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Bringing the Datsun home


millican

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In November, I drove to the ER in Tucson expecting to be there a few hours at most. I ended up spending a week in the hospital. My wife put my few belongings into a storage unit for me and parked my Datsun at a friend's house. It's still sitting there. She started it and checked for packrats a couple of weeks ago. I'm finally well enough to drive the Datsun home. The friend whose home it's parked at is picking me up this evening. I'm pretty stoked.

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It wasn't until yesterday morning that I was able to make it out to get the Datsun. Once there, I found that the set of keys I have is a copy, and the door lock key doesn't work any longer. With some bailing wire and a few seconds, I was able to get in. Then to try the ignition key. It works! That felt like a close one. My wife has the normally used set of keys, and she's pretty far away.

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So what do you do when you start a vehicle? You drive it.

So, here's the GPS file of that drive.

http://darrahmillican.com/~tom/2015-02-06_002613A.gpx

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Thanks, but it's not home yet. The link is a gps file. It's 1.8Mb, and our internet connection at home is slow going out. You can right-click it, save it, and open it with Google Earth if your browser isn't set up to do that yet. All it does is show my route and how slow I went.

The GPS came unplugged from the USB hub in the truck today, and I didn't realize it. I'll be able to see where it died and what it saved in the morning. For now, I'm beat. Tucson, Arizona to Ft. Smith, Arkansas in 30 hours beats my old best time, and I wasn't trying. I'll have some weird comments and observations after some sleep.

Dawn between Alamagordo, NM and Santa Rosa, NM

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Yeah, I much prefer paper road maps to my phone!

Along the highway between Alamagordo and Santa Rosa, New Mexico, there are several pull-offs along the way where trucks and cars can be seen parked at night. I was getting sleepy and pulled onto one of these myself. It's surprising how quickly it gets cold inside the truck once the engine is shut off. I'd wake up every 45 minutes or so from cold and start the engine. When I did decide to hit the road again, I noticed that there were several cars also parked beside the road nearby. Apparently, I wasn't the only one who needed a nap. I took a photo from an angle that got some scenery without the other cars and started up the Datsun.
I passed a heck of a lot of cars on the side of the road within minutes. I then noticed that all of the cars appeared empty. Also, most of them had the front bumpers removed. They were also parked in perfectly straight rows, bumper to bumper in a way that all but the cars at the front and back were blocked in. That seemed odd to me. I wondered how I didn't wake up to the car haulers unloading those things. I also wondered why they were dropping them off in the middle of nowhere; if you call between Alamagordo, Santa Rosa, and Roswell nowhere. Soon, I would come across parades of pairs of vehicles, one towing the other. The towed vehicles were being pulled with all four wheels on the ground and the front bumper removed to attach a tow bar. Well, that explains that.
But what happens to the drivers once they drop off the cars? Where are they coming from? And still, why drop them off in the middle of nowhere? I passed countless dozens of these pairs along the way to I-40 at Santa Rosa, NM. Along the way, I could see other pairs of vehicles approaching from cross highways. Were these vehicles being brought from a broader area? Who owns all of them? Across Texas, I was still seeing these pairs being driven in the opposite direction every few minutes. Ocassionally, I'd see a pair broken down on the side of the road or a trio of these all connected together; presumably re-arranged from other broken down pairs. How did they arrange for insurance on such an endeavor? Coming from that far away, where did the drivers come from and how do they get back after parking the cars so neatly in nowhere, New Mexico?
I was stil seeing these pairs with similar markings on the windshield and similar magentic tow light kits frequently in Oklahoma City. I was dumbfounded and awed by the scope of the operation and the logistics involved. How were the towbars distributed? Some vehicles had to be towed with a dolly; how many dollys did they have? Who bought all those? Do they use radio communication, cell phone, CB,...? My own CB, hastily put in at the storage unit in Tucson with the antenna cable run through one of the holes already in the floorboard, didn't help me find any answers. I tried to think of explanations. Maybe a Car-Mart-like chain in Mexico was buying all those to resell and they were going to be put on a train out there or something? The only other thing I could come up with is extra-terrestrials. Maybe there was some sort of couples cannonball run where the rules weren't written quite the way they were supposed to, but they stuck to them anyway? That would explain the lack of drivers at the parked cars despite the constant influx of more car pairs. Aliens. It makes the most sense, even if it isn't much sense at all.
Here's a photo of the extra-terrestrials at work. They're hard to photograph when they're driving along the interstate in the opposite direction.
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I quickly found that at every gas station, my bank card wasn't working and had to be run as debit inside. I called the bank and found that it had a hold on it because of "suspicious transactions". These transactions were small purchases for fuel. Duh. It's a small tank, and since the gauge doesn't work, I stop more often than I need to and buy 4 or 5 gallons of gas. This happened a few years ago when I was on my scooter in Oklahoma. I had to call the bank and explain why I was buying about 2 gallons of gas at a time. They did nothing, however, when a pizzeria in Costa Rica deducted $101.64 every few minutes until it was drained. So, buying gas in Arizona and Oklahoma gets flagged as suspicious while buying $1800 of pizza in Costa Rica isn't? Well, I got that taken care of and was soon buying gas at the pump like normal people again.
I felt out of the loop of current events in Oklahoma after noticing that all the flags at places along the interstate were at half-staff. I should get an FM radio in the truck sometime for news.
It looks like the GPS died between Oklahoma City and Ft. Smith. The unplugged hub would explain why the battery on my phone drained instead of charged while on the USB hub. It was probably powering the GPS. Still, here's most of yesterday's drive. (2.4MB)
http://www.darrahmillican.com/~tom/2015-02-06_100341P.gpx
At my brother's house in Ft. Smith, Arkansas, I slept. That's about it. Soon, I'll be off again after deciding which direction to drive in. The weather will determine that.
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Lived in NM most of my life and have never seen what you are describing.  However, the last time I went past Santa Rosa on I40 was almost 2 years ago.  That being said, what you are describing isn't really the strangest thing I have seen living here.

 

New Mexico, Land of Enchantment.  Not really new, not really Mexico.

 

 

 

 

 

They fly the enchantment in from south of the border.

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That's great! In ABQ, I can't imagine what one would see. It's an interesting place. The nuclear science museum is both cool and depressing, and Sandia Crest is pretty sweet.

I drove up to Fayetteville (Arkansas) and am with some old friends in my old apartment that I lived in for 14 years. It's surprising what's changed and what hasn't. Basically, just drinking with friends to delay continuing the trip until the snow has passed where I'm headed to in the Datsun. There are chains in the back, but I'd rather avoid having to use them.

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It was nice to spend a couple of days in Northwest Arkansas visiting friends. I had hoped to visit a friend in Little Rock briefly, but the timing didn't work out. So, on to Memphis. I visited my friend Stu and his family before driving to Somerville to spend the night at my Dad's place.
One of my friends was telling me how awesome it is to be driving something that can't be hacked and remote controlled, referring to a recent exploit of a car's On-Star system. One thing I've been wondering about though, is when we'll have to outfit our Datsuns to meet vehicle-to-vehicle communications regulations that cars increasingly rely on to keep us safe while we're (not) driving.
I slept 10 hours and feel like a human being again. So, with loads of sleep, some snack cakes from Dad, and a huge bag of Pirates Booty cheese puffs from Randi, I'm ready to hit the road again.

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I believe they are called road trains. Cars with really high miles or other problems bought at auction/junkyards and then driven in convoy down to Mexico. Sometimes 5 cars long. I imagine that the road train you spotted the driver pulled off so he could grab some sleep at a motel or grab something to eat. Hard to drive around when you are dragging several cars behind you.

 

Never considered the logistics, with a boarder crossing involved I imagine that could be a nightmare. I imagine though it is more of a case of "here is 1000$ bring back what you can, we'll pay you a % of the sales" simple order with incentive for results.

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That sounds like it, Seattlejester.

I didn't intend to go through Indiana, so I knew I had taken a wrong turn somewhere when I found myself in Indiana. I could try to blame it on the construction on I-65 in Louisville, but I would have made the same mistake probably. That makes two wrong turns today. Oh well. I do prefer the secondary highways and back roads. It feels much more like seeing what's really there. The only thing is, I don't want to keep trying to figure out where I am with the tiny screens of my phone and GPS. I'd love to have a paper map to see the large and small scales at once. I don't have one in the Datsun though except for Arizona, which I left a few days ago.

I didn't pick up my table saw in Fayetteville. There just isn't a place to put it. Sure, it could be tied on top of the other stuff, but if I look anymore hillbilly, they're not going to let me cross the Mason-Dixon line (if I haven't already).

I have another .gpx file if anyone is interested.

http://www.darrahmillican.com/~tom/2015-02-12_001628A.gpx

I also have a video driving through Northwest Arkansas. It's not great, but if anyone is really bored...

http://millicansmeads.com/test4.ogv

I haven't seen another Datsun on this trip. I feel like an odd-ball.

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Amazingly enough, the biggest problem I had on this 2000+ mile trip in a loaded down Datsun was the lack of windshield washer fluid once I got into the Northeast. My right calf is pretty sore, but I remember that happening the last time I went for a long drive.

I'm a little bit confused now and need to shift gears tomorrow now that the Datsun and the rest of my tools are here (except for that table saw). The Datsun will probably stay parked most of the time during the winter to keep it from turning to a rolling collection of rust. In a week, I went from having the ugliest Datsun in the neighborhood to having the only Datsun in the neighborhood.

Here's the final .gpx file for the morbidly bored.

http://darrahmillican.com/~tom/2015-02-12_105837A.gpx

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