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Rally Rally - Moscow to Paris - Prologue


Joe Ernest

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Disclosure and Disclaimer

  • The story below is based on actual events that took place during the Lemons Rally of January 31 to February 3, 2017. Loosely based, ok, very loosely based.
  • This is not a documentary, or even a docudrama, it might be better described as a crocumentary.
  • The opinions expressed in this story are not necessarily those of the 505turbo list.
  • The opinions expressed in this story are not necessarily those of the Lemons Rally.
  • The opinions expressed in this story are not necessarily those of the author.
  • The events recounted and the opinions expressed in this story may not be suitable for all audiences.
  • If you are a member of the ‘unsuitable audience,’ suitable entertainment can be found on PBS.

Prologue (Draft):

Ensconced in my recliner after the workday, laptop on lap, I performed my daily scans; CL for 'Vanagon', SearchTempest for 'Peugeot' and 'Citroen', 505turbo for everything, the Samba for 'TDI, Passat, Eurovan and Vanagon', recycle, back to 505turbo, then SearchTempest.....Huh? 'Lemons'....back to 505turbo. No Lemons for sale or wanted. What lemons? More forum scanning, and there towards the top of the preview pane I find it....something about Moscow to Paris Le Mons.  

Being quite familiar with PD, and having just binge watched this year's Dakar, my mind was already in that long distance rally mode. I was excited to hear that the Lion of Africa would be roaring from Moscow to Paris, perhaps even extending its claws in the snow and ice coating the bituminous surfaces between. I made a mental note to revisit the forum and check for progress reports. 

A few days later, again ensconced in my recliner, I returned to the forum, and horrors! Team Lion had lost all its team mates. The Lion would still roar, but now there was an invitation for replacement Lion-izers. Interesting, no, fascinating, enticing.......but no, I am a responsible, alimony paying, cautious engineer type. I do not engage in such irresponsible frivolity. A few hours later, there I was again ensconced in my recliner, like a moth to a flame, drawn back to that 'Le Mons' post. I put the laptop away and pushed all thoughts citric and de Monic out of my mind. Ah, good, 'Wheeler Dealers' are working their magic on an HY van. It had been a rolling garment store and later maybe a produce van in the south of France. Produce? Citrus? Oranges....and lemons? Non, non, non, pas pour moi. 

And then the moth was inexorably drawn into the flame, and it sent Arun a message asking to communicate via email or phone.  He replied explaining that everything was set up, he had paid the entry fee, arranged for the hotel rooms, prepped his car, etc., etc., all I had to do was show up and ride the Lion. A day and a phone call later the Moth was crawling across the Expedia screen. Holy insecticide, batman, those big aluminium birds do not fly as efficiently or parsimoniously on petroleum as moths do on bug guts or bird scat. So the moth morphed into a weasel and sent Arun a weaseling out email. But then Arun responded with an email expanding or explaining the full extent of his generosity, that he had already paid the Lemons Rally entry fee, that he was going anyway, he was offering the same deal he offered his brother. He had made all the hotel reservations, paid the deposits, and with or without his brother he would be funding the hotel stays anyway. I could avail myself of the same generous deal he offered his brother. All I had to do was book my flight and buy my meals, he’d even fill up the tank on the 505.

And thus the weasel was shamed back into his previous incarnation. 

The Expedia tabs were still open in my browser so booking both legs of my journey took but a few clicks of the mouse. I had intended to forward my itineraries to Arun that evening, while again ensconced in my recliner, but on my drive home, my phone rang. It was Arun, calling to ensure that I fully understood the full extent of his generosity and the resultant minimal impact on my ability to pay alimony that month. He said he had paid the entry fee, arranged for the hotel rooms, paid the deposits etc. He concluded with an ardent request that I reconsider my decision to weasel. I asked if my forwarding airline itineraries within the hour was sufficient evidence of adequate re-consideration, and proof of sufficient de-weaseling to warrant riding the Lion. 

Mais naturellement, but of course.

Now came the biggest challenge so far, or since spraying WD-40 and applying a crowbar to the cover of my checkbook - getting my derrière out of bed at 3:30 am, and making the pre-dawn frigid hike from long term parking to the terminal.  Contrary to popular belief, it does get bloody cold in this salad bowl part of sunny California, thousands of feet below but only tens of miles from California's snowy ski slopes. 

Allons-y! Onward ho! To the Peugeot.

Lemons Rally Day 0

The 727 touched down in the deepening darkness of evening in Baltimore - as it taxied up to the terminal, I sent a text message to Arun, “Just landed.” Arun responded advising me that I would recognize his car by the yellow fog lights below the bumper, Oh, and the car is a Peugeot. With that knowledge I grabbed my carry-on bag and shuffled up the aisle and stepped into the walkway leading to the terminal. I strode the billion yards to the exit to ground transportation. I relayed to Arun the section of the passenger pick up zones I was in. I waited, and then I waited some more. The Baltimore airport cell phone area is apparently a fair distance from the arrivals terminal, which, from what I have been told about the size of states in that corner of the country, could be up to two states away.

Suddenly the evening sun began to rise on the drab greyness of the airport terminal wall. As the late evening advanced into night, and the deep blue of the sky gave way to black, the sun rose further. And then, without fanfare, a yellow daylight was upon the terminal wall. I looked to the left, there I beheld the twin suns of Constellation Cibie 175. I blinked and hastily looked away, but it was too late. Seared upon my eyeballs was the solar flare of Constellation Cibie 175, but also as a ghostly halo floating across my eyeballs, I discerned the unmistakable outline of the angular three box Peugeot. Reflexively I stepped towards the halo. The earth fell away under my feet, suggesting that I had stepped off the sidewalk. The blaring of horns and the screeching of tires suggested that I should again seek refuge in the safety of the sidewalk, at least until eyesight returned. I blinked repeatedly, and the halo took three dimensional form. Traffic flow was now such that with functioning eyeballs I was able to thread my way through traffic and arrive at the front passenger door of the 505, making sure I kept my eyes averted from Constellation Cibie 175. I opened the rear door, swung my carry-on bag onto the back seat, shut the door and reached for the front door handle. Seconds later I was seated in the familiar comfort of a Peugeot leather seat, shaking hands with Arun.

The adventure had begun!

As we headed away from the terminal and out onto the highway we made our introductions, and of course, talked about our Peugeots and other cars. It was quite obvious that we were both from the Indian sub-continent, his first name, Arun had suggested that possibility to me. During the following days on the road we discovered that our ancestral hometowns were on opposite sides of the Palk Strait; Arun being a South Indian Tamil, and me, a North Sri Lankan Tamil. Neither of us ventured into our mother tongue, as decades of atrophication of a schoolboy stunted vocabulary does not make for easy conversation, especially a vocabulary devoid of translations of ‘camshaft’, ‘snow’, and ‘limits of adhesion.’ A thought did flash through my mind, renaming Team Lion to Team (Tamil) Tiger, but perish the thought, in this era of schoolyard arrests of the parents of ‘dreamers’, and denial of entry to permanent legal residents. Makes you proud to be an American, don’t it, the land of the free, home of depraved….. indifference.

Along the way, spending many hours seated beside someone you’ve just met there is sometimes a progression that you go through. Curiosity, confusion, consternation, collusion, understanding and finally, hopefully, acceptance and friendship. I dread to think of the idiosyncrasies I subjected Arun to, but I doubt I even know what they are, and even if I did, I probably wouldn’t be working on them with my life coach or unburdening myself on some psychiatrists couch.

We’d be driving along, through the winding twisty bits, and Arun would be focused on the driving. The 505 would glide through the sweeping curves, never a squeal of complaint from the tyres, the brilliant Peugeot seats more than adequate to keep you firmly in place, no need to rely on the safety restraints, no need to reach for the door-handle or dashboard. Arun’s 505 was a little more reactive to minor irregularities, bumps and thumps in the road, not unpleasantly so, just more noticeably so, if you were paying attention. The larger scale undulations, the whoop-de-doos taken at speed, caused a startling noise to emanate from the front of the car. A rubbing grinding noise from the oversize un-studded Firestone winter tyres mounted on Nissan Nismo Ray 13 lb 6 lug custom modified wheels attached to 6 lug to 4 lug adapter systems mounted on modified Porsche rotors with custom spaced and drilled lugs. Each of the adaptations only stole numerous hours and several hundreds of dollars of fabrication, but the good news is that the additional weight of the all the wheel adapter paraphernalia only steals 0.000001 seconds from the 0.000002 seconds improvement in lap times. The rubbing noise comes from when the fender lip steals a few grams of tire rubber for its personal use. Despite the lowering springs there was no bottoming out, lust a little tyre on fender rubbing.

The V6 sedan was steady, smooth and level, improperly so from my perspective. I only knew the wagons, a 504 D, two gas 505s, and now my daily driver 505 TD. These wagons made grocery store parking lot sleeping policemen look like they hadn’t had a donut or anything else to eat in a couple of years, and at railroad crossings, you only heard them, never felt them. But any curves taken with even the slightest enthusiasm, the Lion wagon responded in kind, enthusiastically wagging its tail, shuffling from rear paw to rear paw until the derriere’s enthusiasm ( exploded into exuberance and) had it trying to outdo the front end for leadership on the road. Then with a “Sit, good lion” involuntary release of the accelerator, the lion wagon would shake its rear end as if it was drying off after swimming across a river. In all probability the lion would end up looking back at the river it had just crossed. The shaken passengers would be stirred to unleash a wailing and a torrent of abuse at the driver. Not at the lion. There was no such shaking or jiggery-pokery from Arun’s 505. It just went about engorging itself on the miles, gobbling them up like baguettes liberally smeared with fromage fort and dipped in eau de impala, a liquid that might be better recognized in some locales as “ah Jew.”

The PRV 2.8i was a revelation, with instant torque off the line well down the tachometer. And it pulled and pulled relentlessly until a click and a snick renewed the urgency of the forward urge. When cruising speed was attained, and fifth gear selected, the revs dropped and the restrained growl dropped to a murmured warble. At speeds somewhat north, mmmm, responsibly north? of the posted speed limits, the V6 505 was surely a gentleman’s express. Space and pace, with grace to indulge in another automotive plagiarism. In most ways Arun’s 505 reminded me of a 3 series BMW I once owned, similar performance and handling, except with more space and grace.

 

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Part 2 - Day 1

My 325 ic was an impulse buy, a week before friends arrived from Texas to join us for a week in wine country. I bought the convertible from a Spanish speaking underwater welder, who had aimed his torch at all four coil springs producing a ride height much appreciated by many. The PO had also applied his welding magic to the exhaust system. At WOT it had an impressive bark, but at in-town and cruising speeds it produced a faithful imitation of a refried beans fueled baritone Blazing Saddles monotone. The drive from the SF Bay to Sonoma County delivered ear aches and headaches for each of the occupants. To squeeze our friends into what passed for back seats, I had to move the front seat as far forward as it would go, so I drove with the steering wheel pressed into my chest. How 2 adults and my son squeezed into the 2 half seats in the back I do not know, but, hey, we were headed to wine country in a convertible. Oh, did I mention that the Mrs. from Texas had recently had a gastric bypass procedure. I kid ye not.

Fully loaded with 5 bodies and luggage, the convertible’s ride height was best measured with a feeler gauge. Every pebble and driveway necessitated a fire drill. My son took great pleasure in disembarking over the trunk lid, and who was I to deny him. The trunk had arrived in my possession with somewhat less than perfect shut lines courtesy of an earlier rear-ending, in which the soft top geometry had been modified such that the clips at the top by the windshield didn’t quite reach far enough to completely kerr-lip. If I still had that car it would be sporting a roll cage and Lemons 24 hour stickers, so yeah, go ahead, disembark to the rear. Now I know better, next time I’ll opt for a lovely French speaking gentleman’s express, and leave the sunroof open; more than adequate pace, lots of space, and an awful lot of grace. Upon arriving in Healdsburg it took lots of wine to unwind the kinks from my steering wheel dented chest. How completely different to stepping out of a 505. You may not be refreshed but after hours behind the steering wheel of a 505, but you are not drained of energy and in need of a massage either. Maybe it’s my age, but my adoration for my Vanagons is beginning to wane. A camper van whose raison d’etre is traveling numerous hundreds of miles and then enabling camping in comfort with convenience. More than a couple of hours behind the wheel of a Vanagon and I’m bushed, achy, in need of rest, ready to climb back to the welcoming Westfalia bed, with its granitic foam pad. It worked well for me in the 1990s, but not so much now as I’m approaching my 60s.

Buying the EVC written 3-3-17

An hour or so out of Baltimore my cell phone rang. I answered in my usual polite way. No answer, just silence on the line, and then ‘click.’

Arrgh! Robo calls! A few minutes later the phone rang again.

“What!?!” I barked.

“Ummm, I’m the guy with the 1996 Eurovan Camper (EVC) for sale in Ontario, are you still interested?”

“SssOrry,” I stuttered, “Yes, maybe?”

“Well, if you’re still interested I’ve lowered the price from $9500 to $7500.”

An EVC at $9500 USD is a little over half priced, and at $7500, at or below half price, I was more than tempted. I felt the hook set, and knew that the line and sinker were not far away.

I had been looking for a Eurovan MV Weekender for my sister (pop-out table, rear facing middle seats, and a pop top, no stove, fridge or furnace,) and while this EVC was beyond her budget, I was willing to bridge the deficit and get it for her. If she didn’t like all the extras, there was always the option to take it for myself. I had offered the seller $7k, slightly above my sister’s budget, and when he declined, I added a thousand. Later, thinking I should just get it for myself, I called him back and told him I’d re-up my offer to almost match his asking price. I was more than surprised when he offered it to me at below the amounts I had already offered. He confessed that he needed money FAST! A week earlier his wife had stuffed her Golf into a ditch, a few days later the engine in his Jetta wagon had died. They had barely managed 1 car down, but with no cars, they had been forced to get the best they could from the nearby car dealer. Car note payments were a-coming due.

I accepted his price and agreed to PayPal a deposit that evening from the hotel. And bank transfer the balance once I returned to California. And thus begins my next automotive adventure, but first my sister will have to trek 8 hours across Quebec and Ontario to retrieve the van. Her adventure will begin at the Quebeci DMV, or SAAQ as they call it there. I visited the SAAQ website only to discover that my atrophied minimal schoolboy French was of little use. Nowhere on any page of the website did they say something vaguely recognizable like “Ou est la gare?” or “Deux cafes au lait s’il vous plait.”

So I called their toll free help line, and pressed the appropriate button for “English.” Their version of “English” sounded like a less guttural version of French, or perhaps it was a more guttural version of English, but whatever it was, the net result was, as they say in Texico, “Yo no comprehendio nada.” I had a long ago memorized phrase ready to unleash on any operator that picked up my phone line. “Je vais a la piscine.” But I knew that I’d be lying. Long ago when the British Colonials had opened their social club swimming pools to all, there was enough poupine and piscine dans la piscine that I vowed never to enter stagnant water again. Surely hippopotami and crocodiles had the sanitary decency to amble the few meters to the far side of the embankment to discretely water the trees desiccating there? I failed to recognize that the fish freely performed in that non-stagnant river the actions as described by the first three words of the seven words you could not say on TV.

I pushed more buttons trying to get to a live operator, and eventually I joined the queue. A lovely femaleish voice told me that soon I would get my two cents worth, or maybe she said that my wait would only be duh cent something or other meenooootes. Whatever it was, I didn’t hold on long enough to get my two cents worth. I decided that the website and help line amounted to nothing but a SAAQ of DMV. Worse, I had the feeling that “Il va pleurer” on my automotive parade from Ontario to Montreal.

 

Hotel – Night 0, Dunmore, near Moscow Pennsylvania.Monday January 30
Quality Inn 1226 O'Neill Highway, Dunmore, PA, 18512

When I had weaseled out of the trip Arun had patiently re-explained that he had already paid the Lemons Rally entry fee, that he was going anyway, he was offering the same deal he offered his brother, even though/because his brother had been forced to drop out. He had made all the hotel reservations, paid the hotel deposits, and with or without his brother he would be funding the hotel stays anyway. I could avail myself of the same generous deal he offered his brother.

As we drove on and it began to get late, I wondered about hotel reservations, and how late they would hold the room. So I asked Arun about the hotel reservations, the night’s reservation in Moscow in particular. He repeated that he had checked into all the hotels at all the overnights, and this time he added that he had made the reservations for the first three nights.

We arrived at the hotel and calmly walked in, secure in the knowledge that despite an overflowing parking lot full of Lemons automotive curiosities, our room was securely ours. Arun gave his last name to the receptionist when requested.

“Sorry sir, we have no reservation under that name.”

Arun confidently suggested that he might have made it under his first name.

The receptionist searched for a room reserved under his first name. No luck there either.

With great confidence Arun advised her that he had surely made a reservation.

She then checked using his last name as a first name, and again offering his first name as a last name. Still no luck. I am quite familiar with this situation as I too have only two first names, NMI, and no readily discernible last name. Oh for the simpler times when (Mr.) Miller ground your wheat, and (Mr.) Black would beat your shield back into shape and (Mr.) Smith would do the same for your sword. Similarly Mr. Cobbler, Mr. Monger and Mr. Baker. But how on god’s green earth did Mr. Dickinson get his name, and was it a moniker he bore with pride?

In search of answers perhaps anthropologically and etymologically one should start with Mr. Dick.

Research suggests that the family name was later quietly changed to ‘Holmes’ with the simultaneous designing of a most impressive family crest featuring not crossed swords, but a single mammoth sabre, pointed flared tip skywards.

 

Meanwhile back at the hotel in Moscow, the receptionist widened her search and announced, “Ah, found it sir, you have a reservation for tomorrow? Would you like to keep that reservation?”

My faith in Arun’s hotel reservation prowess began to wane.

“It is for our smallest room, sir.”

My faith in Arun’s hotel reservation prowess took a further dip.

“It is a smoking room, sir.”

My faith in Arun’s hotel reservation prowess took an additional dip.

“There is only one bed in the room, sir.”

My faith in Arun’s hotel reservation prowess turned sharply south.

“The bed is barely wide enough for one person, sir.”

My faith in Arun’s hotel reservation prowess could plummet no further.

With a wry smile on her lips the receptionist asked “Would you like to move that reservation to today, sir? I could do that for you, sir.”

“Please.”

“A room with two beds, sir?”

“Oh, yes please!”

“A non-smoking room, sir?”

“Oh, please, please, yes!”

The receptionist announced the rate for the room and added “How would you like to pay for that, sir?”

“I told you, I’ve already given you my card info.”

“Yes, sir, but we need the actual card to run the actual charge, sir.”

Arun fumbled with his wallet-brick while juggling a Canon DSLR camera bag, a wobbly roll-on bag, a flight bag, and a Go-Pro bag. At an earlier freeway toll booth he had mined the interior of his wallet and extracted a recently expired credit card, several expired membership cards, a prized expired Hilton Honors card and a usable credit card, and then after making payment asked me to return them all into the recesses of his wallet. With no idea where each card belonged, which expired card went where, I had just stuffed the lot into the pocked that gaped the widest. Arun continued searching for his one good credit card in his 1.5” thick leather-bound stack.

After a few minutes, thinking that we’d taken up enough of the receptionist’s time, and noting the increasing restlessness of the Lemons berserkers stacking up behind us, I decided it was time for me to act.

My faith in Arun’s hotel reservation and payment prowess did manage to plummet further.

I whipped out my wallet, after doing battle with the Fresno-Baltimore flight information sheet that had been demoted from my front shirt pocket to my trouser wallet pocket at the end of that flight. Finding my credit card was easy, as I keep but 1 credit card. At the winter solstice following my first visit to divorce court I dropped all the cards my soon-to-be-ex had amassed, credit cards, store cards, gas cards, the lot, into the orifice at the top of the chimenea poised on my back patio. I dumped in a couple of shots of her Cutty Sark, shot off the cork on a Roederer Blanc de Noirs, and flung a blazing match at the evidence of American excess. Woosh! went the cards, a prelude to the wooshing of her out of my life and the sucking wooshing sound the judge would soon cause to emanate from my wallet.

I extracted THE credit card from my wallet and presented it to the receptionist. She processed the payment and handed back my credit card and two credit card looking room keys. I handed one of the two card keys to Arun and hoped he would not cause it to disappear into the depths of his 1.5” leather brick of card purgatory.

Arun said something about paying me back later, but I was unconcerned. I was not comfortable with the ‘Arun pays all’ arrangement I had accepted, and was happy for the opportunity to bear a little of the financial load.

My faith in Arun’s hotel reservation and payment prowess remained unchanged.

We made our way up to the room and unloaded and stashed our stuff. Arun needed to go back to the 505 for something, so he asked to borrow my room key. Perhaps the room key I had handed him in the elevator 1 floor below was already deep inside his 1.5” leather brick. Perhaps expired cards and room card keys was how he had grown his leather brick to its current 1.5” girth.

There was an unofficial drivers meeting at a bar that the hotel almost shared the parking lot with. We decided to attend.

THE BAR AND THE POLICE AND THE BEAR, THE WHEEL CHAIR

Exiting the hotel we turned right, past the Midas home of free lifetime fleecing, and to the next building which housed Mack Kelly’s bar. Inside the door was a rather large man standing beside a lectern. Upon this lectern were sheets of paper with a pre-printed grid, and within the grid there was handwriting of all sorts.

“Can I see your driver’s licenses please?” said the big man.

I flashed mine at Mr. Big Guy and without bothering to study it he asked me to inscribe my name and sign in the first blank line of the grid. Arun either didn’t have his Driver’s license with him or knew he’d be unable to retrieve it from his 1.5” leather brick-o-cards before the closing bell. No DL, no problem, Mr. Big mumbled something about ‘21’ and directed Arun to add his name and signature to the list, directly below mine. After restoring my driver’s license to its rightful place in my wallet I had held the wallet at the ready, all the better to pay the cover charge. No, no cover charge due, please enter. Moscow/Dunsmore is supposedly a dry town, but alcohol can be served in private clubs, even those with no membership fees and extreme vetting procedures. Those Muscovite lawmakers are so enlightened, is it any surprise that every Chrump and every other swinging stick is desperate to be buddy-buddy with the Ruskies? Maybe it’s just the ultra-enlightened ones who’d seen fit to declare bankruptcy nine times and deprive the American people of nigh upon a billion dollars of tax revenue.

As we entered the bar proper, I scanned the room: pool tables to the right, bar counter to the left, and at the far end of the bar was Arun’s friend Chris, and his co-pilot Bates. We joined them, and I ordered a Yangling beer, Arun some local cider, and I turned to survey the scene. There was a woman who could have passed for Mr. Big Guy’s mother rolling around the bar on her electric wheelchair. Her hangout of choice was a little glassed in alcove at the far right of the room, beyond the pool tables. At frequent intervals she’d wend her way across the bar, oxygen bottle clanking on the pool table corners, and clear hose and mask catching on every chair she passed. Having traversed the bar Big Momma would squeeze past Chris and Bates fling the glass door open and head out into the frigid night air, there to blaze up on an unfiltered cigarette, alternating puffs from the cigarette with puffs from the mask. As I watched her tip-toe her wheelchair through the door one more time, a flash of red zoomed by beyond her. Seconds later two Dunmore PD cruisers sailed by, lights ablaze. The officers jumped out of their cruisers vaulted the back fence and disappeared into the bushes. Soon two more Dunmore PD cruisers arrived, then three more. It was turning into a Dunmore PD festival.

Mr. Big Guy went out to investigate and upon his return announced that it was either an idiot in a red truck fleeing the man, or it might have been that same red truck guy trying to bag 'our bear,' the bear that uses the trail behind the bar each day, morning and evening. Mr Big Guy seemed a little perturbed at the possibility of some overzealous hunter pointing a gun at the bear. Presumably the police took a dim view of bear hunting from the cab of a truck, and the discharging of firearms within their city limits. The red and blue lights were still flashing when we finished our drinks and headed back to our room at the hotel.

Back in the room, I took note of the relative cleanliness of the room and the décor that suggested that the last remodel had occurred when avocado green and mustard yellow were all the rage. There was a griminess to the carpet that stopped just short of sticky. I went to use the bathroom and found it generally clean, except for the brownish dust and grey fluff adorning each corner, crook and cranny. I've had to deal with worse at National Monuments and State Parks, but I'd been camping in my VW camper van then - the willingness to use pit toilets requires a revision of expectations of cleanliness. The bathroom vent screen in our room had grown a liberal beard of dust and lint, sufficient for it to travel incognito through the most violent of Taliban territories. The beards of many friends and fallen comrades lay directly below. Above, the toilet seat lacked the proof of sanitation seal but did possess the obligatory brown elongated oval cigarette burn stamp of disapproval. Higher up the off-white counter was decorated with blue intermittent streaks across a 6 inch wide section. I recognized the shade of blue, I had an ice-chest of the same hue.

Sometime later Arun went to the bathroom/washroom/restroom/water closet (the 505turbo list has an international audience, n’est pas?) Upon his return I could sense a slight change in mood. I could deal with the room, but Arun could not, so we agreed to save time in the morning by making minimal use of the restroom, skipping showers, with perfunctory ablutions, hitting the road with shiny teeth and sleep flushed from the eyes.

 

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Tues 1/31 – Buffalo Nickel, MLK head, McKinley
Double Tree by Hilton (Greentree) 500 Mansfield Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15205

 

We assembled pre-dawn at the mechanic/machine shop in Moscow, Pennsylvania, and milled about looking at the Lemons Rally cars in the parking lot. Cars continued to arrive, some we’d seen the previous evening at the hotel, some we had not. Arun ventured into the building and filled out the paperwork, and summoned me to register as a co-driver. It has been said that the debilitating cold of the Russian winters is what defeated both Bonaparte and Hitler, and on this day in Moscow, I was absolutely convinced. I hid in the wind chill depriving interior of the 505, and went so far as to don the semi rubberized work gloves I had brought in case I had to help wrench on the Peugeot. I can tell you with absolute certainly that frostbite cuts through work gloves like a plasma cutter through block cheese. Clearly this tropical, equatorial, California boy had no concept of real winter.

Our plan was to follow Chris and Bates in the Porsche 924S, as Chris was the veteran of numerous races and rallies. With a snort and a spray of ice Chris was gone, his studded snow tyres giving him an overabundance of grip. Arun gunned the Peugeot and we lurched out of the parking lot in hot pursuit. The Firestone Winterforce tyres on the 505 may have lacked studs, but they did not lack for grip. The PRV V6 enabled us to keep pace with the Porsche. Constellation Cibie 175 showed us the way through the wall of snow.

We pulled into a rest area at the same time, but by the time we got back to the car Chris and Bates were gone. We figured we might meet up again at one of the bonus point locations in and around Buffalo, or we would surely rejoin at the hotel for the evening. We caught up with them again as we entered Warsaw, where we decided to stop for lunch. The statue of Don Knotts in front of the theater was easily found, correction, hard to miss. It was on the main drag, the only drag through town, and if that wasn’t hint enough, the herd of double parked brightly decorated Lemons Rally cars blocking traffic practically herded you to the metallic Mr. Knotts. Having dutifully taken our checkpoint verification photograph of Nina the Lion team mascot with Mr. Knotts, we continued through town. We met up with Chris and Bates at a local diner, and as we exited after the meal Arun dashed across the street to the Napa store in search of a replacement H1 halogen bulb to right the wrongs in the world of Constellation Cibie 175. He dismantled the offending light, removed the suspect H1 bulb and marched into the store. Within seconds he returned.

We do not sell H1’s here, sir, nor visas of any kind, No, no, no.”

The store employee turned and repeated his statement to the surveillance camera on the wall, slower and louder this time. If Obama had tapped secure phone lines, surely the CCTV in the store was being monitored by the Fakenews Bureau of Investigation, ICE and the Trump Voter Fraud Commission. Prior to the creation of the Trump Voter Fraud Commission, the only proven commission of voter fraud was by a single Trump supporter who so desperately wanted Trump to deprive her of her medical insurance she voted for him twice. Trump Voter Fraud Commission – indeed the only Commission of Voter Fraud was for Trump. And now Trump foists upon his base and the American people his Commission of Voter Fraud.

Back to more illuminating matters. The H1 bulb in Arun’s Cibie 175 was of a most peculiar design, with a thermoplastic or ceramic triangular base, and with both +12 volt and ground wire leads. Accepting that he was unlikely to find a replacement bulb, Arun reassembled the Cibie 175 and reinstalled it on the car. As soon as he started the engine the yellow reflections in the glass storefront told us that Lucas POD must have spent the 80s brushing up on his French, as what was once bright was now dark, and what was once dark was now bright. Go figure. Go head on to the next bonus point location. The giant Buffalo Nickel.

Now the Giant Buffalo Nickel resides on the campus of a local university, and the locals are apparently so proud of it that they harass anyone that ventures near it. There was a young local University Police cadet shooing away the gawkers. As he rushed the Lemons Rallyers on the right, more Lemons Rallyers advanced from the left. He’d double back and rush to the left……you know the game. Soon the junior officer broke into a sweat and radioed for backup, and when none was forthcoming, he jumped into the ancient Ford Explorer with catawampus flashing lights and headed for HQ. At my alma mater in Lafayette Louisiana, the campus cops were affectionately referred to as the “Pecan Patrol.” I wondered if the campus cops in Buffalo had earned a similarly respectful nick name. The Buffalo Copralites?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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