly when I went to get the towel out to dry the windshield. I closed the door, triple checked the latch, and locked it with a pad lock. Back to the road.

Someplace in the middle of Idaho, I discovered what kids do for fun in the middle of nowhere. They stand on overpasses and throw rocks down onto the cars. Bast*rds! One of them fired a nice big rock at me as I passed underneath. Luckily, his aim/timing was off. How you miss a class 7 International with a 12 foot high, 8 foot wide, 26 foot long box hauling a 15 foot trailer behind it, doing 50 Mph is beyond me. Thankfully, he did.

I hit my goal of 700 miles for the day, stopping for the night in Ogden Utah.

Saturday – 6:00 AM, I’m on the road and gunning for Nebraska. My goal is Kearney which is about 750 miles away and ½ way through the state. Robin and I stayed there when we drove her out, so I knew the town, knew there was diesel there and a hotel right off the freeway with lots of truck parking. I made good time and rolled into Kearney at about 8:00 PM. Uneventful day really. In and out of rain storms but that’s about it. I could see a huge thunderstorm on the horizon with lots of lightening. I was happy to pull into Kearney before I got into that. I checked in, hauled my food and gear into the room and decided to click on the TV. Hmmmm, the emergency broadcasting system was on. Must be one of those stupid tests they always run. Flip the channel, huh, same thing. It’s telling me to turn to channel 18. OK. Channel 18 is a big red screen with “Severe Thunderstorm/Tornado Warning� in big letters. Across the bottom is a scroll providing information on the exact path of that storm I saw up ahead. Let’s see here, hail the diameter of quarters, severe thunderstorm, stay away from windows, get inside a sturdy structure now, tornados sighted. Great! They have the path of the storm mapped out in 5 minute increments, town by town. I grab the trucker’s road map, flip to Nebraska, and discover that this thing is headed right for me. Wonderful! I’m just about to gather up a flashlight, some food, water, and go hide in the bathtub when I see the storm is changing directions. The tornado has moved north. The hail is still coming. Glad I wrapped the roadster in bubble wrap! The hail hit us at about 10:30 PM. It passed by pretty fast and from what I saw on the news the next morning, it looked like we got the tail end of it. I can’t say that I saw hail the size of a quarter, but there were definitely balls the size of a penny. Still big by Portland standards! The truck came through unscathed. I wouldn’t know about the roadster until I unwrapped it.

Sunday – On the road again. Hoping to get just past Chicago. I’m thinking Chicago traffic has got to be better on Sunday night than Monday morning! The roads were rough as can be and we (me, the truck and the roadster) took one heck of a beating. There were 10 to 20 mile sections of highway with expansion joints every 40 feet or so that would set the truck into a violent shake. The faster I went, the worse it got. I had to slow down to 40 for miles on end on a number of occasions for fear of breaking the truck, my stuff, or my kidneys! I pull through Chicago and stop just outside. Another 800 miles down.

Monday – I’m in the home stretch now! I-90 from Chicago to Boston is one big toll road. You get a ticket at the toll booth as you enter the state and pay the toll as you exit. Every 20 miles or so are service plazas. They are basically set up like the highway rest stops we have on the West Coast but they also throw in a gas station, some restaurants, etc. It makes for super fast and convenient stops, especially when you are driving a big truck. I made excellent time that day and stopped in Albany, NY. Right on the NY/Mass boarder.

Tuesday – The end! I roll out of bed and hit the road at 6:00 for the final stretch. I make my first stop just outside of Nashua and check into my storage unit. Time to see how the roadster did. I carefully cut the filthy protective shell off the car, remove the car cover, then the bubble wrap.

http://www.311s.org/phpBB2/album_pic.php?pic_id=118

The car is spotless! It’s got a little dust on it but that’s it. I disconnect the tie down straps and crawl under to remove the safety chain around the rear axle. Here’s where I found why that was a bad idea. The chain had been drawn tight around the axle and had rubbed through the rear brake line. Doh! No brakes. Oh well, that’s an easy fix. I can use the E-brake to get it down safely. Time to pull it off the trailer. I stick the key in, give it a turn, nothing. That’s right, I disconnected the battery before I wrapped it. Silly me. I reconnected the battery and tried again. Nothing. Uh oh. Luckily my tool box was loaded into the truck last (I’m not as dumb as I look!). I grabbed my multimeter. 4.2 volts. Let’s see, a fully charged battery is disconnected for 4 days, shook mercilessly for 3,300 miles, and now has 4.2 volts. Looks like I knocked the plating off the grids. Oh well, I needed an Optima anyway to keep my trunk from rusting out. With the help of the friendly storage place manager, I got the car off the trailer and pushed into the unit, safe and sound. I’m heading back this weekend with a new battery, brake line, and crossed fingers!

Dave

[TR]

Dave,

Glad to hear you made it safe and sound. Sorry to know that you now live even farther away! TR

[sgriffin]

Dave:
Thanks for sharing. It's like living on'es life through another's eyes. Very funny. Best of luck. Sam

[srldatsun]

Dave,

Congradulations, you survived. That brought back memories of my cross country drive from Ca to NJ. I was in a van pulling a big u haul. Memories of truckers passing me in exess of 100 mi hr. Every morning seeing a flipped big rig off the highway. My favorate was signs that said next gas 87 miles. But I really enjoyed the experience. Well now that your East coast, maybe we will meet up at one of the Roadster gatherings.

I wonder how many people passing you knew that was a roadster under all that.

Jeff
Rockaway NJ
68 2000
69 2000

[alfred183]

Congrats on making it, man. That sure was a fun read ^_^

The whole saran wrapping thing looked a lot more ghetto in my mind. Must be from seeing cars saran wrapped to trees and the like

I bet your gf's dad loves your car. I know my gf's dad loves my rusty Roadster

[CBreault]

Welcome to New England
Charlie Breault
Springfield, Ma

[S Allen]

Great story Dave. Glad to hear you made it relatively unscathed. I highly recommend the optima battery. I just put one in the stroker.

Steve

[TR]

I'd recommend the little yellow top optima. The SR doesn't take any juice to start and the extra space in the trunk is worth it. You could even go to a tiny motorcycle battery if you don't drive in the cold or have lottsa watts of stereo stuff, etc. TR

[Dave]

Thanks guys! I'm pulling the battery tonight to go match it up with the right sized Optima.

Hey Charlie, what's your e-mail address? I want to touch bases with you about getting signed up with DRONE!

[CBreault]

email address is vze2fhba@verizon.net. You can sign up for DRONE through www.drone-club.com . There is a link to enter your info.
Charlie B.

[dbrick]

Great story, Definatly settles the discussion on how to wrap the car for travel.