It looks like fun. To me, anyway. But it would probably have kilt me. (click pic)  

This is the Saloon that Gordon built. The marvels it contains... (click pic)  

I Don't Own a Land Cruiser

I just got back from Idaho again.

I flew out there on Horizon yesterday. “Be at the airport two hours ahead of your flight…” I shot for an hour and a half – and good thing: I was at the gate ten minutes after I was dropped off at the curb by Dave. But then, of course, the flight was an hour and fifteen minutes late leaving. So I left my house at 9 to catch a flight that didn’t leave until 12.30. For a flight that takes an hour and a half.

And people wonder why I like to fly myself so much.

I flew out there to buy a 1975 Land Cruiser from Gordon Rock. I saw it a few weeks ago out there in storage, and it looked like the perfect rig to leave at the Lake Chelan airport to drive back and forth to the lake house. (3.5 hours to drive; 35 minutes to fly. Another reason I love to fly.) I was going to get in and drive this beauty to Seattle. 12 hours in a BMW; who knows in this thing.

Gordon picked me up and we went out to his ranch, “The Saloon.” Fantastic spread, this place, and he has a bunch of cars just sitting out there in the barn. He decided it was time to sell some, and I had volunteered that the LC was just what I needed.

Gordon got it running last week without any problem. (It’s been sitting for six years.) We worked on it for a couple of hours yesterday afternoon, just trying to get the tail lights to work. And we did. It was the sort of thing that you remove the housing for the tail light, and wires would just break off. Rusty, crusted dry mud, mouse droppings. It was the kind of work I knew I’d be in for with this rig, but then I drove it.

Gordon had driven it around the property a bit, and said it ran great. Well, it did run great. But then I took it out to the highway to drive it back to his house. Between 30 and 50 there was some vibrational stuff going on that I knew was wrong. Expensive wrong. Between 50 and 70 – I thought maybe I could just ‘wring it out’ a bit – it became truly frightening. Then at 75 it smoothed out, and at 80 it just cruised. But Land Cruiser steering is not designed for 80 miles per hour, and this thing was just a 4,000 pound iron deposit deciding on which shoulder of the road it was going to re-integrate itself with the earth. If god had thrown a chipmunk in front of us, the decision would have been made.

Gordon drove it and agreed immediately. He pleaded with me not to buy it. I still wanted it. He couldn’t stand the thought of me being stranded, and the work that may ensue. I suggested we sleep on it.

This morning at 8 we went to Dick York, the valley mechanic. (He looked nothing like Darren on Bewitched.) He looked at the beast and slapped a timing light on it. It was way, way out of timing. He fixed that. So I drove it again, and the engine ran better. But the vibrations persisted. It existed on a continuum that included dangerous and expensive. Gordon succeeded in talking me out of buying it.

Wonderfully, he and his wife Shirley and her sister were all flying back in Gordon’s 206 today. So I took the co-pilot seat and flew back with them. It was a flight in the clouds, with rain, snow, and some ice accretion. But routine as instrument flights go. Nonetheless, we were pleased when we popped out at 5,000 feet over Enumclaw, and Seattle loomed in the mist 30 miles away.

Now I’m home, two days and $300 poorer, but it could have been much worse. I could be somewhere between Baker City and Pendleton in a driving rain storm with an exploded transmission. I’m a good sport. Just not that good.

I don't know if he's avenging evil or delivering it. But he has a Mr. Potato-head Bufallo coming out of his cod piece. And I like that.  

Many mushrooms on the way to Annette Lake...which are benign? Which are malign? (click pic)  

Waiting for the next quake. (click pic)