So I got to thinking…

As far as anyone reading this site knows, we died somewhere in South Dakota on the 9th of October… or I suppose, depending on how active your imagination is, you may have fabricated your own ideas involving fish-like creatures from the outer most regions of space, abduction via mysterious bright lights in the sky and intergalactic sweatshop slave labor…. Or, perhaps you’ve concocted a notion concerning a roving band of transexual imps ravaging our cars and leaving us for dead in the Dakotan tar-pits.

I decided it was high time I dispelled such rumors and updated said website.

To the dismay of some and the delight of others, it is with great pleasure that I inform you; we’re currently alive and well.

We finished off the remainder of our trip with very few issues. I wouldn’t go as far as to call it “uneventful” because we always have a good time.

When I say “issues” I mean deaths, car accidents, blown motors and things of that sort.

Kitty did get real thristy once, and we spent some time on the side of the road diagnosing, guessing, troubleshooting and head scratching, only to find out her fuel gauge had decided it no longer needed to inform anyone of the information it possessed.

After much testing, jumpering, checking, swapping, cranking and frustration we determined a lack of fuel was the issue.

Other than that, we simply enjoyed the drive and the scenery the rest of the way home.

Feel free to check out the gallery to see some of our roadside adventures. If you’re into older cars, funny signs and tomfoolery, I’d recommend it.

For now, Kitty is off the road for some much needed maintenance and a few small repairs. She’ll be back next summer for plenty more road tripping fun though.

Today we made to South Dakota…

Got lots of odd looks, questions, smiles and giggles on the road.

And then were treated to an amazingly beautiful sunset. So of course we had to take peekshers…

And tonight we are in room LOL.

And now we need to get our sleeps on so we can head out early tomorrow, and hopefully actually drive more than a few hundred miles.

Oops, I did it again.

Things got busy, as usual, so there hasn’t been any time to update.

Tuesday September 25th – Left Montana.
Wednesday September 26th – Made it to Bismarck, North Dakota.
Thursday September 27th – Made it to Pittsburg, Pennsylvania.
Friday September 28th – Made it to Ocean City, Maryland.
Saturday September 29th – MK1 G2G @ Jolly Roger in Ocean City.
Sunday September 30th – H2O International Show.
Monday October 1st – Made it to Fayetteville, North Carolina.
Tuesday October 2nd – Made it to Atlanta, Georgia. Hung out with a crazy Irishman.
Wednesday October 3rd – Made it to Memphis, Tennessee. Hung out with Mister-Piano-Man.
Thursday October 4th – Hung out at Graceland in Memphis.
Friday October 5th – Made it to Peoria, Illinois. – Picked up another Cabby.
Saturday October 6th – Made it to Staunten, Illinois – The town threw us a party.
Sunday October 7th – Saw lots of cool cars. Made the first mod on Minxy.

And now we are heading back on the road again, and will give a more proper update of our adventures tonight. I know I always say that, but this time I mean it. For reals.

So… I forgot to make a road-trip thread before heading out, and sure enough…. day 1 brings some issues…

Thankfully we had brought a spare radiator…

The other one cracked in multiple places, and was a disaster. (Will post pics of it later)

So then…. driving through freezing North Dakota last night, the passenger latch breaks, and the top flies up… :wallbash_tb:

Once again…. thankfully I had a spare with me….

I’m running out of parts, and we’re not even halfway through the trip!!

I’ll update with more pics and infos later tonight when it’s time to stop, but right now it’s time to roll again….

P.S. If you want to see this trip route, you can find it in the maps area.

So we were way to busy road trippin’ to keep updating the site. We’re slackers.

And now there is about to be another road trip, going to H2O international in Ocean City, Maryland. But I’m gonna do my best to actually keep up with things this time.

Officer Owen decided he needed to have a word with me in regards to the posted speed limit. Apparently I was traveling in excess of the posted 30mph.

The fact that the speedometer is extremely inaccurate may have something to do with it, but being distracted by the sign on the theatre probably didn’t help much either.

I’m sorry Officer, but can you really blame me? I mean… just look at the sign.

Lucky tried to snap a picture of him but this is all she got…

He’s hard to capture on film so we looked him up online instead. Here he is, in the “flesh”:

Nice guy, a bit creepy though. He just kept asking where John Connor was.

Kitty ishooz.

Sooo…. Ugly got a rad new tat today.

Bloody rabbit:

The big wuss couldn’t stand the pain. I had to keep biting his arm to distract him from the pain on my…. umm… I mean his ankle.

Cleaned up:

So, we ended up sleeping through most of the show, both Saturday and especially Sunday. Saturday we rolled in with everyone else around 10am or so but had to leave early because we just spent 2 days and 2 nights driving and required a little sleep.

Sunday we ended up sleeping in and didn’t end up at the show until nearly 3 o’clock, just as most people were leaving. We drove past at least 100 cars coming out as we were rolling in. There were still plenty of people around when we made it in though. We ended up hanging out with the NEK kids under their tent until we were all too hot and hungry to stay any longer.

We started heading for the hotel to shower before getting some eats but Brian stopped us and said that Kitty’s right rear wheel was wobbling all over the place. I told him not to worry about it, I tightened em up the day before. He said it was really bad so we popped the center caps off to have a look, sure enough the lug bolts were all loose again.

Brian tightened em up and we rolled back to the hotel to take a closer look. Once we got the wheels off we found out the hub-centric rings were too small for the car and even if they were the right size, the cheap-o wheel spacers wouldn’t allow them to do their job because the rings in them were too thick. One of the knuckleheads had a battery powered dremel and John volunteered to bore out the rings enough to fit properly.

He managed to get the right rear to fit so we bolted that up and kicked the spacer to the curb because it didn’t allow the ring to come in contact with the drum to center the wheel. When we got to the right front our fears were confirmed, the tire wouldn’t clear the coilover so we needed the spacer. No problem, break out the dremel again and thin the hub-centric ring in the spacer so it sits flush.

We got everything but the left rear wheel done before the dremel battery went tits up. Using a dremel by hand (no power) is far more time consuming than simply flipping the switch and letting it do all the work. After at least 20 minutes of using the bastid powered dremel we decided to throw the wheel back on, sans ring while we went to get food and let the battery charge.

We went out and had some food then drove around looking for someplace open to purchase booze but didn’t have much luck since it was about 9:30 on a Sunday night. You would think after 2 hours a battery that requires an hour and a half to charge would be fully charged, right? Naw, I plugged it into the dremel, made one pass around the ring and it was dead again. Back to manual mode…. Bastid powered dremels are slow as hell, I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone, but eventually I got it all bolted up.

We spent the rest of the night hangin out with the Knucklehead kids talking cars then headed back to the room so we could wake up in time for breakfast with everyone… which didn’t end up happening due to rain, sleeping and everyone being to eager to get on the road.

Monday involved a lot of driving but we didn’t get too far. We got checked out of our hotel room and got the car loaded up, said goodbye to all the 152/NEK kids and headed off into the rainy mess. Once out of Jersey it started to clear up a bit, by the time we got into Maryland we had clear skies and sunshine again. I sent Tim (ninethings, titletracks, tight pants Tim) a text so we could meet up with him in Baltimore.

We ended up making a couple stops before going to Tim’s. Got some laundry done, got lost, realized the steering wheel was falling off….. you know, things like that.

I called up Tim and let him know we needed a wheel and I took over driving while holding the bolts from falling out, then eventually with just the hub. We met Tim and Sam and waited for Sam’s drunken neighbors to quit pestering Lucky with questions about her car… once they shut up Sam let me drive his mk5 over to Tim’s so we could steal his steering wheel. Turns out there was a misunderstanding and the tools were in the garage… not the hatch.. so, we rolled back to Sam’s, grabbed the tools, dropped Sam off and rolled Kitty over to Tim’s only to find out that he didn’t have a 24mm.

We tried home depot to find some larger bolts for the hub but they didn’t have the proper size tap so that wasn’t happening, the auto parts store was closed so we couldn’t get a 24mm and it was too late to try anywhere else. Tim went through his phone and called someone who might have a socket we could use and actually got one, first try. We hubbed our way over to pick up the socket, then back to Tim’s to finally swap the wheel.

We had all kinds of plans that day as far as things to do in Baltimore but nothing ended up happening, we didn’t even have time to grab dinner by the time that mess was over with. I’ll let Lucky tell you about today (which wasn’t too eventful) because I’ve been doing all the updates so far. :P

In closing, big thanks to all the New England Knuckleheads for their help, hospitality and use of their tools, big thanks to Tim for lettin us borrow his wheel and his friend for letting us borrow a socket. Thanks for lettin me roll the mk5, Sam. She’s a beast.

No thanks to the bitchy owners of the Best Western in East New Brunswick for being stingy with the towels, coffee, breakfast, and whining about the parking lot parties, and a general lack of customer service. No thanks to Grant for making cheap products that fall apart and a big middle finger pointed at whoever’s responsible for the rubble they pass off as roads out here.

Now we gotta make it back to Montana in time for me to swap my trans and get back to Sea town for Waterwagens

Later.

-uglybastid