Angry Bird travels Route 66

  Shortly after getting to Denmark, I bought this totally reliable 1960 Volvo PV544.  After buying it, my co-workers at the boat building facility told me that car model was generally known as the "Hurtigst Traktor i verden".  Translation please..."the fastest tractor in the world".  Well, I guess that was good and bad.  In their eyes, it was mostly bad... I used it as a dependable work car every day for 6 or 7 months, including a winter break to go downhill skiing in Norway.  I had met up with Jacquee before starting work, and she actually had a job offer in Denmark, but alas, she had no visa.  So she went home to wait out a long winter before rejoining me for some road tripping in Denmark in the above set-up!   We travelled down to Austria, across the border of Italy and through the Alps, then up through Luxemburg and on home via several other countries.  We only broke down twice that I recall .  Once a weld broke loose on the clu...

My attraction to road trips was probably spawned in 1958 when my parents and siblings loaded up in a 1955 Buckskin (why do I remember that???) and white Ford Fairlane and headed east to Philadelphia (Mom's family) and New York Idlewild Airport to travel by DC-9 (yep, propeller driven) to Denmark, our Dad's homeland.  I remember vividly the adventuresome spirit involved and never felt any fear or apprehension from my parents who had managed this trip on their lonesome several times before! We did it again in 1967 when I was 16.  We went east to pick up our Uncle Lars Peter who wanted to travel with us across country from New York/Pennsylvania.  The men folk headed out west, while Mom and Greta would fly home separately.  Only two days out, and Uncle Lars Peter asked "are we almost there"?  Heh, heh.  Well we have at least 4 more days on the road...Wow, the USA is big. I don't know how or why my Dad would allow two 16 year old's to share in the driving, but J...

Rolled in at 4:30 pm -  300 final miles in 6 hours.  Makes the total 5,799 miles, unless you count doing Eastern Oklahoma two times in a rental car!!  That would put total mileage logged by me at 6,240, but not on my truck! More later.

 As I left California and headed toward the numerous mountain passes, I was able to finally shut off the air conditioner which had been on since Oklahoma.  It was 99 yesterday in Williams, and perhaps low 80's this morning, but it hit 58 in the mountain passes.  I turned on my heater as I hit the middle of Oregon. It was still sunny and dry as I went through the Shasta National Forest, but as I neared Oregon clouds were gathering and it rained on me for the first time in 2 weeks.  Almost felt refreshing!  The vegetation was turning green!  What a welcome sight. As I got further north, there was another storm cloud forming so that I had blue sky, black clouds and a rainbow all at the same time.  Five minutes after the pic below, it started to rain again.  Only in the PNW.  (I know, another over the hood road pic...) I only have about 300 miles of driving tomorrow.  But three or four large cities to traverse.  Hopefully my timing avoi...

 Over 500 miles today in about 10 1/2 hours of drive time.  I was tempted to get past Portland tonight in order to miss the morning rush hour, which is brutal.  Oh well, I guess I will just have to sleep in and wait for traffic to clear! A few things made today more interesting.  Somewhere around Medford, OR a patrol car came onto the freeway in no special hurry, but then turned on their lights and started weaving down all three northbound lanes.  They did this for maybe half a mile while slowing down the whole way.  It was effectively herding the traffic into to a group of slow moving vehicles.  When the patrol man/woman had us all down to a walking pace, she parked her patrol car across the three lanes, jumped out and grabbed a truck tire from the middle of the freeway.  She drug it to the side, ran back to her car and took off!  Never been part of a car herding event before. Next up was meeting Ken Tidwell in Salem.  He is a member o...

 I was unable to post last night, but it was pretty much a boring drive on the interstate.  No getting lost, just stay on the concrete that heads north! Mike took a pic of me leaving the neat little house that I was welcomed into with or without slave labor.  I enjoyed the stay like it was family.  I won't miss the block laying, but I will miss the laughter! I logged in about 450 miles in approx. 9 hours, so my stamina was back to where it was at the start of the trip!  Every mile in this case, getting me closer to home!   The truck ran great and the miles rolled by.