expected route

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and for those of you who cant do flashy stuff heres a link to the expected return route

REMEMBER THE ALAMO!

and now to bring you up to speed! it wont be the most indepth post due to us having not posted in a while but ill do the best i can. ok so we spent the night at a friend of Thomas's and the storm passed us in the night. we had some good warm food and then went to sleep on beds! in the morning we were treated to breakfast and some sight seeing. many of the things that got destroyed in hurricane Katrina were still deserted - emty lots, concrete steps and foundations without houses.

when we got back to the house Shane did a little welding on the broken clutch bracket! His daughter asked me "did my Daddy fix your car?" and i told her that he had. she replied "my Daddy can fix helicopters and cars, he can fix anything!" we got the car put back together did a little relaxing and then headed out. we drove into Louisana and saw New Orleans, bourbon street at night. we kept going a little further and then spent the night at our old friend Wal-Mart :)

in the morning we got up and did some more driving and made it into Texas! we got to Houstin and visited my friend Sarah. we hung out and i worked on the clutch bracket some more. the welds held fine it is the metal of the bracket that is bending. acutally given where its bending i dont know how it held the 230,000 previous miles. i put more wire in there and bent the bracket back and it made the clutch happy again. Sarah's mom was nice enough to let us stay at her house which was awesome! we got another shower and in the morning Sarah's mom made us breakfast! as we were leaving she sent us off with some fresh fruit and candy :)

we drove to San Antonio and saw the Alamo! that was some neat history, it was our own version of The 300 where few held out against many for freedom. we saw the river walk in San Antonio which is neat and then we drove up to Austin where we met Thomas's friend Matt. we got to stay at his house - two showers in as many days! we are living in the lap of luxury! today we got to play some video games and i spent a while working on the clutch bracket again. this time i used coat hanger wire because its thicker and i came up with a new way to twist it tight so it doesnt stress it and make it break. we will see how long this version will last. we did a little stop and go driving where i used the clutch a lot and it seems to be holding... tomorrow we are going to head west some more and see a couple more states :)

storm!

we just drove through a tropical storm! actually it was weak, not much worse than a good oregon rain storm really. didnt phase the subaru at all.

a mechanical update: the clutch cable runs through the firewall and then mounts to a bracket which also holds the clutch pedal. the pedal pulls on the cable and the bracket keeps the cable from moving. sadly the bracket has broken on one side and so its bending each time i step on the pedal so the clutch cable doesnt pull as tight as it should. the pedal goes all the way to the floor but the clutch doesnt disengage. its like not having a clutch at all. since i have a tach and a working spedo i can power shift but i have to turn the car off to put it into 1st or reverse :) sometimes ill just not shift and let the engine bog - its not really any slower bogged down than it is in its "power" curve. we wrapped some wire around the bracket and it held for a few dozen shifts and then it popped so i tried a zip tie and that popped on the first test shift. we wrapped wire around it twice and that has held longer than any of the other fixes. we are at a friend of Thomas's Dads house right now and he has a welder so if this tropical storm goes away by morning i might get a shot at welding it back together and maybe even take a crack at the exhaust pipe.

in other news i have a fatty footermellon!

its gotten kinda fatter and turned fun colors but it hurts less now so i can kinda run/hop on it.

A warm beach in November? We must not be in Oregon...

We have driven through North and South Carolina, Georgia and are now in Florida. As mentioned, we spent yesterday on a beach. In November. For those of you who aren't from Oregon, you should probably know that beaches in Oregon are cold all year round, especially so in the winter. The beach was quite enjoyable and a welcome change from the biting cold up north. Last night we parked and I slept in the car, as I'm not feeling too well. (Sickness comes as easily from each other as strangers.) Around 2 in the morning, a police officer informed me, not unkindly, that if I stayed where I was, someone might "mess with me" and he proceeded to direct me to Peter's Point, where it was okay to park. The funny thing is, where we parked, no one had bothered me up to that point. After I reached the parking place at Peter's Point, some people decided it was a good time (3AM) to come drink beers and play loud music. (They left their cans to my dismay.)
Regardless, I didn't sleep as well for the rest of the night, but I did get to see this:

And that made it a little worth it.

beer cans and wire

so we were cruising down I 95 when all of a sudden the engine gets super loud and there is an awful dragging noise. i pull over and we peak under the car to find this looking back at us :)

now we have had an exhaust leak for quite some time but it wasnt bad and there wasnt much we could do about it. the thing was cracking at the weld joint and today it finally failed. being as we couldnt leave the pipe there and we couldnt drive with it dragging on the ground i set to work with some wire i had in my box of goodies. we picked up a budwiser beer can from the side of the road and wired it onto the pipe in hopes of it making the poor car just a little less loud.

i pulled a tire off to get a little more room to work and while looking at the tire i noticed a really bad wear patch on the outside. the outside of the tire is more or less bald all the way around, likey due to some toe in from the tie rod ends being loose or the suspension being bent from my other adventures with this poor car. sadly i think we are going to have to drive on this tire till it blows out from baldness because we cant replace the parts or have it alligned professionally i guess i could rotate tires front to rear on the passenger side but thats a lot of work becaus i have to use the spare in place of a jackstand.


our finished product! it sounded less loud for a bit but now it sounds like we have open headers or a helicopter is flying near by...

hopefully this doesnt get us a ticket!

Slightly down South

After some good times in DC, we headed south through Virginia, stopping in Richmond to visit Ben's friend Tamurlane. She very kindly bought us drinks and we thank her. We reached North Carolina that night and crashed at a rest stop just inside the border. This morning we set out for Fayetteville, home of the Airborne & Special Operations Museum, which was very interesting and enjoyable. A large portion of the exhibits focused on the use of special forces deployment via parachute during WWII. The rest followed the use of said forces up to their role in combat today.

War posters are cool.

Also, we wanted to thank Clare, who is helping us go ten miles. (She gave us a dollar.) I also wanted to thank the good folks at Harvest Church, who were most welcoming last Sunday and treated us to a most delicious lunch. We also appreciate the Metro tickets that you gave us, they helped immensely.

Deliberately in DC

Personally, I really enjoyed DC and would gladly have spent several more days there. Unfortunately, we couldn't, so there you have it. Anyway, for those of you who might be wondering what geocaching is, click on the link and you can find out. It's easily one of my favorite activities.

Since I don't want to bore you with all of my experiences in DC (which would be long winded, basically: lots of walking and museums), I'll show you some of my many pictures, these being some of my favorites.

A Zero in the Air and Space Museum.

T-Rex in the Natural History!

Kermit the Frog.

The Washington Monument

United States Capitol.