7.20.11
666 Devilchild in Salt Lake City, Part 1
Brace yourself, dear reader, this is a saga...
On a quiet Denver morning, Cb wakes up before everyone and takes the van to the tire joint to get a new full sized spare for the van. I get up and take a shower and then go back to bed. Somehow, despite last night's events, I am the last one out of the house, when it comes time to leave. We drive to our second home (Yellow Feather) and Brandon and I get coffees and make oatmeal on the sidewalk while CB and Evan go for huevos rancheros.
With the new spare tire, tires rotated, we finally feel like our troubles are over. This is the first tour with Ghastly where we've had to throw in personal $$$ for gas cause our expenses have outweighed the merch & door earnings. Into the west and to the coast, where we finally turn this thing around!
It's a hefty drive from Denver to Salt Lake City, about 10 hours for us. Denver's distant mountain view and endless manure filled plains give way to the mountains, its your first real view of high contrast bulging rock formations in the earth heading west. In past tours, we've had to play denver>boise>seattle, or even denver >seattle, which is an insanely epic drive that must include overnight shifts. Dangerous stuff to do at night alongside semi trucks on steep 6% grades where you have to downshift into D2 & D1 in order not to burn your brakes off. Growing up in Florida and driving up and down the east coast, one has no idea what this even means. I remember the smell of burning brakes as we went flying down a grade in the early morning last Fall on this same stretch of the journey… it's scary... Remember, we're hauling tons of gear in our trailer.
We are finally doing this drive in the daylight hours, and its breathtaking.
Lots of fuel fill-ups and mysterious mountainscapes later, we notice a little clicking sound that used to accompany full-throttle acceleration on past tours - something we thought we fixed last fall when we had a broken piston replaced. Evan was driving, we decide to pull over. We are about 30-40 minutes east of SLC, in the mountains, some little place called COALVILLE…
As we slow down we realize the sound is like nothing we've heard before. Its a bad clanking sound that is directly related to the engine belt rhythm. At idle it clinks along, when you accelerate, it speeds up. We pull over to gas up and investigate. We all get out and listen for the location of the problem, I slip under the van to get a closer look. The belts are fine, its coming from deep inside… Brandon is underneath at this point and has it located further back than the engine block under the hood.
I look underneath on the driver side and realize that part of the transmission is just hanging open! Its between the oil pan and the transmission pan. I photograph it with my iphone and immediately send them to J, my oldest friend and go-to car diagnostic Guru. Knowing that the sound is coming from / near the transmission unsettles me… a transmission is something that can de$troy a tour like this.
I quickly tried to think of solutions. Clanking noise, hanging transmission piece… must bolt that thing up proper, right? I go into the gas station, where I meet a very amused young blonde girl behind the counter who perpetually looks like she's on the brink of uncontrollable laughter whenever I look at her. She heard us coming… maybe all of coalville heard us clanking' into town, now that I think about it...
"do you have any hardware, screws?"
"nope, just some thangs over ther." (a place with no screws). At this point, I'll take wire too, i can wrap wire around the holes and rig it up until we get to SLC. but nothing here…
I go outside and CB has befriended an old guy coming out of a garage, who gives him a couple lengths of wire, the perfect gauge!
I went back to see if I could wire the cover back on...
I'm not sure exactly when or from where he came, but we were suddenly joined by a helpful kid who talked pretty quick and confidently, offering us advice and options, asking us questions. Things were happening fast, and we were running out of time to catch our SLC show, which meant potential & essential $$$ for this leg of the journey would be lost. He asked about our band, where we needed to be and when, etc. He listened to the clanking sound, suggested it might be the exhaust, problem solved a bit, mentioned mechanics, parts stores, and before we knew it, it sounded like we had a real coalville expert on our hands.
Something dawns on me & I try something before I wire up the cover piece. I slip back under the van and hold the cover tight against the body where it goes and tell Brandon to fire up the engine again, being careful to avoid the smoldering exhaust pipes and other hot metal under the van. He cranks it up, and the sound is almost worse when the cover is where it should be… something banging around in there? Everytime I press up on the cover, the sound gets worse, which leads me to believe the gears inside are clanking against the cover itself.
All this time, I'm trying to get a solid diagnosis, feeding data to J, who I had obviously woken up not realizing the time zone difference between Utah and Florida until I heard his sleepy but nonetheless committed voice listing options.
Meanwhile, this dude from the gas station has offered to hitch our trailer with our entire life as a band inside and drive us to Salt Lake City in order to make our show. He has a Triton turbo charged super souped-up brand new truck and guarantees us he'll get us to the show in time. His level of commitment to our situation was beginning to show, it looked like this dude really honestly wanted to help. Our options were running out.
As I'm still on the phone with J, the band is gathering their personals, and this guy has them unhitching the trailer. I say goodbye to J and get the 411…
We are taking a chance on this kid. We are putting our trailer with all of our gear on his truck. He guarantees our van will be safe in this Coalville parking lot. He has agreed to drive us to SLC to our show, and after our show, drive us back. He has offered us a place to stay too. He lives 3 minutes from the gas station. He moves quickly, talks confidently, he's kinda wild eyed and wiry, he looks like he's 18 years old. The whole group relays the story to me, he goes to get his truck. I stop him and ask "hey man, what's your name?"
"Derrick."
He's 20 years old, so we might not be able to get him into the club we're playing. He's fine with that, he insists he'll wait outside.
I quickly shake hands with him - he's kinda not into being all friendly, just gettin the job done - and head back to the van to get my personal belongings.
I change into jeans, grab my backpack, and head over to Derrick's truck, hop in shotgun while ghastlies get in the backseat, and off we go!
Dear reader, we will never forget Derrick. stay tuned for part 2…
No comments:
Post a Comment