2013-07-04 39 -77

Location

Next to a mountain near Mercersburg, PA

Participants

OfficeLinebacker
Allison

Plans

Drive up there and hike to the hash point

Expedition

This was a trip of car troubles.

We set out from Rockville, MD at about 9:30 am. When I tried to start the car, I was met at first with a click, but on the second try I started it right up. Google Maps told us it was a 1h 40 minute drive. We headed up and the trip was eventful.

We stopped for gas and when I tried to start the car to back it up a few feet to the gas pump, it wouldn't start. I got under the hood and struck the starter a few times but it didn't work. I checked the battery and one of the wires, the wire to the starter, came right off in my hand. Come to find out it was badly corroded and not attached properly. I used a key to scrape off the corrosion and found and old, run-over roll of red electrical tape a few feet away from my car to hold it in place. We put some gas in the car and were off.

We stopped at a Food Lion for fluids (Powerade Zero, Distilled Water, and Salt and Vinegar potato chips). We got to the place where a road called "Fire Trail" branched off from the main road and there were gates blocking two smaller roads leading off of there. We went through the gate that did not have a "No Trespassing" sign on it and walked up an incredibly steep gravel drive.

We encountered Grant, a resident of the home at the top of the drive and told him of our mission. He explained to us the lay of the land and said it was no problem traversing the property to get to the hash, which indeed was on private land. He had just caught a lizard and the lizard was just chilling on his back.

We headed back down and took "Fire Trail" which looked like it was traversible by 4WD only and reached the point where we would set out into the bush to reach the hash. Once we got a few yards in Allison realized she was not up for it so we headed back (the hash point was another half a mile into the bush and I wasn't going to leave her). We got back on Fire Trail and took it up about a third of a mile and found an awesome vista. We saw all kinds of interesting looking fungi, locusts, and lizards. I snapped a pic of the nice vista and we headed back.

It was so sweaty that not only was sweat dripping off my fingers, but my wrists started turning white and wrinkled like when you go swimming too long.

We got back to the car and once we started driving, we realized the left front tyre was flat. Oh man! We pulled over near a house and I walked up to the house to make sure it was OK to pull into the driveway to change the tyre. Well the owner was working in his garage on a pool cover system so it was lucky. It was really lucky that he had an air compressor and a bottle jack because my car is missing the jack and the spare tyre was flat. So after trying a few things, including driving the car up on some boards so that the jack would fit under (it's a sports car so it's low clearance), we got the tyre off and I used the compressor to fill both tyres. It turns out the valve core was loose in the original tyre--no puncture. Almost like sabotage! Anyway he suggested we drive into "town" and go to a gas station to see if they had a valve core tool they could lend us. Well right before the spot he suggested we saw Jim's Auto Repair which had a bay door open. We stopped in and one of the owners was working on a car to enter in a demolition derby. It was a Plymouth Voyager minivan, manual transmission, 4 cylinder. He was doing something to the bumper and he lent us a floor jack and a valve core tool, and even let us nose the car into one of the bays because a light rain had picked up.

We got the car into tip top shape and got back on the road.

So while it was a failure, it was an interesting experience and I found out some of the weaknesses of my car without too bad of a consequence. I'll be addressing these things tonight.