It’s been too long, but I have been busy…

working on my new website, Route 66 Rambler.

In October, me, my wife and son, and my best friend decided to attend a Queensryche concert here in Phoenix. My buddy lives on a mountain high above Prescott, Arizona, about 120 miles and 6,000 feet of elevation to the north.

We generally refer to this trip as “Molly Blue’s Two-Lane Blacktop Tour #2″. It used to be just the Two-Lane Blacktop Tour, but the last time, she got a leak in the torque converter drain plug(nice quality control, Chrysler), and I used 2 1/2 CASES of transmission fluid limping her 120 miles back to Phoenix.

The concert was on a Monday night. (?) The plan was to go up on Sunday and bring him back to Phoenix, spend the night, go to the concert on Monday, then run him back up the hill on Tuesday.

The timing of the trip was a little tight on finances, and also Molly Blue was due for a tune-up, lube and tires. So I would have a lot of work to take care of on Saturday before I left.

Then, about a week before I was supposed to head up and pick him up for the show, the door handle broke on the driver’s side door. No problem, I own two other Gremlins, and also keep some extra spares handy. But I wouldn’t have time to do the work until Saturday morning.

A couple of days later, some jerk broke out the driver’s side window. It was half rolled down at the time, and the car was unlocked, sitting in my driveway. Nothing was taken, and no one searched through the car or anything. It looked like just plain ol’ jerk-like behaviour. Now I had another job to handle on that Saturday morning. Just like before, I have some spares, so at least I didn’t have to go to the junkyard. But everything should be ok.

A couple of more days, and…. the passenger side door handle broke. Great. More Saturday morning. Once again, it pays to keep a few spare parts around.

Saturday morning, I went to the tire store and got the skins on. They know me there from when I used to deliver tires to ‘em, so I always get moved to the front of the line. In and out in 20 minutes. Less than an hour from the house, over and back.

Next, I had to take apart the door, vacuum out all the glass in the car, replace the driver’s side door handle, reinstall the glass, and get the panel back on. That was when I noticed that some of the clips on the back side of the trim panel needed fixing. So I set them up in glue and clamps, and proceeded to let the fluids drain while I repaired the door handle from the passenger side. From there it was finish the fluid change, grease the chassis and front suspension/steering, and do the tune-up. I decided to let the door panel dry and install it Sunday morning before I left.

Here is the page which covers the door glass replacement procedure from the 1973 American Motors Technical Service Manual–> located at: The Old Car Manual Project–

HTTP://www.TOCMP.COM

The next morning, I was up bright and early, re-installed the door panel, and packed in my supplies. The route north is a beautiful trip up, U.S. hwy 60 to Wickenburg, a small touristy place about halfway there, then from there north to a small state highway, and a couple of turnoffs later, past Peeples Valley, I was arriving at Kirkland Junction, near Skull Valley. A quick stop for refreshment, then on to Yarnell. Between Kirkland and Yarnell is Yarnell Hill, which climbs close to 4,000 feet in about 5 miles. Beautiful view across Skull Valley, and you can see about 120 miles on a clear day. Plus there’s a nice painting of an elephant on one of the rocks when you’re heading down. The weather was great, too. Molly went right up the hill no problem whatsoever, with the temp gauge never moving at all in 90-plus degree weather. In another hour, I was climbing the mountain above Prescott(5,280 feet) to a final elevation at my friend’s cabin in the ponderosa pines at around 7,500 feet.

He was happy to see Molly Blue, and after some goofing around and football watching, we headed down the hill. The story is pretty much over at that point. Molly covered the remaining 360 miles of hills and 150 miles of city traffic with zero issues.

The concert was terrible. Queensryche is completely used up. Geoff Tate has none of that once-amazing voice left. The sound mix was horrifically bad. It was like some sort of kid’s school play, a theatrical production of Operation: Mindcrime, and seemed mostly to be an excuse to come to Republican territory before the election and wave around a bunch of anti-war signs. The audience was completely under-whelmed and hardly left their seats or made a noise the whole time. You don’t even want to know what 20 years does to the hot concert babes you used to see at these events. I even got to see a hump on some chick’s back with a tattoo all over it. Ooooh, gaaawd…nightmares for the rest of my life.

On the bright side, Molly Blue was a huge hit with the crowd and the parking attendants both, with lots of yelling, thumbs up and offers to buy. Well, at least we grilled some killer ribs and drank plenty of beer before I returned my buddy to his lofty perch in the clouds. I’ll catch up some more after my next historical Rambler post….
mike

Tuesday November 7, 2006 - 10:42pm (MST)

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