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Westward Bound Part Three: Homecoming

Posted by Sloan Schang

There are lots of things I’m looking forward to in Oregon. Good old friends, the fresh smell of fir forests, and favorite Thai restaurants all await our arrival, as does a healthy VW support network and my most trusted mechanic. But there’s one thing about Oregon that I’ve not been looking forward to while driving these 5,000 miles across eleven states. That thing is the state law that prohibits motorists from pumping their own gasoline.

To the average driver, pumping gas may be a trivial detail of driving. I know people who think of it as a nuisance, little more than an interruption of errands or a reminder of the escalating cost of driving. I also know lots of people in Oregon who love having an attendant pump their gas for them, which is done automatically and at no extra cost. Indeed in the sorry weather of winter, having someone else take your credit card, swipe it and then stand shivering in sideways sleet while you wait in your still warm seat, this is a dream.

But in ten years of owning and maintaining classic cars, I’ve learned that there’s one thing more than any other thing that keeps them alive and running. It’s not just fresh oil every 2,000 miles, a valve adjustment every other month, or making sure that the tank only gets the highest octane fuel available. These things are critical and obvious, but what counts even more is making sure that no one lays a wrench or a greasy finger on the car besides me and my trusted mechanic. Unfamiliar hands cause familiar problems because people not accustomed to handling precious old things often treat them like replaceable modern things. Their rough, careless handling of door pulls and gear shifters is often the touch of death and I’d rather they just not touch it at all. It’s not that I don’t trust people; I just don’t trust them with my car. This puts me at odds with a home state that doesn’t legally allow me to touch my own gas cap in a filling station.

So my girlfriend and traveling companion Amy has been a good sport for the last month and a half, listening patiently when I have loudly announced at every filling station between Florida and Nevada that, “I love pumping that gas!” I pumped my own, one last time, right at the Nevada-Oregon border, wanting to postpone the inevitable for as long as possible. And when the needle finally fell to “E” a day later, I rolled into a Shell station in the vast nowhere of the Southeastern Oregon desert, handed my credit card to the attendant and asked him to fill it with Premium. While I was off in the restroom, he did me one better and overfilled it with Premium, topping the tank off with so much extra fuel that I returned to find a fast growing puddle of petrol beneath the engine compartment. Dumbfounded, the attendant looked at the puddle, then at me, then again at the puddle before predictably scratching his head and saying, “Well, I’ve never seen that happen before.”

I offered a few teachable words about not topping off anyone’s gas tank, especially not a 30-year-old gas tank, and then got to work looking for the leak. I found it at one of the short lengths of flexible hose that connects the longer metal lengths of the fuel line. It wasn’t tough to deduce that too much fuel forced into the tank had expanded this old flexible hose and created the leak. Knowing that I was only a day or two away from the end of this trip and my own mechanic, I stared breathlessly at the drip, willing it to stop. When it started to slow a little, I made the debatable decision to try the “wrap it in duct tape and drive ten miles” remedy. Fire extinguisher in hand, of course. It worked. Ten miles down the road the leak was gone. Three hundred more miles down the road and we would be home.

We have been traveling, away from our home in Portland, Oregon for more than seventeen months. Three of those months have been spent inside of this VW Bus, living and rattling our way around the country. We’ve seen the best and worst that life on these American roads has to offer. In Atlanta, Georgia, furious commuters wielded their SUVs like weapons to move us out of their way. In Winnemucca, Nevada a local woman gave us her spare electric blanket after hearing our stories of cold nights past and still to come. And through our big bay windshield we’ve watched the sun rise over the Florida Keys and set over the twinkle of the Vegas strip. Through it all, I’m in awe of the engineering that’s allowed this old Bus to go 5,000 miles before finally having a problem - a problem that was in fact caused by a careless hand.

And with that fuel leak still abated, we finally rolled into Portland yesterday, finding it unseasonably sunny. Spirits were high, and our first glimpse of the skyline created a rush of such warm emotion that we decided to take a few extra minutes to drive through downtown before parking one last time. This would be our victory lap, a couple of turns around familiar streets to see the new condos and restaurants that had risen while we were away. I pulled off the interstate and into downtown’s posh north end, a glittery steel and glass neighborhood of expensive groceries and fancy dogs called the Pearl District. We’re less of an oddity here than we were in say, rural Mississippi, but a few people are still looking up from their lattes to smile and wave. We’re waving back and literally patting each other on the back when I push the clutch in and finally hear the “pop” of inevitability.

The clutch pedal has gone soft and I realize I can’t downshift. In three seconds we’ll be stopped and disabled at a downtown stoplight, cars piled up and honking behind us, so instead I glide into an empty parallel parking space. I try a few times to get it into gear, but it’s not happening. Five thousand miles of driving and the clutch gives out less than three miles from home. You’d think I’d be crushed, like a professional long distance runner who needs to be carried the last few yards to the finish line of his last race. Instead, I’m feeling pretty peaceful. There are friends nearby who can come pick up our luggage and our dog. It’s also Spring Break now, so downtown’s not as busy as it could be. And there’s a nice cafe across the street where I can sit, wait for a tow truck and reflect on this rather poetic ending to the trip. But first I have to make a call. I have to call my mechanic and tell him I’m home.