Tag Archives: writing

Verticality.

Next up was Wild and Wonderful West Virginia.

Where homes cling to the mountainside with driveways that fall away or climb from the road like amusement park rides and Route 50 (or maybe ALL roads in West Virginia) have more curves than a 36DD stripper.

Driving in West Virginia is spectacular and spectacularly exciting and exhausting. The views are magnificent but the roads are relentlessly curving left and right as they corkscrew up and down the seemingly endless West Virginia mountains. As soon as you get to the bottom (or top) of one elevation and catch your breath for the maybe short half mile stretch of straight road (West Virginia DOT hates straight- I’m convinced of this) you start up or down ANOTHER 9% grade.

But the views. Simply amazing.

So as I wrestled Turtle (I think I’ve decided to call my truck/camper Turtle)(because that’s what it looks like) up and down and back and forth, braking hard and accelerating harder, I marveled at the scenery.

I’m a flatlander. We don’t even have any little bitty hills in Virginia Beach or Knott’s Island, so to be winding up (or down) a mountain road with a cliff high above on one side and a cliff plunging away on the other was like driving in a 4th dimension.

Anyway.

I got to Davis and my brother-in-law showed me around and we spent some time together before he had to leave and then I had too much to drink while watching the very worst movie I have ever seen in my entire life. (Anybody But Him)

The next morning when I was brushing my teeth, I realized that my Gezellig, my cozy comfort level was gone, the places I knew and were familiar with were behind me now and that I had asked for this and I’d got it.

And I wavered.

But then, as I stared at my hungover self in the mirror, with toothpaste smeared in my beard and mustache, I said to myself- stop being such a pussy.

And got dressed and loaded up and went out to wrestle the mountains roads some more.

A change in the plan. Already.

So this is what happened.

As I mentioned in my previous post the plan was to build a little camper on the bed of my 1989 F350 for my cross country trip.

Well, that’s changed.

On Tuesday morning I was at Pungo 4X4. I needed three new tires, two of which were the steers. Everything went well and I was able to make an appointment for Wednesday at Bert’s Alignment to get my new steers aligned so that they wouldn’t wear all cock-eyed the way the old ones had.

On Wednesday morning I get to Bert’s and as I was getting out of my truck I smell gas. I look back to where the gas tank filler necks are and sure enough gas is pouring out of the front tank filler. AGAIN.

This has been an ongoing problem (among others) with my truck for the last two years. Instead of one gas tank my truck has two 19 gallon tanks, a sending pump in each tank, a delivery pump somewhere or other, and a fuel switch that is supposedly, somewhat, sometimes, controlled by a switch on my dashboard that is supposed to let me decide which tank I want to use.

Any and all of these components can fail (and have) or operate erratically (and do).

I watched the fuel flowing out of my front tank down the side of my truck for a moment before switching over to the other tank and calling Miss Carol to let her know there’d be another repair bill coming up.

To say she wasn’t too happy would be like saying I don’t like beets (I hate beets) and after venting her frustration in me, my truck, our marriage, and her life for having married someone like me with a truck like mine, she asked me if I had any idea how much we’d spent in repairs in 2025.

And, of course, I didn’t.

But over the course of the next two days I found out and added it all up. Then I got on the Ford website and “built” a replacement F350 to get some idea of what the truck payments would be. And you know what? The annual truck payments for a 2026 were not terribly different from the repair bills on my 1989.

So I’m still doing my cross country trip, and I’m still gonna build a little camper on the back but, instead of on an 1989 F350, it’s gonna be on a 2026 F350.