Long Drive Home

Aloha, chapter 3- We started off for the closest gas station to fill up the tank, it was empty. I bet the previous owner even siphoned the gas out. I had some two way walkie talkies that were brand new and only one could transmit so that didn't work out too good. I went ahead to check the clearance and parking at the gas station and radioed back and said to come right in, there was plenty of room. We filled up the tank and found a leak. I didn't get excited, no big deal, I just looked underneath and seen that it was the fuel line for the generator that was not there. The hose was just hanging down. I pushed the hose up high so it would not fall. That should be good enough to get home, and I will fix it later.

I filled up with $200 bucks in gas, and we pulled right out onto the freeway. We drove through Portland at about noon. The freeway was packed with cars ripping on the road like there is no tomorrow. Nobody would give us room to cut in and change lanes. Cars were honking at my friend in the motor home when he almost missed the turn off for the correct bridge over the river. He just turned in at the last moment when he was going to run out of room because the other car would not give him space. My friend just turned into the guy and made him hit his brakes. And when there was a space, my friend just moved over slowly with plenty of room. All under control. I was a few car lengths behind and saw the whole thing, it looked smooth. The guy in the car looked panicked. All he had to do was slow down and give some room.

We headed up river on a very cold but almost sunny day. I radioed that I was getting hungry for lunch so we pulled over at some small town and made a pit stop. I parked the car, we noticed the parking brake did not work on the motor home. Oh well, brakes only slow you down anyway. I think they are over rated, who need them? Just keep going. I grabbed a couple of rocks to chock the wheel with. It didn't surprise me. Put it on the list.

A couple of sub sandwiches and some coffee and it was back up to 60 mph. I followed behind to watch if something fell out like the engine or something, but nothing did. 70 miles from home I needed to fill up the Nissan again, pulled into a gas station and my friend just kept on going down the freeway. I thought that I would catch up to him quickly, but I didn't. I started to wonder if he was way up ahead or did he turn off someplace. I could not see the motor home. He was hiding behind some old grain elevators. I pulled over, he said everything was fine. It was dark by now and the winding road to the ranch is very hard to see. we pulled the rig into a neighbors place. My friend honked the horn loudly and flashed the lights. The neighbor came out wondering what the heck is going on. We all laughed. He let us park the rig there for the night. Our house is only 4 miles away but the one lane dirt road to the house was more then we wanted to try for the night. We made it back to the ranch and parked the car. I went inside and went to sleep early. I will look at it tomorrow. At least it is here, I beat the snow and I can relax.