The suburban America obsession with lawn care mystifies me. I simply do not see the point in it. In some sense, I would probably prefer to live where grass can grow wild. In other ways, I am too used to my modern comforts to be okay with that. It’s not that we didn’t live outside of town when I was growing up, but nowadays almost everything is right nearby so I’m able to get anything I need, and if I can’t, there’s the internet, so I’m spoiled.

The point of that is… I really don’t know what to think of yardwork. It certainly isn’t fun for someone with a tendency to get sick in the heat and carpal tunnel.

Still, Grandpa needed help with his yard, and since we are here, we are rather easy targets.

So… um… Grandpa’s yard looks a bit like it was mowed by a drunk person. Not, of course, that I was drinking while doing lawn care, other than coffee before and after, that is, but I can’t drive a mower in a straight line.

Mom even went back and fixed stuff I did because I somehow missed a row completely. And by the downspout, supposedly, though I swear I tried to do that.

I think it just goes to show that you would be much better off not asking me to take care of your lawn.

Monday morning the first week of vacation almost always means working on the Maxwell.

(My Maxwell is at home. I miss him. But my kitty does not travel well.)

I started being tasked with cleaning the back tires free of grease. I got my bright green gloves and my special cleaner, and Grandpa jacked up the Maxwell so I could spin the tires. For some reason, it lifted lop-sided, where the passenger side was higher and driver’s side low. Still, it was enough.

I got the tires nice and clean and also did the splash pans and the hood. The car leaked so I had to do the splash pans twices. Also the hood as Grandpa was not satisfied with my first attempt.

We were about to break for tea when Grandpa discovered that there was another squeak. I was like, “but we fixed the squeak last year.”

And we couldn’t figure out what was making the noise.

After Mom trimmed the hedge, she came over to see what our status was, and she helped look for the squeak, but it couldn’t be found. It seemed to be coming from the area of the gas tank, which made no sense. Mom asked if it was because the Maxwell was on the jack, and I asked if Grandpa had heard the squeak before yesterday. He said it shouldn’t be the jack and that while he hadn’t heard it yesterday, it was there anyway.

We went back in for tea, and when we returned, Grandpa continued to search for the squeak.

We still couldn’t find it, but we ended up letting the Maxwell off the jack.

Yes, you guessed it. There was no more squeak. Funny how that goes.

Day two of vacation had us arriving at our destination too tired to do much more than say hello and crawl in bed.

That whole overnight thing… I’m not sure I can do it anymore. I used to be fine going all night on our drives, but not so much anymore. At any rate, we were feeling rather mellow for the day as we were both still very tired even after the nap.

I discovered to my dismay that my record player is malfunctioning.

And then it was time for food. We went to eat at a local hotel’s restaurant which was quite tasty (the gumbo was spicy but very good and my sandwich was so huge I had to finish it today.) Still, Grandpa and Mom both noticed the unfortunate carpet pattern on our way in, and I was like, “what?”

So after the meal, I go back out and look and sure enough… The pattern on this carpet is an odd mixture of colors done to alternate in random ways kind of like those graphs you see when its a needle on a polygraph (I may watch too many crime shows) and where one of the colors was looked more like the carpet had completely worn away and so it looked pretty bad. It also clashed with the grain on the wood.

We were joking about how we’d be easy pickings for Whist and shouldn’t get paired up because it would be too easy. And it’s true, really. I’m a terrible Whist player. Like… awful. People really complain about me as a partner. So I figured it would be bad.

Only… I won for the first time ever playing Whist. Well, Mom did, but you know… it’s still a win.

We got a later start on getting on the road this year, owing in part to my varied… er, issues? I was a bit scatterbrained all the way through packing, relying heavily on lists to get by and still managing to forget what I was doing about two seconds later.

There were upsets like “wow, none of my jeans fit, what happened???” and there were “crap, I can’t find that” panics and then there was… my new talent for spilling things.

If it was on me, I’d be tempted to quote Airplane and “that as much as anything led to my drinking problem,” but I didn’t actually spill anything on me. First I knocked over a thermos full of water trying to get a suitcase out the door.

Then as I was packing my dress bag, I knocked over my coffee cup, spilling the last of my precious coffee all over the floor.

Still, in spite of that, we made it on the road. In addition to the usual game of watching for horses (Mom totally won and possibly cheated as she ended with thirty-seven and I got three) we were on the lookout for white vans like the one that stalked us last year.

We did actually see several, and a few of them acted a little suspicious, but we ended up leaving them all behind or they turned off, so no stalking occurred.

Then I was starting to get a little fuzzy like maybe a migraine might be coming on, and so I stopped driving to rest, and I was just trying to move the box of crackers when I lost control of it and dumped it all over the floor of the car for spill number three.

Those are good crackers, too. It was a real shame.

Still, we made it through the night minus a few crackers and no white vans, so that has to count as a victory, right?

Most of the time after the run is a bit quiet.

This would be a bit of an exception. We unloaded the Maxwell from the trailer, and Grandpa set to work trying to repair the light for the oil gauges. I had the fun of wiping down the entire car post run, where lots of grease and oil had gotten all over it. Yes, I was quite dirty by the time I was done with my work, covered from head to toe again, though at least this time I’d used my bluetooth speaker to give me some music while I worked, making it more enjoyable to a point.

Grandpa managed to fix the light (after breaking it) and the short that was causing it to fail after he’d replaced the washer.

We then started the Maxwell up, and Grandpa backed the Maxwell into the garage. He went to step down, and that was when he heard it. The squeak.

It had squeaked on the run, according to Grandpa, but we hadn’t noticed it. So then we tried to identify the source of the squeak. It kind of sounded like it was coming from the back on the driver’s side. Only it sounded like it was coming from the rear passenger side. And then it sounded like it was coming from the front.

Grandpa said maybe it was the springs, so he got underneath the car and oiled them. We checked. Still a squeak, still no clear sign of where it was. So he went to the front, took the bolt off the springs, and found signs of wear, aka a squeak. So he was going to switch it with the other bolt, but it was still good on the one side. Both sides got oiled, the bolts and pins were put back in place.

Check, and there is still a squeak.

Mom had come out to check on us and asked what we were doing. I explained there was a squeak. Grandpa told her that it moved.

It kind of did, in a way, as it was impossible to pin down.

We went back out, took off the bolts on the rear of the spring, and the process repeated itself, with the oiling and putting back in place. We had it all done, and I went to check the squeak.

The loud squeak? Gone.

Only there was still a squeak. Grandpa said it might be the running board, but currently, it remains a mystery.

I’ve been a little remiss in updating the past few days. It was a long, long day Saturday, and I suppose I’m still recuperating some from that day and the weekend. I’ll get into a bit more of what happened after we got back in another post.

Back to Saturday. The day of the run. Day starts at five, getting us ready, the car repacked, and the Maxwell up and going. Well, we were a bit late this time due to a slow funnel for the oil, though I should add that the Maxwell pretty much started first try. The oil took so long that people came over to make sure we were going to make it.

We did. We got over to the church before the starting gun.

Joe had decided that since he was replacing Grandma in the Maxwell, he was wearing her hat, so he put it on right as we were driving out, much to everyone’s amusement. He said he’d put it on at all the stops, though we missed a few along the way.

We explained to him about waving to the cows and statues, and he even neighed at some horses.

We made it to the first stop okay, about paced with the group, though we got slowed down along the way. After Litchfield, I was driving, and it was a little bit awkward as I’d gotten no practice until then. So I’m up front with Joe embarrassing myself by grinding the gears, but we made it. (The guys in the car in front of us did look back at me, and I’m not sure if they were trying to figure out who Joe was or if they didn’t understand why I was behind the wheel.)

I drove to Kingston, and there was a trumpet player there going along with hits by Johnny Cash and CCR. That was neat, never seen that before, so I took a little video of him on my phone.

We took off kind of late from Kingston after stopping for sandwiches for Grandpa and Joe. As we were leaving, this guy was crossing the road and not paying attention. I had the brakes going and honked the horn but still had to swerve to miss him. We made it out fine, and he wasn’t injured.

I drove almost all the way into Buffalo, and then Grandpa took over just before there. The tow truck stopped when we switched, thinking that we were in trouble, but while Shadow was lagging a bit, she still made it.

Lots of people made comments as Joe and his hat came into Buffalo, and we went in to eat again. I sold my last of the books I’d brought with me.

I ended up driving after Buffalo for a bit, to my surprise. We had to find a gas station, and there was a bit of confusion as to where we were supposed to stop, if it was the one listed in the directions or just any of them. It was a little nerve wracking, thinking I was to run out of gas at any second, but it turned out we had three gallons, so we had plenty.

Grandpa drove the rest of the way. We stopped in Crystal, and they gave the driver free corn. We headed on to the last bit, thirteen miles of winding paths to avoid city traffic, ones that Shadow didn’t care for much as it was a lot of stopping and starting.

At last we reached the finish line. Grandpa told Joe not to wear the hat, but the mayor of New London asked him where it was, so Joe put it back on. The Maxwell almost died just before the finish line, but we made it. Grandpa completed his thirty-first run.

Some car issues today. We will call them issues as Shadow may just have been persnickety and not necessarily having any real trouble. It’s hard to be sure.

She had a bit of an incident in the parking lot prior to the Green Lake tour. We call this one how to clear a parking lot. Mostly because it kind of did… by smoking the place up. The Maxwell was parked in the middle of the antique cars at the Legion, almost right smack in there, and Grandpa decided he needed to run off the oil. I’m not entirely sure what the issue was, if doing the valves resulted in a spill or if the oil in the car itself was suspect, but he held down the gas and let the car run for a while. The result was a rather large cloud of foul smelling smoke that was kind of all over everyone.

People started leaving for Green Lake early.

We had to go back to the trailer for air and then repeated this process some. The run around Green Lake seemed fine, at least from what I could tell as a back seat passenger. We made it around, stopped for rootbeer floats, and that was when things took a bit of a worrisome turn.

The car would not stay started. I got it to start, much to the surprise of people watching who did not believe I could crank it (I can, but sometimes it doesn’t work and it does hurt a bit, too, at times.) Grandpa said it wasn’t getting enough gas.

So we checked, had plenty in the car, and so he checked it going into the carburetor. Grandpa got under and started trying to fix it, and I’m not sure entirely what he was doing, I couldn’t tell, but we thought we had it fixed. I put the tools away, he tried to start it. Nothing. I reminded him we didn’t turn the gas back on, so I did and woosh. Gas puddles under the car, and it turns out some line was disconnected. Whether that was the line Grandpa tinkered with or not, I am uncertain, but it was a bit of a new disaster as at first it seemed like it needed a new part. It didn’t. Grandpa put it back in place, the car started, we drove back to town.

(I will add that the parking lot was rather deserted at this point.)

It did not want to start again when it was time to do pictures. I got it started after that, a bit in advance, and we were off to the nursing home.

And the car seemed to start fine the next few times, so here is hoping that bit of finicky behavior is behind us and all will be good for tomorrow’s long run.

Also known as… paint and I don’t mix.

My last couple days have been occupied with getting the Maxwell ready to go on the car run. I almost wish I meant my cat as I miss him terribly, but no, I’m talking about my favorite antique car, the 1908 HC Touring car that is my grandfather’s.

This year, Shadow, as I like to call her, needed some patch work done on her seats. Leather is a resilient enough substance, but it will crack when it ages, and the leather with the car is over a hundred years old. So Grandpa had put the patches in the back seat, and there was one minor problem (well, the clamp wouldn’t work to hold the leather in place while gluing in the patch, but that was less minor, I guess.) The leather patch was brown, and Shadow’s seats are black.

The black leather was too thin for a proper patch. I asked Grandpa if he was going to paint the patch to match the rest of it, and he said I was.

After doing other prep work to get the car ready, Grandpa finished the patch on the back seat and turned to me, going, “okay, Rembrandt, your turn.” So, that was what I did yesterday, took leather dye and applied much like I might nail polish to the patchwork places and a few other areas that needed it on the doors.

I asked Grandpa if he was going to repair the front seat where it was just horsehair, and he said he’d tied it in so it wouldn’t come out. I just kind of looked at him. The car run is long, and I’m a bit thinking of my poor dresses getting snagged on the seat, and he relented and fixed the other seat, too, though with a great deal more frustration than the last one.

That was last night, and it had to wait to be glued, so this morning I got to do the larger patch and make it black. I ran out of the dye and think a bit too much of it ended up on my fingers and wouldn’t wash off.

It’s gone now, but then I had to resort to paint thinner because of the spray paint.

This is the part where I explain why paint and I don’t mix…

I got done with the painting and oiling the steering rods and tire rods and we loaded up the Maxwell after a few other disasters (um, no, not really kidding, either, the Maxwell got stuck and the winch didn’t want to work.)

Grandpa asked me to trim the hedge, which I did. Then he was looking around at other projects, and he asked me if I wanted to mow the lawn. I didn’t. In retrospect, maybe I should have, but my carpal tunnel was hating me for the hedge. I wanted a smaller project, so I chose the spray paint on the trailer, which seemed like it would be less strain on my hands.

Not so much, but then I’m getting ahead of myself… I was fighting some wonderful masking tape that didn’t want to be attached to the trailer and the paint didn’t seem to want to work. (I didn’t shake it enough, though I swear I shook it.) Finally got one can working, did the back of the trailer and one of the sides and ran out of paint. I went back one of the cans I’d tried earlier that didn’t work because the sprayer broke. I used the one from the empty can, and it seemed to work.

Key word being seemed.

I ended up having to repeat that process multiple times as I worked, and by the time I was done and out of paint again, my hands were white with paint. Sticky paint. I walked inside to wash it off only to have both bathrooms occupied at the time. So I waited, sticky hands and all, unable to do anything while I waited. Finally, space freed up, and I tried to wash it off, but it didn’t come off with regular soap. It didn’t come off with dish soap.

I had to go look for paint thinner. I couldn’t find paint thinner. I looked in the paint cupboard, missed it, and later went back only to find that bottle was empty. I made another attempt with dish soap and was told where to find paint thinner. So then I got to go into the shop and scrub my hands with the paint thinner, getting a little bit woozy from the fumes, and I swear, it took a good thirty minutes just to clean one hand, and even now there is still a bit of paint there.

On the bright side, the grease from yesterday and today is gone, but I’ve still got white paint on my nails and knuckles. Fun times.

I should talk a bit about some of the interesting things we’ve eaten thus far on our short little trip.

We used to eat at Runza a lot more when I was a kid, though after our move, we were more often getting Swartz’ krautburgers. It was kind of nice to stop at one enroute and discover that they had an order of Frings. Yes, half-fries, half-onion rings, this was perfect for us to share. Not really that adventurous, but I hadn’t known that existed, it being so long since we last went and all.

No, the truly adventurous part starts when we get to the lake. Well, hours after waking up there, at least. We were told we must try lots of my aunt’s friend Don’s homemade stuff. We didn’t get to the Raspberry Dandy, but we did have the homemade pesto bread with cheese, very delicious, and the burgers he made.

They introduced us to Skip and Go Nakeds, which is a drink made of lemonade, beer, and gin. Or vodka, if you’re out of gin, which they were by the third pitcher. Kathy says it tastes like summer. All I know is I couldn’t taste the beer, so it was good by me. I was tempted to put tea in one to see if an Arnold Palmer version was as good as the regular, but I didn’t.

Kathy made some chili chicken, which was not something I sampled as I’m not able to take really spicey stuff, but Mom liked it.

The real challenge was what we found at the grocery store: gummy bear brautwurst.

No, you did not read that wrong. They were real. I have pictures. We ate them. Well, we each tried half of one, much as Don protested. They were like regular brautwurst with just a bit of… gummy bears. It was interesting.

We continued our adventurous eating with a stop the next day to see my other uncle and aunt, who had us try Hub 41 in Detroit Lakes. There we had some new drinks, including beers (one had lemongrass) and I had something called a Birk. We had an appetizer made with korean pulled pork, tator tots, and bleu cheese dressing.

I got a Muffaletta sandwich, and that thing was surprisingly good, though I kept losing my olives and was too full to finish it. I should admit now that I had to look up a few things on the menu to know what they were, but it was all tasty and definitely part of our… adventure.