Fun With TracFon

Monday 2/27/2006 cont.

Once upon a time, someone had a horrible idea and the cell phone was invented. That is probably a simplification of the facts, but it gets to the point of the matter which is I hate cell phones. Always have, possible always will. It’s annoying and rude to have some asinine little song blaring at you insisting you answer, it’s pathetic and lame that you then have to decide if the person calling you is important enough for you to interrupt the person or persons you are currently with, it is grating and horrible when you hear other people’s phones going off and their subsequent yammering…. And that’s not even getting into the cost of minutes, contracts, voice mail, the confusion of nationwide calling networks, roaming fees, bad or nonexistent reception….there are plenty of other things I would rather worry about and be frustrated by in life than my phone.

However, I do understand the fact that sometimes, as in the case of a jaunt across the country, it makes sense to have a lifeline. Not that I could not as easily (perhaps at some point easier) called my support network from a payphone (except for the fact that there are very few payphones left, having lost the technological battle with, you guessed it, cell phones.)

For this journey, Donnie’s dad had gifted us with a TracFon. The thought behind this being that you didn’t have to set it up with a year-long contract, you could just buy a wireless phone card and add minutes to the cell phone to use as you wished.

Okay, back to me and the cats, sitting in the Toyota next to the surplus place, with about 14 minutes left on the phone. I had a phone card of 250 minutes to add, but since I had set up my TracFon with a Portland phone number, every call I made in Ohio - including 1-800-TRA-CFON cost me 3 minutes. I made an attempt to add the minutes, which consist of typing the equivalent of the first 900 digits of pi into the keypad, before my last fourteen minutes disappeared, in chunks of three.

Not realizing at the time that I had to call from a landline to do this.

My minutes almost gone, I finally contact Dubai. A nice lady on the other side of the world reads off three strings of at least 25 numbers each for me to write into my notebook and hopefully add once I get done talking to her, thus magically making my phone work again. I try.

It doesn’t work.

I try again. I must have somehow lost a number in the translation, because I still can’t get it to work. I give up, use my last two minutes to call my dear beloved father and quickly say, “Hi Dad! I only have two minutes left on my phone but I wanted to tell you that I’m alive and we’re fine and I’ll call you again soon, okay?”

“Okay honey, that’s all I wanted to know.”

Click - Beep.

Stuck in the garden of Edon

Monday 2/27/2006 cont.

It’s Nor. The sweetie has done a search and gotten us a quote on how much it would cost to UHaul the truck all the way to Oregon. “I know it’s not cheep,” I tell her, hearing the hesitation in her voice. I had heard horror stories of $3000 Uhaul bills before leaving Cleveland, one of the reasons Donnie and I hadn’t even bothered to get a quote.

“$1,900,” she says. I don’t flinch. That was from OH to OR; and our major goal has changed to just making it to MN, which I assume would be substantially cheaper. Still expensive, but not multiple-thousands.

“I’m running out of minutes,” I tell Norah, and cut the conversation short.

Donnie sat rather motionless, numbly considering our next move.

“Norah quoted out a Uhaul and tow bar for the truck at $1900. The place she called is back towards Ohio.”

“They gave me directions to a place in Indiana, about 10 minutes down the road.”

“Okay, we’ll go to that one.”

We drive pretty much in silence, distracting ourselves with following the directions given to us by non-Tim. They pretty much consist of “drive straight down the road,” but give us a break. There is little to talk about. We both feel pretty dumb.

When we finally do come upon the Uhaul rental facility, we are greeted by a (hopefully disarmed) bomb out front painted with a message: “WE MEAN BUSINESS.” Honestly, except for the multitude of Uhauls parked out front, even in our most adventurous, we probably would have given the place some space. As it turns out, it was a military surplus store that also rented Uhauls.

“I’m going to stay out in the car and try to put some more minutes onto this phone,” I tell Donnie.

“Okay. I can handle this.”

It sounded like a plan.

What about the cats?

Monday 2/27/2006 cont.

By the way, in case I failed to mention it, besides the two hapless humans involved in this excruciating excursion, and their extended network of support staff, two four-footed furry felines were also having, I’m sure, the literal time of their lives.

Meet Roo
..and Jackie Chan

Since January, I had been conditioning the two of them to the impending upheaval of their world by getting rid of furniture, packing away boxes of stuff and pretty much moving everything recognizable around. They were more accepting than I could ever ask of a pair of pussycats. No puking on the bed or peeing on the couch (mainly because we got rid of it.) They wandered around uttering pity-inducing “mrow?”s and took to sleeping in our bedroom more frequently (the one last bastion of normalcy and peace to them no doubt.)

Jack’s personality is such that I could not bear to keep him locked away from the changes we were making, as some animal-behavior books suggest. That, and I didn’t want to see any more carpet ripped away from the door stoop in Jack’s futile attempt to dig his way from the bedroom into the living room. Roo probably could have handled being locked away from the dismantling of the house, but since he pretty much slept his oblivious way through life anyway, we decided to just let them have free range of the place while we worked.

As the day of departure grew closer, I took to feeding Roo inside his crate (actually a large dog carrier). He was never completely comfortable but never refused to eat. We also took to keeping them collared at all times, with my newly acquired cell phone number attached to their tags. The last thing we needed was to have one of them mysteriously disappear. They were not “bolters” in that when the door was open, rarely was there a flash of fur as they shot out into the night. If they did, it was inevitable that we’d catch them rolling in the driveway like fools struck by some bizarre dust-bath inducing virus. They were easy to catch, but we weren’t taking any chances.

Finally, as the infamous morning dawned, we trundled them out to the car, where I had carefully packed the entire contents of my life around the cat carrier (they were both to be housed together, for mental reasons - both mine and theirs.) From that moment, until we pull into Tim’s, they had slept like the perfect angels they are. However, I knew the time had come to allow them to get some fresh air, stretch their little kitty legs, and move about the cabin a bit.

I open the carrier, doors of the car closed, while Donnie does some negotiating and gets directions to the UHaul place. Jackie’s the first to venture forth, does a one around and then allows me to slip his leash on. We take a few steps outside of the confines of the Toyota, but nervousness grips him and we go back inside. Roo is happy as a clam to remain in a furry Roo-ball inside the carrier. I tuck Jack back inside with him as Donnie approaches the car.

Then my phone rang.

Monday 2/27/2006 cont.

I have Progressive Car Insurance and feel they are a mighty fine company. However, I had a nasty surprise waiting for me when I called my Roadside Assistance number. Seems I added the $14 a year roadside coverage to my vehicle, but not Donnie’s. So unfortunately, there was no free tow to a reputable service station awaiting us. Instead, Donnie asks the lady at the Citgo station where a garage is and gets the phone number for … Tim.

Donnie talks to a nice man on the phone, (who we found out later was not Tim) and they have time to take a look. Tim’s is just up the road. We decided to drive to Tim’s.

Oh, and just to recap, this is around 2:30 p.m. on our first day out. And we aren’t even out of Ohio yet. Our goal had suddenly changed from “let's get over the Rocky Mountains” to “let’s try to make it to Minnesota.”

At Tim’s, we find the guy on the phone, searching for what turns out to be the most illusive transmission in the Midwest - that of a 4.3 L 1996 5-speed S-10 pickup with a standard cab. Who'd have thunk?

“I haven’t been able to find one,” he says after he hangs up, “which probably means we would have to order a rebuilt one which would take two days to get here, so you’d be looking at about Thursday.”

Our worst fears are confirmed. The weight had been too great. We should have been driving in 4^th gear the whole way. We shouldn’t have been towing anything. And we certainly shouldn’t have had a boat strapped to the roof driving 60 mph in a windy snowstorm. I love learning life lessons.

“So do you think we could get a U-haul or something?” I ask.

“Yeah, your best bet may be to get a U-haul and trailer the truck to Minnesota. We could even give you a hand loading the trailer into the U-haul.”

That offer he would later live to regret.

Monday 2/27/2006 cont.

We continue along the Ohio Turnpike until Maumee, OH, when Donnie calls over the CB, “something’s up.”

I look ahead and think he might be talking about the utility workers pulled over to the side of the road. Then he comes back. “I just lost 5^th gear.”

It was at this point that I break one of my Cardinal Rules of Life - I call someone on a cell phone while driving. Until this trip, I had never even had a cell phone, and if Donnie’s dad hadn’t lent us his Tracfon, I probably still would be cellularless. But it turned out to be quite a useful tool.

“Hi Nor!” I say, “guess what I’m doing? Yes, I am talking on a cell phone while driving. But there’s a reason; we’ve run into a little situation here on the road…” and I explain. Now the reason I call Norah was a.) she was most likely to pickup the phone, and b.) her fiancée knows not just a little bit about cars. All I really wanted to know was should be ditch the car or try to get it fixed? I didn’t want her to waste too much time; we’d make the final decision, but she went beyond the call of duty leaping into gear - calling my dad, her fiancée, other contacts etc, searching the web like a person in one of those OnStar commercials. It was great.

When she called back, she had two opinions for me: “Dad called someone and said that you should stop because you might do more damage - chunks of metal from 5^th gear may be flying around in there and could break the other gears. Brian’s cousin said you should limp it along in 4^th since that’s the strongest gear.” I thanked her and we struggled through the Ohio Turnpike. When we arrive at the end and pay the toll to exit, it was the moment of truth. I hang back near the entrance of the tollbooth with my hazards flashing, just in case we had to push the truck through the toll.

I wait and watch the truck. Break lights. No lights, then break lights again. Then movement. Donnie’s voice over the CB - “All I have left is 4^th.”

I pay my toll and the lady in the booth said, “are you with him? He’s having transmission trouble and he’s pulling off at the next exit.”

I follow and roll into a gas station behind him.

We are now stranded in Edon, Ohio.

Adventure! Excitement! Ulcers!

Monday 2/27/2006 cont.

As we slow down on Hwy. 2 to go through Toledo, Donnie suddenly pulls over ahead of me into an abandoned lot. I pull up next to him and he has ‘The Serious Look.’

“What?”

“I had a hard time shifting into first. When we pulled up to that light, I really had to jam it.”

“What does that mean?” I ask.

“Well, it did that right before I had to have the transmission replaced about two years ago.”

Oh.

Okay.

Mind races into List Mode:

1. We could abandon the truck, load as much stuff into my car as possible, store the rest in a mini-storage (problem - who would come and get it? We are still 95% from our destination.)
2. Call Progressive Roadside Assistance (our car insurance) and get a tow to a repair shop to get checked out. Possibly get a hotel and wait for truck to get fixed.
3. Limp along - see how far we get.

Donnie drives a few circles in the lot and says it’s working again, so we choose #3.

Not that it would end up making that much difference in the long run.

Monday 2/27/2006 cont.

When I think about it, I survived a near nuclear disaster while living in Cleveland. And the Big Blackout. That’s pretty cool I guess.

Monday 2/27/2006 cont.

There is a gigantic bridge that goes over the water just past Sandusky, Ohio, and it is currently undergoing some sort of road work. They put up six-foot barriers on either side of the road and, as we barrel down this bowling-alley like highway, Donnie’s voice comes over the CB:

“Luke, aim for the Death Star. Use the Force.”

Monday 2/27/2006 cont.

I enjoy taking photos and documenting things on my VHS-C video camera. So of course before we left, I tried to recharged my video camera batteries. They failed to hold a charge. My 35mm film camera also needed batteries, as indicated by the flashing battery symbol in the LED display. Out I went to Radio Shack and, first off, they didn’t have my $40 video camera batteries in stock and secondly, I tried new batteries in my 35mm camera, and the little flashing battery just kept flashing, indicating the problem was not the battery, but probably something in the computer. Crap.

I can kind of get the film camera to work, kinda, every once in a while….

Monday 2/27/2006 cont.

.5% there

Re-ratchet the boat.

Boy it’s cold.

The Cleveland List

Monday 2/27/2006 cont.

We both had a list of things to do in Cleveland Ohio before we left. Donnie’s went something like this:

- Eat at Players

- Go to the Agora (he didn’t achieve this one)

- Don’t make a long list of things to do before leaving Cleveland

Mine was more like this:

- Eat at Players (a fancy restaurant just down the street from us that we had avoided for two reasons: 1. They served pizza, which seemed pretentious for a fancy restaurant, and 2. no one we saw through the windows at any time in the 6 years we lived their ever seemed to be eating anything. They drank wine, they looked at bread and salad, sometimes they had dirty dishes in front of them, but we never saw anyone actually eating. And, when we did finally eat there on Feb 9 for my visiting Aunt’s birthday, the food was delicious, but we still didn’t see anyone around us eat. Bizarre.)

- See Cleveland Orchestra at Severance Hall

- Throw a giving-away-all-our-stuff party (one of the best ideas I had, if I do say so myself. I encourage everyone to try this, perhaps after a rummage sale. Invite all your friends over to watch movies, eat pizza, drink beer and haul away any stuff they want before you donate the rest to Goodwill.)

- Eat at the Winking Lizard (I will so miss those Buffalo Chicken Salads)

- Go to Dave and Busters and use up all our points (sort of like a Show Biz Pizza / Chuck E. Cheese’s for adults. We got a corkscrew that broke on our way home. )

- Make soap (see Mon. Feb. 20 entry)

- Get Winter Issue of Belle Lettre ‘zine published and distributed (albeit very late)

- Get the radio in my car fixed (I had a tape player in there that stopped working, and so I tried to get Toyota to fix it. They couldn’t without replacing it for $300, and so I just bought a new Panisonic CD player for $160.)

- Go to the dentist

- Get a tattoo

Some things I did plan for that didn’t happen: visiting my friend Jessie in Michigan. Why it didn’t happen? I was called for JURY DUTY. Gag.

Anyway, as we were driving away from Cleveland and everything we knew, there was a lady on the radio raving about the Agora - one of the few things on either of our lists that we missed. Go figure.

Leaving Lakewood

Monday 2/27/2006 -

30 degrees

Snowy grey

Things start out splendidly.

I loose Donnie after literally 5 minutes on the road.

We both had full tanks of gas in our vehicles, but were lacking caffeine. We stop at the Speedway down the street and I buy some coffee. I walk over to his vehicle to give him his cappuccino.

“All set?” I ask.

“Let’s go,” he nods. As I walk back to my car, he pulls out of the gas station and disappears.

“Wait!” I yell. “Stop!” I get into my car, situate myself and find a space for the coffee. I try the CB radio but get nothing. Okay, so now what? I pull into traffic, find my way to the interstate and try the CB again: “Radio Check - Channel 21.” Still nothing. One would think it would be difficult to loose a low-riding S10 pickup with a boat strapped to the roof towing a white trailer, but somehow it managed to elude me until the Columbia Road Exit. I keep trying the radio, without rhyme or reason (thinking back, I should have tried it before each exit or at each mile marker as a sort of landmark.) Finally, a voice comes through.

“I’m off the interstate.”

“Where!” I yelp.

“Columbia Road Exit,” he says, just as my car cruises past the off ramp. “At the BP gas station.”

“Stay there - I’ll be a minute.”

Remember of course that this is early morning, by now around 7:30 - 8 a.m. The opposite direction on I-90 is filled with rush hour traffic, and so to swing back around to Columbia Road would be a laborious task. So I chose to take the side streets and add another 15 minutes onto our little separation. Probably a good thing, since I would have strangled him if I’d exited right away. When I did pull into the BP, I was still angry and so thought it best not to get out of my car lest violence erupt.

“Where did you go?” I ask.

“I got excited” he says.

And thus we agreed to radio check every time we took off.

To Do: Spackle Kitty Closet

Sunday 2/26/2006 -

We picked up some road snacks today. I told Donnie I needed something salty, like Chex Mix and he picked out Cheezits for me. I don’t like Cheezits because they don’t taste like cheese, but the bigger problem here was the fact that this is what he picked out for me (he bought Pizza-flavored Combos for himself.) Was this a sign of things to come? Did we perhaps not understand each other after a relationship of nighon incomprehensible Idontwannathinkaboutit years (letsay we’ve been together since highschool)? As I desperately reached to come to some understanding of what this might mean, I looked closer at the box and realized it was Cheezit Party Mix. Oh.

I guess we’re okay then.