After our 4 + hour delay in the beautiful town of Tucumcarie, we cranked up
the turbo diesel, with hopes of making up some of the delay. I drove late
into the night, rather than our planned 6 am to 6 pm stint. We finally
stopped at a Microtel... I can't even remember at this point whether it was
in Tulsa... yes, it was Tulsa. They a rooms available. Cool. The lovely
Veronica takes the key to 104 and heads down the hall. I'm dragging all the
luggage. She opens the door, and gasps. "There's people in there!", she
shreiks, as she allows the door to close. "Were they sleeping?" I ask.
"No... there were... busy", she says, greatly embarrassed. I'm half amused,
half pissed off. Walking into someone elses hotel room in the middle of the
night, especially in Oklahoma, is a good way to get your head blown off.
Later, after a few questions, Veronica reveals that "head" and "blown" were
two of the key scenes she witnesses when the door to that room was open for
mere moments.
The desk clerk can't understand why that room wasn't empty, but gives us
another room. I oppen the door this time...(didn't want to miss the show, ya
know?). The room was empty, and we maged to get a few hours sleep. In the
AM, I start the truck, and proceed to speek to the desk clerk about the
situation last night. He syas he doesn't know how that could have happened,
and apologizes on behalf of the hotel. Only when we get to the truck, does
Veronica reveal it was that desk clerk, along with the sleepy lookin'
chubbly little blonde that was lounging on the couch in the lobby that were
playin' "hide the wienie" the night before.
The remander of day 3 is uneventful, hitting some rain & sleet, but,
otherwise, no problems. The Red Rat II, which Jacques had started taking
down to bare metal in a bunch of places, is now, 3 days later, baptized in
IL road salt, and has a lovely coat of surface rust on all once shiny bare
metal surfaces.
So, after a long week on the road, and about 4800 miles of driving, we're
home safe and sound. However, the toilet at the house flushes a little
wierd... but I'm too tired to worry about it. In the morning, the toilet is
definately not flushing. 3 days of messing around reveals that the pipes
gping from the house to the septic are frozen. The septic guy says hat
because we've had a particularly cold winter, with no snow cover, and no
warm days... that the frost is down 4'. He has customers all over with the
same problem, that have never had trouble before. Ultimately, it took me 6
hours of jackhammering up the frozen pipes to fix the problem...
So, the Red Rat II is safely stored at the FLounder's compound. It must be
in shock. Jacques had rescued it from a relatively rust free life in a
California junkyard... now it sit behind the fence at my place (which looks
not unlike a junkyard at times) quietly rusting, wait for its trip to the
dippers, and reconstruction.
Part 4 is on its way...
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