Colorado Breakdown No.s 1, 2, & 5 
Now on the day that John Wayne died/ I found myself on the Continental Divide/ Tell me where do we go from here?/ Think I'll ride into Leadville and have a few beers.
Jimmy Buffett, Incommunicado, Coconut Telegraph
"How long you been driving it like this?"
"Since Telluride."
"And where're you going?"
"Cincinnati."
"Jesus. You're shitting me. That's over a thousand miles. You'll never make it. Well, you might could but it'd take all week because you can't use your headlights. Or the stereo. Or your wipers if it rains."
I'm screwed.
"You ought to get her on back to Utah...Salt Lake is it?" He's looking at the plates. "And get her straightened out. We'd have to get the alternator from Denver, and that could take a day or two, ‘less we could find one in Grand Junction. I think we got to drop the engine out of her to get it in. I haven't worked much on these old Volkswagens."
I don't have that kind of money.
"I don't have that kind of money."
"I'll tell you what. I'll charge both these batteries for the price of one. This'll take two or three hours. When one wears down change them, and then get them recharged in the very next town. And don't drive at night."
I thank him and walk over to the grass behind the gas station facing the Colorado River and sit down in the shade. I'm glad that Rifle (el. 5,345) is at least big enough to have a genuine old-fashioned authentic grease-rag service station and not just a bunch of munchie marts. I'm also glad that I have two batteries. I bought the second one after I got to Key West (el. 14) in January. Why? Since I would be living in the bus I figured having a freshy might come in handy after using lights and the stereo without the engine running. That's logical, isn't it? I bought a Die-Hard. If you can park your car with a Die-Hard in it on a frozen lake in Minnesota for four months with the lights on and still have it start, you'd think that driving to Cincinnati (el. 683) without an alternator would be a cinch.
I knew the engine recharged the battery somehow when it was running but I didn't really know how until B had to explain it to me back in Illium (el. 8,400). Krantz, B & D (Brian and Dianna), and me all camped in Illium Valley the night before the bluegrass festival started in Telluride (el. 8,792) last week. The next day when I started up the bus to head into town the engine hesitated, stuttered, and then it ground and cracked and screeched. By the time I shut it down a sticky dark smoke was coming out of the engine compartment. When I opened the latch smoke farted out. It came out in one big burst, kind of like one of B's smoke rings pooping out from underneath his nasty long moustache. How can Dianna kiss that thing? It's unsavory.
B's moustache is a vulgarity. B's moustache is an evolutionary violation. It's a yak's ass. It has peyote growing in it guarded by a troll with a sharp stick. B's moustache harbors illegal aliens. It has its own bar tab. His moustache once went several rounds with a surly wolverine. The moustache came out on top and the wolverine got pregnant. B's moustache is Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave Grooving with a Pict.
B seemed to know what was wrong right away. "The alternator's shot." The only belt on the engine was smoking. B pulled the knife from his pants and sliced through the alternator belt. His knife sliced through it like a-something, through a-something-er-other. Well, it went through that belt like a damn sharp knife through a 300-degree rubber belt, is what it did. The belt laid there on the grass smoking like an oversexed black snake. Even before I had the chance to object or get all riled up about it he told me to relax and, "try her again."
It started right up. Hm. I didn't get it so B explained how the alternator is run by the engine to create the electricity to run all the other stuff and to keep a charge on the battery. Okay. Okay. But...
"You bought the silly thing. Not me."
I did buy the silly thing. Six months and forty thousand miles ago I bought this 1977 Volkswagen Bus, Westfalia. That's the camper package. School bus yellow and it had 120,000 miles. But it has some features that make it more of an impending nuisance than it has to be. First, it has an automatic transmission. I've never even heard of another bus with an automatic. What good is a bus that you can't even push start? Hippies have been push-starting busses in parking lots at every Rainbow Gathering and Grateful Dead show since 1965. It's tradition. Also, it has electronic fuel injection. What the hell good is that if it breaks? Sounds like it needs to be fixed in a clean-room environment. Old VW carburetors can be jerry-rigged with beer cans and rolling papers, can't they? Back in Miami, I once jammed one of my earrings into a place where a pin had fallen out of one of the brakes. It was rattling. The yellow teddy bear attached to the front bumper attracted points and comments from little kids, and I'm fairly certain that I have the only bus in history that has a kickstand. Yeah, it works. It came off the goofy red bicycle, known as a conch cruiser, pronounced konk, that I bought in Key West for 20 bucks. It was easy to throw shampoo and a towel in the basket and ride over a few blocks to Smather's Beach to shower every day. "Why do you have a kickstand?" people ask. "So the bus doesn't tip over." Duh.
I gave it the nickname Duval Crawler, pronounced DOO-val. In Key West, when you're too drunk to walk home yet not so drunk as to sleep in the planters along Duval Street, you do the Duval Crawl.
At one point there were nearly 45 stickers and decals on it. But I have only five or six Dead stickers and I took off the stickers that said things like "Save the Reef" or "Save Our Canyons." I figured that as long as I was driving a vehicle that burns fossil fuels and was made out of metal and rubber that came from mines and trees, it was irresponsible to suggest taking care of the environment. And who am I to tell people what to do or what to believe? Although I left my favorite sticker attached which Krantz thought would only cause me trouble one day; "Question Authority." He said, "Cops will call it probable cause." Not bad logic since I've been going out of my way to develop a combination look of longhaired Dead Head and beach-bum Parrot Head. I do look like the cliché hippy in the bus. My sunburnt hair is down my back and I'm way too tan to have any kind of a responsible job. Hell, I'd even pull me over. When living in the Keys, I took care to not have even a beer in the bus when I drove north out of Key West. But if I were to be a drug runner, would this be the image that I would choose to project? Only if I thought that by being obvious I'd be left alone. I wonder if they'd leave me alone if I dressed like Captain Morgan. But I don't ever want to try to second-guess the police or DEA for their oh-so accurate profiling. So there were no stickers of pot leaves or stoner paraphernalia. I kept to radio stations; KFAT (Gilroy, CA, el. 200), KPIG (Freedom, CA, el. 120), KOTO (Telluride, CO) and KRCL (Salt Lake City, UT, el. 4,266), schools I'd dropped out of; University of Utah and Humboldt State University, and a sticker I had manipulated to read, "Drink & Don't Drive."
Right after I bought the bus I began a journey in Arcata, California (el. 33 ft), Humboldt County. I headed south first and then east. I'm twenty-four and I'd never been east of Denver (el. 5,260). I figured it was time. It was January and I was done with Utah snow and California rain. I wanted to be warm. I took Interstate 10 eastbound. I had no definite destination in mind. Austin (el. 501)? New Orleans (el. -2) maybe? I thought that Key West would be cool because I'd always wanted to buy Jimmy Buffett a beer and thank him for doing what he did, but I wasn't sure if I had enough money to make it. However, by the time I got to Phoenix (el. 1,072), -whoa, hey, Glen Campbell-when I got to Phoenix the bus was acting iffy so I found a VW shop, Karl's Custom VWs, and stopped in.
Whatever the problem was they fixed, it was pretty minor. The mechanic asked me while he worked on it out in the parking lot why I didn't just do it myself. Before the bus I'd only had disposable cars. If they broke down I'd just get my mechanically inclined little brother to fix them or I'd just get rid of them. One was a 1965 Ford Ranch Wagon that I'd bought for $75.00. It was huge. It didn't even have seat belts because back in '65 they were only options. It was white and boxy, and it had an AM radio next to the three-foot wide speedometer. We called it the Fridge. When I got it, it had almost 200,000 miles on it. One day the guys in the stage crew I sometimes worked with, Stage Erect, were waiting for the sound check. I was telling them about this enormous car that I got for 75 bucks when the band's road manager came back and asked who had a big car. Everybody pointed to me. He said, "Great. Park it at the stage door with the heater on full blast and wait." I did. He didn't say why. It was February in Salt Lake City. For a twenty-year-old station wagon with as much square feet as my first apartment it heated up pretty quick. A couple of minutes later all six or seven members of Oingo Boingo came out and piled in. Freaky little albino-looking front man Danny Elfman sat right next to me. I drove them for burgers. No joke. We drove a few blocks away and did the drive-thru at Arctic Circle. The Ranch Wagon was all ears and elbows of Oingo Boingo all dicking around like boys do in cars-farting and hitting one another and bullshitting about girls. I finally sold that car to a junkyard for 50 bucks when the water pump broke one night near Wendover Nevada (el. 4,450 ft) while I was doing 115 mph driving back to Utah from California.
The Idiot Bastard Son was another disposable car; a little dark gray 1975 Opel Manta. Heather, a waitress I worked with, just up and gave it to me one day. She said, "I'd rather give it away than try to sell it for a hundred dollars. Want it?" I took it. It ran, but it ran like a mule. My brother tuned it up while I washed and waxed it. Things I can't imagine Heather ever did. I drove that car for six months without problem and then sold it for $500.00. Heather got pissed. I don't see why. I mean, she was driving a new Snaab and I had even finally broke down and had sex with her to feign gratitude for the car. Although she was palatable for the most part, I had to get really drunk before hand, so I was sort of indifferent and particularly clumsy. Looking back, I would totally ask her for a re-do if I ever ran into her again.
"I'm not too good with cars." I said to the mechanic in the winter Phoenix sun.
"You're going to get good driving a bus."
"How do you mean?"
"These things break down. They break down a lot."
I really really really didn't want to hear that.
"Don't you have the Idiot's Guide?"
"What's that?"
"It'll walk you through almost everything you'll ever have to do to a Volkswagen. Seriously. You should get one."
The entire title of this book is How To Keep Your Volkswagen Alive: A Manual of Step By Step Procedures for the Compleat Idiot (sic). It was like 25 or 30 bucks or something. Do you know how much beer you can buy with 30 bucks?
I paid inside and the mechanic walked me out, gave me the keys, and said, "I have a little something for you." He showed me a new a decal on the wing window over the sink. On the outside side was Karl's logo. Inside had a warning. It said, "WARNING: Do Not Open This Window At Speeds In Excess Of 120 MPH!"
It's a bummer a fried alternator can't be fixed with a stretched out bungee cord, a snow scraper, and a Zippo lighter-the only tools I have. I walk back into the service station and the guy says the batteries are almost there but I could go at anytime. I tell him I've decided to drive to Salt Lake City. "Good. Get these batteries looked at in Green River." I thank him. I leave.
A beer sounds good, but I can't be drinking. If the engine dies and some cop comes along to "help" I'd be screwed. I'd take the state roads or alternative routes but then again, if the engine dies and nobody came along I'd be screwed. Pulling onto westbound I-70, I instinctively reach for the stereo. I balk. Damn! How the hell am I going to drive four hundred miles without tunes? I have three hundred cassettes in the bus and now I'm left to twiddle. This is fucked. I want to play the new Jimmy Buffett tape, "Off to See the Lizard," which was released last week.
This last season I worked at Margaritaville in Key West as a waiter. Jimmy, the owner of course, would come in unannounced and get whatever band playing to take a break, and he'd try out new tunes that he was working on. The tourists would always come all over themselves when that happened. So did I. How great is it to already know all the songs on an album when it gets released?
Jimmy was getting set for his summer tour when I left Florida a few weeks back. The sound guy arranged it so I could get some friends into the shows at Fiddler's Green. So I met up with Krantz and B & D in Denver. They'd driven out from Salt Lake City in B & Ds 1970 Cadillac Deville and were staying with a friend in Silver Plume (el. 9100 ft), a little town about 50 miles up from Denver.
After the two nights of Buffett shows (we were eighth row center and the Neville Brothers opened-Hé toi!) we left Silver Plume for the ride to Telluride. At Dianna's insistence and per our usual, we stopped into a pub first. After two nights of singing "Why Don't We Get Drunk and Screw?" and putting away hooch like hard-drinking calypso poets, Bloody Marys sure have a way to keep the tequila and rum vapors from seeping out of your pores, don't they? If you aren't hung over at 8,000 feet, you will be at 12,000 feet. Silver Plume has only 200 populators. Populators? You know, persons, town folk, dwellers... populators. Anyway, Silver Plume is puny so we had to drive downhill to Georgetown (el. 8,512 ft) to gas up the vehicles and to fetch vodka laced Clamato with a big shot of Tabasco and a pickled asparagus spear at Tavern on the Creek. Krantz and B also elbowed up some ale.
This particular stretch of I-70 is steep. Wiping and slurping the extra suds from his moustache, B went into his David Bromberg impersonation circa 1978, "Traveling Man," from Bandit in a Bathing Suit. "They say that this stretch of highway is steep... sheer... abrupt... sudden... unreasonable... exorbitant..." He wiped his mouth again. We all walked out "exorbitant... precipitous..." to the cars.
The highway passes above Georgetown so the on-ramp must incline to meet it. As B has emphasized, the highway is steep, "overzealous..." so just imagine the on-ramp. Now just because more often than not I have a beer in my hand doesn't mean that I'm not a conscionable motorist. I like to abide the speed of traffic when entering a highway. But for hell's sake. The pedal was floored. I even had Krantz hold my beer so I could use both hands, hoping the extra sincerity would entice the bus into finding its stride. We were actually gaining momentum. The speedometer's needle was tippy-toeing to the right when snap! The pedal went all the way to the floor and we stopped, engine idling. What the-?! B & D, luckily, were behind us. I coasted in reverse down to the gravel lot by the gas station. B & D followed us down. "What's up?"
"I don't know. We just stopped. But the engine is still running." I told him about the pedal and he said, "Better check your accelerator cable."
I shut down the engine and crawled under the bus. Sure enough, the cable had busted. It didn't even have the decency of breaking near one end or the other so that it might possibly have been reattached. No. It broke right in the middle. I took out the Idiot's Guide to see what it had to say.
In no time I had baling wire, from B's trunk, running the entire nine or so feet from pedal to engine. Wait. That's a lie. It took well over an hour and B & D even drove down to Idaho Springs (el. 7,542) twice looking for the part. Krantz was no help. Well, no, yes he was. He sat in the bus, played his guitar, and rolled up a couple of fatties for later. Actually, my hands are big enough and trying to thread that heavy gauge wire through all that nonsense under the bus would have been even suckier with extra hands in the way. When I got it working and fired that mother up, I put it in gear and gravel spit out into the street and a ton of dust shot into the air. Wait. That's a lie too. Busses can't do that. But it was definitely good to go.
"Let's go!"
Krantz put a Little Feat tape into the deck, cranked it, and we took that on-ramp like champs. Once on the highway I was able to get it up to almost forty miles an hour. Krantz celebrated by getting two good beers out of the ice chest in back for us. Bottles.
We were singing and carrying on.
"I've seen the bright lights of Memphis..."
I had loosed my hair from the scrunchy-dealy and was chair dancing.
"And the Commodore Hotel..."
We'd catch an evil look from some people passing us, and everybody was passing us.
"And underneath a streetlamp..."
Of course the SUVs and V-8s flew by.
"I met a Southern belle."
Little four-banging rice-burners passed.
"She took me to the river..."
18-wheeler big rigs passed.
"Where she cast her spell..."
A beat up old sedan was pulling a boat that looked like a beat up old sedan. They passed.
"And in that Southern moonlight..."
A giant crepe paper covered hand shaking another giant crepe paper covered hand went shishling around us.
"She sang a song so well."
The hay thresher was a surprise and a street cleaner was at its heels.
"If you'll be my Dixie Chicken..."
A pack of guys with colorful jerseys and tight butts cycled passed.
"I'll be your Tennessee lamb..."
And I swear, it looked like an Amish carriage was racing a Mormon oxcart to the summit, and the Amish were kicking the Mormons' ass!
"And we can walk together..."
Even Arte Johnson riding a tricycle in a yellow raincoat passed us.
"Down in Dixieland."
Until he tipped over that is.
"Down in Dixieland."
As the Eisenhower Tunnel (el. 11,112 ft) came into view we were leaning forward in our seats, pushing into the dash, and skootching our butts forward. We were maintaining, that's right, maintaining, a speed of thirty. Okay, twenty-five, but that grade is seven percent. That's steep, man. "Preposterous..." A motor home came along side and the boys in the big window were shouting and bouncing and cheering for us. Even old Auntie Edna was back there waving us on.
I don't know what the fine is for not leaning on the horn while driving through a tunnel, but I'd bet it's pretty steep. "Plumb perpendicular..." Brian!!! Puh-lease!
TO BE CONTINUED
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