I had to call the front desk in a bit of a panic. Almost all the channels here in my hotel room were working fine. The lone exception was ESPN. Instead of the football game, all I could see was a jumble of paralyzed, scrambled pixels. Hummm. I'm out of town for work, and don't have too much else to do this evening. I'd done some Christmas shopping, exercise, and answered all the emails. Gorged on pub grub (as it always seems to be when I don't have access to my kitchen) and, basically, bored. I felt that the spectacle of the NFL, violence in shoulder pads and shown in HD, would probably do wonders for the speed of the evening. With nothing but static, my plan looked almost as stalled as my screen. WWGPAD? What would Grandpa Do?
Over Thanksgiving, I had some time to sit with my the old colonel, Don Arth, and just hang out on his terms. Most of the time, that meant in his garage, tinkering on some home improvement project under a wall of tools. That was just fine with me. When I was younger, I didn't take much of an interest in anything mechanical. I didn't have a house or a car that could constantly require preemptive attention, and likely just assumed that I'd just call in a handy man any time something wasn't working. You know what? That gets expensive.
When I bought my Sprinter (officially known as Capt. Walter C. Lewis, US Navy (Ret.)) and started planning the RV conversion, I was probably still working under that mindset. I came up with most of the conceptual design after consulting with a bunch of my friends who had already done their own van build-outs. Instead of building out the bad/bench/table set, wiring the lights and house battery, and installing the new stereo, I just searched out a professional, wrote the check, and called it a day.
Vans, if you haven't heard, are really good at two things. Primarily, the deliver the ultimate climbing and road trip experience to the vertically inclined ruffian. "Dirtbag fabulous," as Josh says. I've spent a ton of time driving around in my beloved Subaru, Abbie, and even though those days in Rifle, The Red, and Indian Creek were wonderful, the car wasn't exactly the tipping point. This spring and summer alone, I've "vanned" it in Red Rocks, The Valley, again in Indian Creek, but those trips were in the care of my buddies Josh Finkelstein and Madaleine Sorkin. After being so kindly treated by their four wheeled mansions, I realized I had to get one of my own. But then comes the van's second best trait; the ability to need a little more attention than your average vehicle.
A shop in Denver did most of the carpentry work and electrical system in the Sprinter in late September, and things were going well. Of the nearly five weeks I spent climbing in Kentucky, I probably spent three weeks worth of nights in the van, even when we had a cabin. I realized a few things here or there that I wanted to fix, but those were limited to storage spaces or the occasional squeaky hinge. Problems started when Julia and I were driving home. She and I were midway across Indiana when the radio started to quiet, fading with a meek crackle. The interior lights connected to the house battery were really weak. It didn't take us long to figure out that the battery had been drained. It was supposed to charge from the alternator when Wally was running, but obviously wasn't. I wasn't anywhere near Denver or the guys who'd done the work. I was, however, pretty close to my grandfather's farm. The family had planned to spend Thanksgiving in central Missouri, so at least the timing of this "breakdown" was good.
Grandpa took out an ancient analog voltmeter, and we started poking around under the hood and in the battery compartment. My grandpa showed me some of the basics about direct current, circuits, and switches. We weren't able to entirely fix the source of the problem, (a faulty relay in the ignition cylinder) but grandpa did have a 12 volt battery charger. He helped me hook it up, so at least we didn't have to ride across Kansas in silence after our turkey feast.
Better still, I was armed with a bit of curiosity about those previously unknowable mysteries when I got home. With this little additional curiosity (and the desire to spend my money judiciously) I dug deeper. I called my friend Dan, a veritable encyclopedia of knowledge when it comes to home and vehicle repair, and he helped me out even more. He opened the steering column of the van and started explaining exactly what we were seeing. Instead of being something I had to do, learning about some of these basics became really fun.
It seems like we have the problem diagnosed just in time for a trip down to Hueco Tanks for some of the best bouldering in America. I'll be down there the week before Christmas with a bunch of buddies, and am really happy to get the van back into its preferred role of fun-delivery vehicle. And speaking of fun, the football is back on. "Schports, bubby!" A coaxial cable was just a little loose. I don't need to call in Comcast. I just need to look around a little bit.
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