From Veeduber@aol.com  Fri Sep 29 00:57:59 1995
msgnum: msg16667
Date: Fri, 29 Sep 1995 01:57:51 -0400
From: Veeduber_at_aol_dot_com
Subject: Grendel, Thursday



Grendel, Thursday

Water continues to come out of the sky.  Grendel is on her new wheels, her
belly a bit lower to the ground, her feet slightly wider apart.  She will no
longer shimmy and sway as she rounds a curve , she may even stop if I dance
on the pedals and scream a lot.  But she won’t go.  Her accelerator pedal is
as limp as Odie’s tongue.  And her turn signals don’t work.  She has running
lights and head lights and tail lights and stop lights.  The interior light
even consented to work, once I’d burnished the contacts and resoldered the
wire.  The headlights go from high to low, although you’d never know it.  The
indicator lamp is burned out and all of the local parts stores suck their
teeth and shake their heads when I show them the tiny bulb.

She is extra-greasy in all her parts, sixteen strokes-worth in the upper
front torsion beam on the right side.  But the brake return spring, which I’m
told is nothing more than a clutch return spring, is broken, a bungee cord
wrapped about  the horizontal portion of the lever and secured to the cockpit
floor with a pair of #6 sheet metal screws.  The clutch pedal shrieks dryly
with each depression.  I should take it apart and lube the pivot but I’m too
tired and wet and cold.  

The license plate light now has a new lens, a section of clear plastic cut
from a ninety-nine cent butter dish, spotted On Sale when I went to buy pipe
tobacco this morning.  But the problem was not only the lens but the wires,
broken when the engine hatch fell off.  Because of the hinges.  It doesn’t
have any.  Good condition.

The rain no longer flows in around the radio antenna mounts.  I’ve removed
them, they were shorted to ground in any case.  To cover the crudely hacked
holes I’ve made up ‘bullet patches’ like we used in Vietnam: beer-can
aluminum with a smear of RTV, pressed into place.  Light, tight and quick.

I’ve used an eclectic collection of wires to restore Grendel’s nervous
system, spending a good part of the day binding them up in Basic Black.  Yet
there are a few Mysteries unresolved.  Real head-scratchers.  Copper whiskers
projecting from a melted loom, four puzzles resolved but one remains.  And
the turn signals.  Whoever cut the wires and spliced them back together
failed to route the loom through the proper openings in the steering wheel
brace under the instrument cluster, so that tightening down the package tray
and steering column brace crushed the wires.  I’ve repaired those that tested
open but the color codes are obscured and I’ve no way of telling if the work
was properly done to begin with.     

With the wheels on the ground for the first time in nearly two weeks, I began
playing with the gear shift.  The shifter plate is worn to a knife-edge and
should be replaced but parts at the local junkyard have become prohibitively
expensive; they know I’ve no alternate source of supply and have begun to
charge accordingly, a local sport honed to a keen edge since  the Spotted Owl
shut down the mills and the shipyard has felt the bureaucratic ax.  Local
teenagers call themselves the Last Generation.

Making Grendel go backwards is a chore, finding reverse a sometimes sort of
thing.  You can feel the gear shift hang up on the worn-out shifter plate, go
reluctantly into reverse perhaps one time in three, finding second on all
other occasions.  Yet it’s  a roadworthy machine, the forward gears snick
into place cleanly.  The brakes are firm but only near the limit of the
pedal’s travel.  The shoes are adjusted to maximum drag.  It WILL stop,
assuming I’m not going too fast.

The steering is tight, a minor amount of play adjusted out.  The link-arm is
good.  Grendel should steer with more precision than she has known in years.
 If I could be sure of the condition of the left rear wheel I’d throw my
duffel in the back and head south tomorrow.  But I won’t.  I am safe where I
am, safer than I would be trying to fix some minor problem half-way through
the Siskiyous.  My nearest safe haven to the south is my son’s home in
Modesto, nearly a thousand miles away.  I have been a pilot more than forty
years.  I’ve learned to leave nothing to chance.  Another day or two will put
the odds of a trouble-free trip strongly in my favor.

If I study the rain perhaps I’ll come to know it, to find something useful in
such wasted bounty.  I’ll wipe down my tools yet again, listening to the tap
of raindrops on the metal roof, dreaming of home and the arid vistas south of
the line.

-Bob