The Gorge, the raft, and The Car

I write this from the only internet cafe in Reno, Nevada, which is by far the nicest place in the city, for it offers a link to the world outside its miserable city limits. The only other places of business I have seen are tattoo parlours, auto title loan sharks, sex shops, strip joints, wedding chapels, divorce firms, second-hand car lots and the tackiest, most desperate and low casinos.

But how did I get here? And why haven't I left yet? Well...

My last entry saw me having just arrived in Eugene. We were staying at Diggy's place. Diggy lives with a guy called Adam, a funny and good-natured local kid, and has a girl called Maddie come round and help with the cleaning. Both in their early twenties, and West Coast through and through, they proved a great laid-back foil to Diggy's occasional intensity, and made for a great pair of guides to local living. For a few days we just hung out - I managed to watch the Champions' League final, took in a local jam band with Maddie, and met Jim's landlord, Paul, who was kind enough to lend Diggy his raft, a six-man inflatable, for a spot of fishing. One night, we four boys hiked out to a local hot springs near Cougar Dam, and bathed naked under the starlight. What a place!

We also followed up a lead on a car, which turned out to be The Car. More on that later.

First, though, we were off to the Sasquatch Festival, a two-day concert at The Gorge, in Washington State. Ed was feeling the pinch after San Francisco, so Diggy and I went alone. We stopped at my friend Jenn's in Portland (a two-hour drive up the freeway), who, after a night on the beers and playing pool in the hipster Belmont district of her city, and even longer sat up singing along to Beatles songs to my guitar, decided to come with us. Bright and early, then, we were away, for one of the most amazing drives of my life. Highway 84 follows the Columbia river out of Portland... no, wait... The Columbia River. It needs the capitals. It's gigantic - we clocked it as exactly a mile across one of the bridges - and has carved a deep path through the local rock. The 84 follows its sweep along the Oregon side for around 100 miles inland; then we cut over a high pass to meet the river as it snakes north into Washington state and beyond. The high pass, at around 150 miles, took in forests, lakes, rivers, high plains, badlands, you name it - and all linked together with smooth bends that made Diggy's Landcruiser a great way to travel.

The concert ground is out in the middle of nowhere, but kids had driven from all over the North West, Mid West and Western Canada to be there. I didn't see why until we made it down to the main stage. Set in front of a natural ampitheatre holding around 20,000 people, the stage left its back open to the most spectacular view of the Gorge beyond. Miles across, and up to a mile deep, this made for the most spectacular backdrop to a concert you could imagine, and the bands did it justice. First up were The Long Winters "out of Seattle", who gave country-tinged rock a good name and boasted one of the better frontmen I've had the pleasure to see. Easy-going, funny, charming, all blonde hair and aviator shades, he reminded me of a dozen great rock singers - and sounded uncannily like Michael Stipe. Manu Chau played the sunset set - I've been a fan for years, and it was wonderful to see him move a crowd that I suspect weren't that familiar with his stuff. Next up were Arcade Fire, and the Canadian ten-piece laid down a truly great set. Collossal amounts of energy, great performances, and killer tunes; Diggy commented that it was the best set he'd ever seen from a band he didn't already know about - and Diggy has seen a LOT of concerts. Bjork closed the show with a spectacular explosion of sound, light and costume, but we were knackered from the drive and headed back to the tent.

Jenn and I wanted to make a move the next morning, which pissed Diggy off, as he wanted to see the Dandy Warhols. After we dropped Jenn off in Portland, Diggy and I had a bit of a row about it, but it was all over and vented by the time we got back. Diggy can be a difficult customer at the best of times, but for a handful of reasons, I guess we'd been headed for a fight, and it was good to have it settled.

The Car was waiting. I'd been driving around with Maddie, and a lady in a second-hand car lot had mentioned a white Mustang convertible that her sister in law was selling. We'd gone to see it, and it was clearly in bad shape, but I confess, I was just taken in by it. It's an '87, undeniably not one of the better years for the marque, but what the hell - a Mustang convertible is a Mustang convertible. We knew we'd need the brakes and tyres fixing, but the engine seemed solid enough, and we picked it up cheap - in retrospect, far too cheaply. We'd left it with Bruce, Diggy's mechanic, before taking the weekend up at The Gorge. Now it was back at Diggy's, having miraculously aquired a puncture, but otherwise looking OK. Ish. The repair bill had extended to include a new radiator, tie rod, battery cable, and oil filter. No matter - we set about cleaning her up. Ed went for the imperfections in the paintwork on the boot where an abortive attempt to fix a spoiler had left bullet sized holes, and I went for the deep clean. It had been sat open in a farmer's yard for a while, and it took me about 15 hours to get the filth out, but when I did - boy, did she look pretty. Washed, waxed, polished on the outside, shampooed, vacuumed, scrubbed and polished on the in; I don't think The Car had been this clean since she was new. It was a glorious Memorial Day; Ed and I working non-stop on the car, Diggy, Adam and Adam's girlfriend Tamara drinking Pina Coladas, wearing hawaiian shirts and prepping the raft.

We took the raft out an hour before sundown; Adam and Tamara were wasted to the point of falling over, so Ed and I took the paddles (Diggy took the Landcruiser back - the raft didn't seem stable enough for more). We did pretty well, and though it was pitch black by the time we got home, we took in an exceptionally pretty stretch of river, with a couple of gentle rapids and a plethora of local fauna to keep things interesting. After clambering up the steep bank to Diggy's house, I cooked our hosts a farewell meal of bangers and mash (chorizo and italian sausage on a puree of potatoes, bacon, onion, garlic, mustard and parmesan under a blackberry and port jus, for my London friends). Most of the next day's light was spent finishing up the car, and suddenly we were off. Diggy was short of cash ("flow", as they call it out here) so it was only Eddie and myself on the way down to Vegas. Fond goodbyes were said, and off we went.

We'd only gone thirty miles before the first of the car problems started; smoke started pouring out of the engine, and the steering was distinctly for the worse. We limped over to the side of the road, feeling slightly screwed. We had AAA and third party insurance, meaning we could be towed, but damage to our car was our own responsibility. Amazingly, however, we happened to have broken down outside the best possible house in Oregon to do to. A big, grease-stained guy ambled up - Matt - and offered to have a look. We pulled it round to his garage where eight vehicles in various states of repair sat, including a dune buggy he'd just been racing through Nevada. He jacked the car and had me turn over the engine. Sickening red arterial spurts arced out from the engine. "Shut it off!" he cried... then: "Hmmm..." then "I can fix this." He janked out the power steering hose and inspected the valve, before removing an o-ring, hammering it back into shape, replacing it, and topping it up. A miracle. We thanked him - he wouldn't even let us give him a beer - and headed back on the road. More miracles, it turned out, would be needed later.

Before that though, a glorious night's driving. I was high on caffeine and adrenaline, and drove for nine straight hours, covering 500 miles of backroads into California before crashing out in a cheap motel in Alturas, CA. Dozens of lakes and mountains dotted the route - I know its a cliche, but America is simply huge, and so much of it is untouched nature. It's not like the UK, where the land has been toiled and shaped for a thousand years - Oregon in particular is utterly beguiling in its untrammelled beauty - and our route was going to take us far from the interstates and further from the cities. The next day, yesterday, was where the problems started, and our remote route started to be problematic. Ed was driving - and I'd like to blame him at this point for all that follows - when The Car started smoking again. The power steering levels were fine, though, as was the brake fluid, the oil, the radiator... and yet drips were coming thick and fast... from, it turned out, the transmission. Bugger. We were in The Middle of Nowhere, Northern CA, and knew that if we let the fluid empty, the transmission would be screwed. We found the dipstick, topped it up with power steering fluid (the best we had) and limped on to Quincy, CA, but it was too late for a mechanic, and we stayed the night.

Next morning, I woke to an empty room, and the phone ringing. Ed had taken The Car to a mechanic on the other side of town, and had Some Bad News. New transmission needed. $2000 and 8-10 days to fix it. The Car, and possibly our entire trip, was fucked.

Through my natural optimism, I told him that this was clearly nonsense; that when the fluids were up, the gearbox worked just fine, that this guy was a backwoodsman, and that we just needed to find someone who knew about transmissions. The next mechanic over cautiously gave us hope along those lines, and we decided to make for Reno. We only made ten miles of the seventy before the leak gave way entirely; we limped to the nearest garage with a phone (having had no mobile coverage since leaving Eugene) and called for a tow to Reno. The guys at the garage recommended a transmission specialist, and before long a guy called Lee turned up to tow The Car into town.

Rich at A-1 Transmissions gave us two options; either it would cost $1800 to replace the transmission (which would put Ed out of the trip entirely) or we might have gotten away without damaging it, and only have to fix the leak - a few hundred at most. Tired, pissed off, and worried, we took off for a motel and brooded for the rest of the afternoon. We did take in a couple of hours worth of Reno, and discovered it to be the most miserable city either of us have ever visited, and I include every hick town in South America, Central Europe and the West Midlands in that assessment. We finally escaped the main strip and ate a burger at a pool bar, swinging between misery, wild optimism and mild self-loathing for being such mugs as to buy The Damn Car in the first place. Eager to spend little, we walked back to the motel and slept fitfully.

This morning, however, bought good news. The transmission, it turns out, wasn't damaged, although a new pump seal would have to be put in. Rich discovered the problems with the starter were serious, though, and replaced it, along with the torque converter and two u-joints on the rear drive shaft. $800 all-in, then, but right now that feels like a blessing. And in fairness, aside from the engine itself, almost every moving part in the car has now been fixed or replaced, so I'm reasonably confident that The Car has given us the last of its major suprises.

Ah, who am I trying to kid? But, boy, she is pretty... what can I say? I think it's love.

Today, then; Yosemite Park - then overnight round there somewhere, followed by an evening drive across Death Valley and, The Car willing, we'll be coasting top-down down the Vegas strip an hour after sundown on Saturday...

PS If anyone needs it, my mobile out here is 001 (415) 412 9174