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seventyfo
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 11, 2014 2:34 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Little Switzerland is an awesome little town hanging onto the side of a mountain. Stopped in there a few years ago and spent the afternoon at one of the local gem mines. Worth a side trip if you're in NW North Carolina.
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ChapinBusDude
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 26, 2014 2:51 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Jim Bear!!!!

Yes, they are being floated as they are being written. You busted me.

Next chapter is almost done now. Maybe a couple of weeks. But the problem is that when I post that, no one will know why the heck I'm posting it (like you asked). I think I need to just write the freaking book and publish it instead.

bajaman73 - I got bad news. I sold that bus to a guy in NYC. he sent me some pictures. Bad news. The bus exploded. Forgot to clamp the fuel line to the carb. Alice is now completely dead and gone - a pile of ash.

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A very sad ending....
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 26, 2014 3:13 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Ack... I'm feeling a LOT better about having replaced every fuel line in my bus and having purchased a second extinquisher.
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 26, 2014 3:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

In the third picture, check out the guy in the background. The captain running away like crazy!!! I don't blame him.

The guy I sold this bus to told me he had a fire extinguisher but he aimed it at the engine compartment hatch. Not much use there......

Actually, I think it tough to spend a bunch of money on a really nice bus and then lose it to a missing $1 hose clamp. It's just not right....

Alice will live on though in the story@@@
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PostPosted: Thu Nov 27, 2014 11:53 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Barf.
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PostPosted: Fri Nov 28, 2014 12:27 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

welp. I'm getting new clamps on both my cars.
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PostPosted: Wed Dec 17, 2014 1:29 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Monday, June 27th

The early Arizona sunrise worked like an alarm clock to begin their third day on the road. Both the men awoke feeling the anticipation of getting to the VW specialists shop to see if the experts would be able to figure out what was going on under Alice's engine hatch. They quickly threw their stuff into the bags they had carried and after Van paid the guy at the motel desk they started walking. The sleep had been a cure to the road-induced ache for Van; for Curtis it had reduced the hangover to something tolerable. What the good night’s sleep had not fixed, the early morning walk did. In the summer, Arizona was certain to provide cold nights, cool mornings and extremely hot days. The morning had not been a disappointment as the guys made their way past the restaurants, shops and gas stations that came to life as the sun rose above the low desert horizon. The walk was comfortable. They made their way to the auto repair shop in fifteen minutes and began their wait. Around 7:15 someone pulled into the parking lot driving a red VW Beetle that had a black convertible top. The top was down so the guys saw that the driver was a man that looked to be in his fifties. He had a beard that was mostly black but with streaks of gray. Curtis and Van walked over as the car came to a stop. “Guess you guys own that red bus”, he said as he climbed from the car.

“It’s mine” Curtis replied.

“I stopped by here after dinner last night and saw it parked in my lot. It’s a nice looking bus. How long have you had it”?

“I just bought it a couple of years ago”, Curtis said, “but I am trying to drive it to North Carolina and we've been having trouble keeping it running. I hope you have some time to look at it today. We need to get back on the road so we can make the time we planned”.

The guy pointed to one of the buildings that were a part of the business, the one that they had seen engines and all kinds of VW parts in the day before, and he gestured for the guys to follow him. As he walked he said, “I’m Jim Gross, the owner here, been working on VW’s ever since they started selling them here in the states. Let’s fix a pot of coffee and then we can talk about your bus”.

Van had owned Volkswagens for as long as they had been for sale in the United States. He was glad to hear Jim say he’d worked on them that whole time, but he still didn’t like the idea of someone else messing around with the engine. You just never knew when someone would turn a screw on the carburetor when what was really needed was a valve adjustment. Volkswagens were a beautiful picture of simplicity. Of course most folks didn’t have a clue what a socket wrench was, or why it was a better tool for loosening rocker arms than a screwdriver. When it was first envisioned, an engine was a remarkably simple device. To make the wheels turn you had to make the axles turn. To make the axles turn you needed the gears in the transmission to turn. Making the transmission turn, this was the job of the engine. A VW engine, like the earliest designs had a simplicity that was rather remarkable. As new cars came off the production lines of Ford Motor Company and Chevrolet, their engine designers inevitably added new things to the cars that people would buy. Six or eight cylinders added more power for the heavier cars or trucks. Automatic, push button transmissions that a dummy could drive. Precision machined intake and exhaust valves that were larger than previous ones did the same. Bigger pistons and cam shafts that required an engineering degree to understand; these all boosted the performance of modern American cars – the same cars that cruised the main streets of Kingman each night. These were perfectly fine automobiles but they were too many design modifications beyond the 1960 VW bus they had pushed into the parking lot the night before.

Jim Gross turned out to be the exact expert that he had claimed to be. After helping us push Alice into one of his garage bays he told us to go get a bite of breakfast and that he would have us running by the time we were back. True to his word, when they returned a little over an hour later, Alice was parked again in the parking lot. As they approached Van said “he must not have been able to figure it out. He's only been working on it an hour.” But when they found Jim in his office and asked him, he said, “Your bus is running again but I can't promise how long it will keep running in this heat. The damage to the back has messed up the air cooling so your engine is going to keep overheating. The problem was that the points in your distributor were melted and had closed. I put a new set on there and threw a spare set in the back - its running fine now. I also wanted to tell you that I have a spare engine compartment lid that may bolt on and help some with the cooling.”

Van asked, “How much for the work so far?”

“Twenty-six dollars.”

“How much for the engine lid?”

“How about five dollars?”

“Deal!” Van replied.

After paying Jim the money, the guys threw the engine lid into the cargo compartment, cranked up the bus and took off in search of a shady spot to swap out the new engine lid for the crumpled one. An hour later they were back on the road with hopes of passing over the Rocky Mountains before midnight!

Van was driving, and Curtis was stretched out in the back drinking beer. Alice had double doors on the passenger side right, at the middle of the bus. Opening both made a doorway that was wide enough to fit a washing machine through with space to spare. The center cargo space of VW buses were sometimes traded for additional passenger seating with a center seat, but Alice was configured for the road. She had an open floor space of almost thirty square feet and a total space of around 150 cubic feet. Van and Curtis had packed a number of Curtis's belongings in sturdy boxes. They were stacked along the driver's side wall away from the door. Van had packed a box of his own essentials and also had a couple of backpacks full. And of course there was an ice chest full of food and beer, mostly beer. The floor tended to get a bit cluttered when Curtis went looking through the boxes for something, but he had packed and stacked, and made a space for him to stretch out. Alice did have one back seat. It was in the very back of the cargo space and was as wide as the bus. This was one of the few places the two could go if they were tired of sitting in the same place. Actually, the back seat was more comfortable than the front seats because it had been used much less. It also had the benefit of the full cooling capacity of the vehicle. All the wind eventually made it to the back seat! The one negative to the rear seat was usually not a problem, but since the bus had been damaged in the Klamath Falls wreck, the guys had struggled with blocking off the gaps in the rear cargo hatch. When the truck push in the engine compartment lid, it had also bent the cargo hatch above, allowing engine fumes to enter the bus. Van and Curtis kept busy looking for another hole to fill and another rag that they could stuff. They had done a pretty good job so Curtis was comfortable.

Van asked, “Curtis, what are you going to do in North Carolina when you get there?”

After climbing back into the front passenger seat he sat and thought awhile, “I guess I'll need to find a place to live. And I've been thinking how I might find food.”

You could tell that Van was getting agitated and the look in his eyes confirmed it, it was another one of his disgusted looks, “Are you freaking kidding me?!? I'm spending all this time to get you moved from Oregon to North Carolina and you don't have any better ideas than that? You haven't lined up a place to live yet? What about getting a job like everyone else in the world?”

Curtis knew that Van was right but he didn't want to admit it. He had not really thought much past the part about leaving Oregon till now. Heck, just leaving was a big step for him. Whether he went to North Carolina or New Mexico really didn't matter, he was getting away and that was enough for now. “I know what you are thinking Van.”, he said, “You think that I can't take care of myself. Like I'm some moocher always looking for someone to buy my meals and stuff. Well I have news for you – I have a plan, I'm going to find a commune when I get there. There are a lot of them in western North Carolina. We'll all share what we have and everyone's needs will be met! So what do you think of that?”

“I think that 'commune' is just another word for 'place where lazy moochers live', that's what I think. It boils down to this”, Van continued, “there's only two kinds of people in the world: producers and consumers. I'm a producer, you're a consumer. How do you think you're going to have anything to share if you don't have a job? And what's going to be any different about the rest of your commune? Nothing. When you get there everyone will first come mooching to you for whatever you brought with you, then once you don't have anything, you'll join them in going back to scrounging stuff from outside the group. In fact, that's a perfect picture of what was happening before the “big change” when all the producers disappeared. The government was talking about everyone sharing what they had so they could have their grand social plan. Your damn commune is the plan they never could quite make work. And some in your group are probably the children of the same damn politicians. Back then the real producers called these politicians “looters” because they would bleed any productive venture till it died, in order to give what they looted to the moochers of that time. Special taxes were voted under emergency rules that were adopted by a vote of the same leaders. Thriving historic industries like railroad, steel, and oil exploration were either looted of profits or else lost a favorable status causing some destructive regulation to be enacted. You and your buddies are lazy and have become the prey of today's version of the looters. As long as they continue to give you guys food stamps while promising a taxpayer funded house, you don't have to get a job. Producers like me work, earn a living and are forced by the government to pay taxes to support the very deadbeats that get them re-elected each year.”

“What the hell does all that mean? We've gotta long damn drive ahead of us for you to be saying stuff like that. I'm gonna go and get another beer and it sounds like you need one too.” Curtis reached back and opened the ice chest and handed one to his friend. “Here man, now I'm like you, I'm a producer!” Van just shook his head and took a giant slug of the cold beverage.

Daylight passed into evening and then night as the two continued their drive east. Crossing into New Mexico, Alice was running short on gasoline, so Van pulled the bus into one of the many Phillips 66 stations that dotted this particular highway. After pulling to a pump and shutting the engine off someone came out and filled the tank. Van and Curtis went inside and found a Coca Cola chest and dug out two bottles, then after paying for the drinks and gas, went outside to sit under a tree and wait for the engine cool down some.

“I think that a commune is a great thing!” said Curtis. “Why don't you like them?”

Shaking his head, Van replied, “Another thing about 'consumers' is that they see nothing wrong with what they do. They think that someone – who, they do not really know – owes them something. It's like they feel entitled to whatever: food, a car, a nice place to live, whatever it is that they need, they feel like they should get it just because it is somehow their right. How can you not see what's wrong with this idea Curtis?”

“I don't really want you to go off ranting and into one of your really great lectures Van. But I don't see what's so bad about getting what you need in whatever manner you can. Why can't the government just issue food to everyone like they did to my dad in the Army, huh? There are so many rich people and big companies in this country that have so much money that they can afford to help others out, don't you think?”

Still shaking his head, Van just pointed to the bus and said, “Let's get going. It's your turn to drive.”

Alice cranked up but not very easily. At first she was only firing on two cylinders and even then Curtis had to keep pumping the gas pedal to keep the engine from dying. The two looked at each other. The sound of a four cylinder engine running on only two was not a very peaceful thing. To begin with, it sounded like the two pistons that were doing the work were on the same side of the engine. That makes the engine run unbalanced. They sat there for a while before Van said, “Let's get going down the road and see if the other pistons start to fire. Maybe they’re just flooded and will dry out and start working.” US Route 66 across New Mexico was a remote stretch. The section was the last to be funded when the country's lawmakers decided that the network of US highways would improve inter-state commerce, travel, tourism, and things like that. The only major city that would be served by this highway would be Albuquerque, a city that lay less than a hundred miles ahead of Curtis and Van. As the bus gained speed it also added the missing cylinders and pretty soon they reached their cruising speed of 50 MPH.

Curtis was getting sleepy as they passed through Albuquerque two hours later. The city was also falling asleep at 10 pm but the brighter lights and new sights woke Curtis for a while. He looked to the right and saw that Van was sound asleep with his head nodding into uncomfortable positions. “Wake up Van.”, Curtis said, and when he didn't wake he reached over and gave him a shake. “Whaaa, what's the matter?” he replied with a startled jump.
“Hey man, climb into the back and get some real sleep. I think we’ll try to make some distance today. I'll keep driving till midnight and then you can take over for a while, OK?”

“Sure, that sounds fine. Thanks man!” Van climbed through the narrow space that Volkswagen had built between the two front seats and after pushing some boxes and a cooler off to one side, rolled out the two sleeping bags and curled up on the floor of the bus. There was only about five feet of space making it impossible to stretch out but the road noise coming through the floor immediately lulled him into a deep sleep.

After leaving Albuquerque with all of its lights behind, the highway became straight and flat. Approaching automobiles and trucks first appeared as a single dim light in the distance and then taking fifteen or more minutes before finally passing. But mostly the highway was empty and Curtis's earlier problem returned, still sleepy. They always drove with the front windows down and the middle and back vent windows rotated as far open as was possible. The temperatures were still in the 80's but Curtis tried to raise his window to see if that would wake him up. He was also shifting around in the seat trying to find a spot that did not have a steel spring sticking into his backside. It was a very short time later that he realized that there was a problem with the engine. The bus sounded different. VW owners were famous for being able to detect and diagnose problems by listening to the changes in the sounds of their vehicle. What Curtis was hearing was the sound of the engine struggling to push the bus forward. He glanced at the speedometer and his reaction was out loud, an “Oh No!” This woke Van who got to his knees and peered over Curtis's shoulder and said, “What's up?”
“The bus is slowing down really bad and the engine doesn't sound right. I'm gonna have to down shift to third gear. I think we're losing one or two of those cylinders.” About that time they passed a sign on the side of the road that read: “Elevation 6000 Feet” and a relieved smile covered Curtis's face. They had started the steep climb over and through the Rocky Mountains – they had been expecting this, waiting for it actually. But having never driven this way, neither really knew where the Rockies were. “Hey Van, I know it’s dark, but get that thing out that tells us how high up we are.”

“Hey, that reminds me of something”, Van replied, “I have some grass that I brought for the trip but I forgot till you started talking about 'high' just then! I'll go get both out of the box I packed, the altimeter and the weed.” A couple of minutes later Van climbed into the passenger seat with a joint already rolled and lit. He had the cool new device he had designed and started to adjust a dial.

“What does that dial do?” Curtis asked.

“This is the way that you calibrate the thing to read out an accurate elevation. You have to dial in the current elevation so this can measure the changes in the barometric pressure and deduce the changes in elevation correctly.” When Curtis didn't say anything in response he continued, “Did you get all that Curtis?”

“All what? When are you gonna pass me that joint.”

“Oh, sorry man, here you go.”

With Van calling out the new elevations every couple hundred feet, his company, conversation and the excitement of the pot they had been smoking for the past hour, it wasn't long before Curtis felt the bus asking to be shifted into 4th gear, a good sign that the next elevation sign they would see would be the summit sign. As if on cue, a brown sign announced the western continental divide had been crossed at 8220 feet and it was all downhill to North Carolina. Curtis braked Alice and pulled over just past the summit to trade seats with Van. And while Van was digging through his box in the back for something, Curtis climbed over to the passenger seat for a much needed rest. Van climbed into the driver's seat and opened the Rand-McNally map book and turned to page 26 where the table of contents said the New Mexico map was. After Van said, “8000 feet to 2000 feet in nine miles, six hundred feet per mile. What was that drop we did on the east side of the Willamette Pass?”

“No idea bro, what's the problem?”

“I'd rather not lose our brakes trying to keep us from crashing in a curve. I wonder if we need to use third gear to keep our speed down? I wonder if 600 feet per mile is very much?”

“Look at the Oregon map.” Curtis said. “See what it tells you about the pass we went over. We can compare the two”.

“Oooofff, sorry Curtis, I should have come up with that one. Men on dope should not drive!”
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Buggy Brian
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PostPosted: Wed Mar 04, 2015 6:18 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Great Story! Seems like I heard part of that last night! Thanks again Frank for dinner and the conversation! Can't wait to come back and chat some more, hopefully in my buggy in the not too distant future.

Horrible that he forgot to put the clamp (or neglected to) on the fuel line. What a waste!
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PostPosted: Wed Mar 04, 2015 10:35 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Unsubscibed!
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PostPosted: Wed Mar 04, 2015 1:52 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Those pictures made me very. very sad. I had two Bays (1970, 1971) in that color and I miss them...

Crying or Very sad Crying or Very sad Crying or Very sad
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PostPosted: Sun Feb 04, 2018 3:05 pm    Post subject: Re: Alice Reply with quote

Somewhere in the panhandle of Texas, at a town named Glenrio, around 4 am they pulled the bus into the parking lot of a truck stop to get a few hours of sleep. This time they un-rolled their bags on the dusty ground underneath the bus.

Sunrise around 6 am came with the roar of diesel engines as the trucks that had overnight-ed there prepared to hit the road. Curtis and Van rolled out from under the bus and rubbed the stoned sleep from their eyes while adjusting to the activity surrounding them. Finally Curtis asked, “Do you remember these trucks when we pulled in last night?” “Nope.”, Van replied, “Let's get some breakfast and then get outta here too.

The guys found a table in the nearby cafe and ordered coffee and food from the waitress. They were the only ones left so the waitress asked them, “Are you boys the owners of the old VW bus parked out there?” Van was always happy to talk to someone about Volkswagens, “Yup, we're heading east to move my buddy here to North Carolina.” She wore a dress that was white with narrow light blue vertical strips, pin stripes. Her name tag in-dicated her name to be Roxanne, she looked to be barely sixteen. Not wanting to spend too much time here, Curtis wanted to get back on the road; Van wanted to talk (starting with small talk), “How long have you been working here Roxanne?” he asked.

“My Dad owns the place. I recon I've been working here for as long as I can remember. They say I started by just walking from table to table all day long talking to the truckers that came through. Apparently I was a big hit and that translated into good tips for my Mom who was serving the tables. I've done a little bit of everything since then – started serving the tables when I was fourteen and my Mom split.”

“How come your Mom left?”

“Not sure that I really know the whole story, you can never really know what goes on in a marriage unless you're the one married.”

“Really?!”, Van responded, “And how is it that a sixteen year old girl happens to know this little bit of wisdom?”

“My Dad used to be a Baptist preacher but this town is small so he also ran this truck stop. Lots of truckers come through here; I listen to people talk: my father, the truckers that in-evitably would hole up at a table to talk when they found out he was a preacher. There's a book called Ecclesiastes that seems to be written all about wisdom. My Dad loved to talk about stuff in this book when a trucker would start talking about the problems they were facing. Dad always says "In much wisdom is much grief". But he would tell me that it was better to be wise, and that grief builds wisdom and not the other way around. When my Mom left us he started explaining this to me. Hey, I almost forgot to tell you, my Dad has a couple of VW buses around back. Do you want to go and look at them?”

Curtis and Van answered in unison, “You bet!”

Roxanne went to the kitchen to tell her Dad what she was doing and then led the two out the front door and around to the back. By the time they arrived, her Dad had gone out the back door and was waiting. After he introduced himself, “Rocky Wilkerson”, he showed the two buses, one that looked really nice with a coat or two of primer paint and the other resting on a set of cinder blocks, no wheels and very few windows. Rocky explained that he had been working on the one trying to restore it so he could use it as a church van while using parts off the other. The “church van” had a middle seat allowing it to carry seven people including the driver, maybe more if they were all kids going to camp.

Rocky asked, “How's your drive going? If you need anything I have, you can have it. Now that the trucks have all left I have a couple of hours free. Is your VW running ok?”
“Hmm”, Van thought. This guy's a bit different from the VW mechanic back in Kingston. A Baptist preacher named Rocky that ran a truck stop in Texas that could rebuild Volkswagens. “We gotta get back on the road pretty quick, but lately the bus has been starting hard. Let's go see what happens this morning!”, and they all walked around to the parking lot. The keys were still in the ignition and Van climbed in and turned the key. The engine spun a couple of times really slow like it was lugging badly, then it stopped turning for about half a second, then finally started. It was idling pretty good in the early cool temperatures but all that would change as the Sun heated Texas.

Van jumped out and found Rocky looking at the back of Alice and talking to Curtis, “What happened to your bus?”

“It's a really long story”, he answered, “one day I may need to write a book about this drive. If I do I'll mention your cafe and call it Alice's Restaurant. Well, we got rear-ended the first day out of Oregon and have been nursing this baby along for the past three days. Got about four more to go before we get to North Carolina.”

Van walked up and said, “I think that our battery is going bad, it's been starting like that since we left Kingston yesterday morning. We had to replace the points.”

Rocky opened the engine compartment and listened to the engine for a second then asked Van if he would shut her down. He followed Van around to the front door and as soon as the bus was off asked, “When they changed out the points did they adjust the ignition tim-ing?”

“Don't know, why?”

“When you change out the points, the distributor needs to be turned a couple of degrees to make up for the slight changes in points gap. Forgetting to do that will make an engine sound like it has a weak battery when you go to start it! Wait right here and when I give the sign, turn the key.” Rocky pulled some sort of crazy looking tool out of his pocket that had various attachments. He twisted something around and the tool was suddenly a set of pliers. Curtis watched as he loosened the retaining nut for the distributor and grabbed ahold. Curtis didn't see it move any - two degrees must not be very much. Rocky waved at Van who turned the key and, instant gratification, the bus started. He jumped out and met Rocky with an extended hand. Rocky's grasp was a solid one, adding that to Van's mental list of all the things this enigma of a man represented. With the knowledge that that much of their drive would no longer be a problem, Curtis and Van prepared to get back on the road. Rocky told them they were welcome at his home anytime they liked.

Roxanne asked them to stop in when they were driving back to Oregon (well, she was only sixteen after all). As they were ready to pull away Rocky had disappeared only to return quickly with his hand outstretched to Van sitting in the passenger seat. “If the heat gets to the points and you need to replace them, make sure that you put a tiny bit of this grease on the distributor shaft lobe. That generates a lot of heat and wears out the points here in Texas!” Van took the tiny tube and looked back as Curtis started out of the lot. Rocky’s face was shining like the Sun, Roxanne's was the rainbow that followed a rainstorm. Van just shook his head – what an unusual man.

While Curtis drove, Van grabbed the Rand-McNally and looked up Texas to see where Glenrio was. He found US 66 where it passed through the pan handle then he started looking across US 66 till he found the town at the very western edge of the state. The map indicated that Glenrio was partly in New Mexico and partly in Texas. The more im-portant piece of information though was that they still had the entire panhandle to drive before they reached Oklahoma. Putting the map away he turned to Curtis, “Hey man, its Tuesday I think. We have to go through Oklahoma, then Arkansas, then Tennessee, then we get to North Carolina.”

“Yup.”

“This Thursday is the start of TAG in Georgia. I know a bunch of folks that’ll be there, let's stop for the day and hang out.”

Curtis thought for a moment then asked, “What's TAG?”

Van: “It is an acronym.” Curtis: “What's an acronym?” Van: “It's letters that stand for something – in this case TAG stands for Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, T, A, G. Get it.
“Ok I get it but why would a bunch of folks be going to someplace in Georgia called TAG, is it a VW bus thing?”

Smiling, Van replied, “Well it might as well be one, but no it's actually a yearly event where a couple of hundred cavers get together to check out the caves of TAG. That area is really dense with limestone and limestone means caves! A whole bunch of the guys that go cav-ing drive VW buses; they’re really good for hauling gear up mountains without roads to the cave entrances. They all camp in a field in front of one of the local commercial caves called Sequoia Caverns. The owner is a caver.”

Curtis: “That sounds great – let's do it!” Van: “We'll need to cover over a thousand miles in the next two or three days.” Curtis: “We can do it!”


Bozo's Garage and Wrecker Service was the boy’s early morning stop in Oklahoma. The bus had been running pretty good for about an hour when it just stopped running. It was not the usual deal where a cylinder dropped out or the power gradually dropped – this time the engine just quit. James “Bozo” Cordova was a Mexican that moved his family to Luther Oklahoma from Nuevo Laredo across the Mexican border from its sister city Lare-do Texas. After finally hooking up the bus an hour and a half after the phone call, Bozo towed the bus to his garage while Van and Curtis reorganized the back cargo area. Bozo hated all Volkswagens, apparently because he didn't seem to know how to fix them. He was a rather large man who in spite of his breadth could still lean over a tradition automo-bile hood. But all Volkswagens whether cars or busses have their engines in the back; and not just in the back, but in the back and down really low to the ground. This is the actual reason that Bozo hated VWs. Van and Curtis watched as Bozo leaned into Alice’s engine compartment, his back-side both high and large, and began twisting a screw on the side of the carburetor. Then he twisted another. Van patiently turned the key trying to start the bus while Bozo continued a useless pursuit of tuning the carburetor. The engine never even pretended like it was going to start. After about fifteen minutes the battery was worn out and this course was abandoned. Finally Bozo said that the bus needed a new carbure-tor and that he could get one by the end of the week for forty-eight bucks. After saying no thanks the two pushed the bus to the edge of the garage parking lot, replaced the bat-tery with the new one they had brought along, and repeatedly tried to get the adjustment screws back to where they were earlier that morning BB “before Bozo”. It was not a par-ticularly difficult assignment. Van had adjusted the German-made Solex 28PCI carburetor on other Volkswagens. There was a fuel volume screw and a mixture screw, both of which were anywhere between zero and ten turns away from when the bus was last running. Thanks Bozo. After trying what seemed like about a thousand combinations, Curtis made the winning guess: perhaps the fuel pump had quit working.

He said, “We filled up with gas in Oklahoma City so we know that much is ok. Let's pull the fuel line off the carb and see if we're getting gas there”. As Curtis turned the key to the start position and the engine cranked and cranked, Van watched the now disconnected fuel line and saw not even a trickle of gasoline being pumped out. Fifteen minutes later they had replaced a broken fuel pump and were on the road again, four hours lost but still making time...

Next up: a new road and a new state. Route 66 was turning north now and the boys need-ed some more easterly driving to make their way toward Arkansas always in the direction of TAG at Sequoia Caverns. Their new destination was the town of Valley Head, Alabama. Sequoia Caverns is a local cave that had opened to the general public in 1964 after the family that owned it was visited by a local boy’s camp in nearby Mentone Alabama. The group had been exploring the cave with the Jones family’s permission for the last couple of years when they finally showed Chester Jones some pictures they had taken from deep in-to the cave. The pictures were fantastic in that they showed the sort of limestone for-mations that had only been seen in the then famous Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. Chester was an educated man – he had finished high school, graduating in the 1960 senior class of Valley Head High. If you had asked him where he finished relative to his classmates, he probably could not have told you (because he didn’t care). The boy’s camp had been cav-ing at Sequoia Caverns for so many years by 1968 that the whole affair had become a regular event. Most men, but also some girlfriends and wives now set aside three days a year to camp in the field nearby and then spend a weekend of caving. A fellow teacher at Oregon College had moved from Alabama and convinced Van to join him on a TAG event just the year before the drive. It was one of the best weekends of Van’s life so naturally he was looking forward to doing it again.

After passing Oklahoma City they turned east on Route 62 making for Little Rock Arkan-sas before midnight. A quick stop in the small town of Checotah was needed to restock some critical VW parts from a salvage / junk yard they had seen a sign for on the road. Solex 28PCI ($5), spare fuel pump ($2) set of spark plug wires (50 cents), and a cold beer from Alex's refrigerator, free!

Thursday had been good for the drive. Uneventful. Alice’s health had finally improved with the addition of the new ignition points and fuel pump, the carburetor tuning and im-portantly the cooler temperatures. They were on the road almost continuously as they fol-lowed US highway 62 and then highway 64. The drive from one end of Tennessee after crossing the “mighty” Mississippi River at Memphis to the railroad city of Chattanooga was an incredible 400 miles. They found where Valley Head Alabama was on the Rand McNally map and turned south. The gravel road to Sequoia Caverns was in the mountains that ran between Alabama and Georgia. It twisted through a remote section of southern pine forest. At the early morning hour of 6:00 the fog or mist was still low to the ground. The bus windows were all open, admitting the cool moist air. As they rounded one of the many curves in the road they suddenly saw and smelled TAG, the smoke rising from the dying campfires of the night before. The road opened into the valley nestled between two spurs of the Appalachian’s southern reaches known as Valley Head. Spread before the men was a pasture, green with the early Rye that the owner had planted, dotted with an unbe-lievable number of tents. Curtis had been looking forward to driving into the valley in his pride and joy, Alice, but everyone here seemed to be driving a VW bus. “At least Alice won’t have any trouble finding friends”, he told Van.

They drove on into the middle of the temporary city that had been erected, first passing under a sign strung between two pole proclaiming that they were entering TAG. With the hour being early, there were not very many people to be seen. They passed a small building, and as their view moved from the back to the front they saw that the front was open to the air and it seemed to be a stage or bandstand. There were two men, one on a ladder and the other holding it doing some sort of work near the slanted front of the roof. Parking the bus they jumped out to meet their first cavers of the trip. Van having been to TAG once before walked up right away and asked, “Who’s playing tonight”? The guy holding the ladder said, “It’s a new band from Canada. They call themselves ‘The Band’. Ever heard of ‘em?”

“Nah, we just rolled into town from Oregon. Don’t know any of the bands from Canada”, Curtis said as he walked up. He looked at Van and asked, “So what’s this, the place where the band plays?”

“That’s right, and those are the water barrels.” He was pointing to a line of ten or so 55 gallon drums up the hill about 50 feet.

“What are they for?”

Van looked at the guy by the ladder and shook his head. “He’ll find out won’t he?”
“You bet he will!”

The guy on the roof was finally coming back down and introduced himself. He was a huge bear of a man with a full beard that left almost none of his face visible. The guy stuck out his hand and said, “I’m Smoky Caldwell, I’m in charge of security at TAG.” His smile was addictive and both Curtis and Van knew they would enjoy finding out what at TAG would require a department of security.

Curtis had started to look around a bit and was peering through the fog when his eye was attracted to what looked to be a pyramid constructed of logs. He pointed it out to Van who waved to the other two and started walking that way. It looked to be pretty big but as they approached, Curtis realized that it was not just big, it was a giant. They walked up a hillside away from the bandstand and toward the new structure but as they continued the climb up the gradual hill it was clear that the pyramid stood somewhere between fifty and a hundred feet high. Soon they were standing directly under and looking up a steep side composed of full-sized trees that had been stacked, alternating one on top of another in the style of a log cabin. The structure gradually narrowed as it rose until at the very top it looked to be about five feet wide. They began walking around the base and Curtis looked Van’s way and noted the big smile on his face. “What’s up with this?” he asked.

“Well, it’s about 20 feet higher than the last time I was here”, Van responded.

“Great, another mystery I suppose”, Curtis said. “You gonna keep me in the dark about everything at TAG?”

“That’s the idea”, Van said. “You’re going to love everything about TAG”. He was point-ing to the top of the pyramid now. Curtis looked up but he had to back away some to get a clear view. There were two others that were at the very top doing something. They had a few large cardboard boxes and were taking things out and putting them down into what looked to be a hole in the top.”

“Is that going to be a surprise too?”

“Yup”, Van said as he waved to the guys up top. “Come on, let’s go pick out a place for our camp and see if we can get a couple hours of sleep. The rest of the campers won’t be awake for a good while. They’re sleeping off last night – Thursday night’s party is almost as fun as Friday nights!”

They drove the bus to a spot in the field where they could park between two of the newer looking VW busses. One was a ‘68, the year that Volkswagen said they were going to do a redesign. Neither of the guys had seen a ’68 bus in person so they spent some time checking out what looked like a new type of side cargo door, a large single pane of glass for a windshield, and a front that looked completely different from Alice. These newer busses were bigger too. Alice looked like a little girl parked there between them. Leaving Alice to make new friends, Van and Curtis pulled the now smelly sleeping bags out and crawled inside for some sleep. The grass was soft, there were the noises of crickets all around them, the air was cool, and soon they were both in a deep sleep.

It had been two hours and then: “BOOM”!!! Then more booms and more and more. The sounds were echoing from the surrounding mountains and continued to echo for five or more seconds before the quiet returned. Both men jumped and within seconds were standing looking around. Van had a big grin on his face. Curtis was looking for a gun. “What the hell was that”, he asked. “I suppose you are going to say that it’s a surprise, right?”

“No, this is something that you can see now – it’s Time! Climb out of the sleeping bag and we’ll go find it.” They stashed the bags in Alice and noticed that the camp was stirring now. Tent flaps were being thrown back, some of the newer tents had zippers that were being opened. People were pouring out into the surrounding field, rubbing the sleep out of their eyes, but none of them seemed to be as surprised as Curtis over the loud boom. They were starting gas powered stoves and getting coffee water boiling. Van motioned further up the hill and they continued walking. As they got to the top where the woods-line out-lined the edge of the rolling field they saw a really large balloon floating up. There was a long strip of rag on fire and hanging well below the balloon. Van quickly ran to the right and hit the ground – Curtis followed not knowing what he was doing exactly. He looked at Van and saw that he had his hands covering his ears. “Second wake-up call”, Van screamed as the balloon exploded with a boom that rocked the boys, sending them top-pling over onto the wet grass. Curtis’ ears began ringing and were the only sound he would hear for an hour or more.

“What the heck was in the balloon”, Curtis yelled, a bit too loud probably but he couldn’t hear anymore.

Van stood back up and motioned for him to follow on up the hill. There were a couple of other guys up there cleaning up. They stopped long enough to wave to Van and Curtis. Van said, “These guys are the wake-up call for TAG. Each morning they take carbide rocks and mix them with water, and then they fill up a big trash bag with carbide gas that bubbles out of the chemical reaction of carbide and water. When the bag is full it looks like a big balloon. They tie it closed with a strip of cloth that has been soaked in diesel. The cloth is lit with a match and the balloon floats away since carbide gas is lighter than air. Hoping that they used the right amount of diesel and that the fuse will burn slowly, every-one runs away and covers their ears. The carbide gas makes a really nice boom don’t you think”?

Curtis just shook his head, astonished and ears still ringing, “This is going to be a fun time”, he thought.

“So, are we going to go caving today Van?” Curtis asked.

“We’re going to ask around and see what caving trips are planned for today. Just about everyone here is going caving today. I’ve only done one caving trip here into a cave in Jackson county Alabama. When I was here two years ago a guy led a trip into a cave called Tumbling Rock Cave. Let’s do some wandering around and see what trips are happening.”

-----

After a bit of checking, the guys found a group of five that were going to do a cave nearby Guntersville Alabama called Banana Cave. Van and Curtis donated the gas and agreed to drive the group to the cave in return for the five taking on two new cavers. Neal, the guy that seemed to be leading the trip had a map of the cave and had it spread out on a table for the group to look over. No one in the group had been inside this cave so they had a good look. The map was hardly useful in that the only way to experience a cave is in person and so after spending a few minutes with the map it was folded up and everyone piled into Alice and headed down the road for the cave.

After a drive of about two hours Curtis parked the bus off the side of a road and the group geared up. The map indicated a crawlway as the entrance and then a borehole passage - nothing particularly difficult. Van and Curtis were pretty light on gear. Neither of them had a caving helmet to wear but they each had a flashlight and spare batteries. “Flashlight Cavers” they were called because they were pretty much unprepared for the risks associated with a caving trip. The original group had pooled their gear and come up with two complete sets of gear for Curtis and Van to use. Van had told them about his Tumbling Rock trip two years back and that was enough. A caving helmet with a mounted battery powered light, spare batteries, a spare hand flashlight and batteries, and a small backpack to carry the gear with. Van had scrounged some water and they had made PBJ sandwiches to eat inside the cave. The skies were overcast as was often the case till afternoon as everyone loaded their gear and made way down the narrow trail beside the road. They looked for a small stream that ran out of the cave entrance in the side of a small bluff. When they reached the bottom of the hill the trail ended at the cave entrance. Banana Cave’s entrance was a small crawlway that led into the bluff and was seemingly etched by the water that flowed out. This day the water was only a trickle but after checking out the entrance, Neal prophetically warned the group that if water is flowing out, it would be more if it rained. He led the way as the group made the way into the cave. The crawlway was about three feet in diameter – a reasonably large passage – that was high enough that a person could crawl on their knees rather than scoot along on their bellies. After ten short feet the crawl turned about ninety degrees to the left and then went another five feet be-fore opening up in a small room where everyone could stand up. The crawlway entered the room at the floor level and the water that flowed out of the cave also flowed down a wall across the small cylinder shaped room. The room’s floor was covered with medium sized rocks that in turn were covered with a fine coat of mud. The room had no apparent way out except for up so the team searched for and found a climbable wall next to the small waterfall. Once they climbed out of the cylindrical room they were rewarded with the large passage leading into the darkness, following the small underground stream. Neal had heard that the cave had a large population of brown bats somewhere near the back.

After a short rest break Neal asked Van if he wanted to take the point for a while. The passage seemed to match the map they had carried along and there was not really any indi-cation of a side passage or any other sort of place where the route could be confused. They were simply following the small underground stream further into the depths of the cave. Van had been thinking about the bats some. As they moved further along, they were probably acting like a cork in a bottle, stopping things up, especially any bats that may want to fly outside to eat their nightly meal of bugs. “Yes”, he said, and the group headed further into the complete darkness of the cave. As expected the passage was not much of a challenge. Occasionally the group would need to cross the small stream, or would need to traverse a section of passage where the water had pooled up to block their way, but after a couple more hours things were becoming more comfortable to the new guys. Curtis had been following Van for the last bit of time. Van was in the lead and had started to notice shadows up ahead when his light shined just right. At first he figured them to be reflec-tions off the water but after one of the shadows flew into his face and then turned to fly back he told everyone that they were getting nearer to the bats. He also developed a new stoop in his walk.

The passage ahead was somewhat nondescript. The ceiling and walls till this point had been pretty close at hand, only ten or so feet away, but now the passage was larger. Seeing the walls was more difficult since the incandescent lights did not penetrate the darkness beyond about 20 feet. The footpath still hugged the small underground stream but the group had started to explore to the left and right, checking for side passages as they went. Van stayed on the path mostly dodging the flying bats. Finally the passage narrowed once again and the air above grew busy with flying activity. Van had adjusted to the bats ok as long as the tunnel was wide and high because the mammals could avoid him by use of their echolocation. But now they were often flying directly into his face, then suddenly turning either back, or passing by his head near his ears. He learned to recognize the flut-tering sounds they made as their wings beat the air nearer and nearer his ears. He contin-ued to stoop lower to the point of duck-walking, a term used in caving to describe how you could keep moving down a very short tunnel but not quite having to crawl on your knees or belly. A flurry of bats had just finished circling his head when he felt a tapping on his shoulder. Jumping, he spun around ready to yell at Curtis for surprising (scaring) him! But when he had completed the turn, Curtis was not there – he was still some 20 feet be-hind. Thinking that a rock had become dislodged from the ceiling he looked up and then over his shoulder. Instead of a rock he saw a small brown bat clutching to his shirt just be-low shoulder-level. Two legs were working to push the bat higher as two other finger-like appendages at the tips of the bat’s wings were pulling their way along. The bat was climb-ing right toward the back of Van’s neck. Shouting in surprise, he quickly brushed the bat off and headed back down the stream to join the rest of the guys.

Curtis asked what the commotion was all about so Van had to tell the whole story. The regular cavers had a good natured laugh and returned to their study of the cave map. They had been talking as Van approached but he was unaware of the topic. He listened as they talked about another entrance potentially being at the upper end of this cave, but then they ruled it out due to the large number of bats that were present – disturbing bats, though not dangerous, is considered to be bad stewardship. The thing that Van could not figure out was the general level of anxiety that accompanied the discussion. He looked at Curtis who pulled him off to the side and pointed to the stream. It had been rising – Van had missed this completely. Curtis said, “They think that it must be raining outside and that the stream is the rising runoff that is gathering from the hillside that is making its way underground. They were thinking that it would be a good idea to go out at the top but were not really sure that there would be an entrance that we could get to. The entrance might be high up at the top of a dome room where the bats would likely live and use to come and go during the autumn. It is looking like we will have to head back down this passage the way we came.”

This was confirmed when Neal picked up his cave pack and made his way back down the way they had all come. Single file the group retraced their steps. The stream continued to rise to the point where the group would have to wade at a place where they had stepped across before. Van noticed the ceiling once again except this time with a better under-standing of what they faced. There were bits and pieces of outside debris wedged in cracks or caught on the sharper points, debris that proved that this stream would eventually fill the passage completely. The group was aware of this problem as they continued on. Fifteen or so minutes further and the stream did not appear to be rising higher but simply running off and down the passage. Tensions were easing as the group turned the corner and approached the cave’s exit but they were met with a loud, echoing sound of flowing, rushing, splashing water. The noise was impressive in that the water must have been flow-ing powerfully. The team all approached the cylindrically shaped room and looked over the edge and into what now looked like a bathtub filled with muddy water. At the far side of the bathtub was a spinning vortex as the water swirled and was sucked down to the exit at the bottom of six or seven feet of water.

Curtis seemed to go into shock suddenly, screaming, “What are we gonna do? How are we gonna get outta here before the whole thing floods and we drown?” He was moving around the edge looking first down at the water and then back at one and then another of the cavers. He looked at Van, his eyes pleading that perhaps he had already thought this through and had a good plan for their escape. Van’s eyes were getting larger by the minute as well and they both turned to Neal who had sat down and was taking off his caving boots.
“What’s the plan Neal”, Van asked, but he was already beginning to see. He looked at Curtis and said, “Take off your boots and put them in your caving pack”.

“Why?”

“Because we are getting ready to swim outta here.”

As that whole idea started to sink in, Curtis looked into the water with a whole new per-spective, escape was down there somewhere. He could swim and hold his breath just fine, but the water was muddy so he couldn’t, or wouldn’t be able to see. He tried to remember what the dang passage had looked like – what did it do? He remembered crawling out of a crawlway and then standing up before looking up and across the cylindrical room, so the way back out was at the bottom and completely across the room. Neal was ready to go. He walked over to Van and Curtis and gave them some last minute instructions.

“You’ll need to dive into the water and keep your head pointed into the drain. Don’t let your feet get in front or you’ll get trapped. The suction will mostly pull you to the bottom so just follow it into the crawlway. The walls and ceiling of the crawlway are jagged so you might get banged around some. Remember that the passage goes about five feet and then turns to the right. The water will keep you moving and you’ll probably bounce your head off the wall at the turn, just keep your wits and this will go fine. ok?” Curtis and Van just nodded as it all started to sink in. He continued, “You guys have to go last. These guys here have done this before and know what to do. If anyone gets stuck, the guys behind won’t know it till they jump in and wind up stuck too. Each of us will wait ten seconds to allow the last guy to get out before diving in. You two can decide who goes last.”

He turned and waved to no one in particular and then dove in and disappeared immediately. A ten second countdown passed and the next, then the next and eventually it was down to two. Curtis motioned for Van to go, who then dove for the siphon across the pool. Curtis counted down, grabbed a deep breath and dove in. The whole thing took less than 5 seconds not even giving him time to think about what Neal had said. He was sud-denly spit out of the entrance and tumbling down the stream and past the rest of the crew. There was no sign of rain and the guys were all lying on the bank in the Sun, steaming.

... to be continued ...
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PostPosted: Sun Feb 04, 2018 3:22 pm    Post subject: Re: Alice Reply with quote

wow, this thread is certainly a Novel one.
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PostPosted: Sun Feb 04, 2018 4:47 pm    Post subject: Re: Alice Reply with quote

Alice in Tinderland......
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