In the last issue, we left off in this tale of the 9,000 mile circuit-ride in the Green Streak -- a 28-year-old Volvo 1800ES with some 487,000 miles on her -- as we were arriving at Junie Mae's Roadhouse Barbecue Cafe in Keystone, Nebraska. That completed a 1,500 mile straight-through, 28-hour run from Western North Carolina. The trip had barely begun. Magazine editors wanted Left Coast stories from places hundreds of miles apart; what better way to fetch them than in a trusty old Volvo?

We'd only been at Junie Mae's three days, but you'd think it was a year: It took 40-50 miles to get good at being on the road again, to get the coffee thermos in the right place, the right tape on the stereo, volume and squelch right on the stereo and the CB, to get the radar detector adjusted and to remember to take my wallet out of my jeans before it deformed my butt.

We weren't in a hurry to leave Junie Mae's. It's owned by our old Marin County, California, pals, Thom & Paula, who make the best damn Texas-style barbecued pork and brisket north of the Gulf of Mexico. He stuffs his own sausage, makes his own 'tater salads, chili & beans, and they bake their own bread -- plus Junie Mae's makes the only decent espresso 'tween Seattle and our house. Anywhere else in mid-U.S.A. you can read the date on a dime at the bottom of a full cup of coffee. Not here. These people are fussy, downright anal. They do whatever they do better than most anybody else ever would, which, along with their buoyant personalities, makes a three-day pit-stop at their joint a real treat. That, plus Thom bought one of my old bikes years ago, a BMW R69S, which I get to ride through the Sand Hills whenever we're there.

But we had to git on down the road, so we set the clock for some obscene hour to be on the road by 6 a.m. one day -- and of course we left at 9 a.m. as we always do no matter what time we intend.

We romped out of Nebraska and into Wyoming along about noon, and conditions were grand. The car seldom dropped below 90 mph for tank after tank after tank of gas -- across the whole state of Wyoming, a corner of Utah and well up into Idaho! Into survivalist country. Mark Furman's territory. We kept the pace hot, at times above 100 mph because we could -- also because the rednecks couldn't keep up in their jacked up, cammo painted pickit-up trucks. When we neared Ontario, Oregon, we got a motel well off I-84. The next morning, it became two-lane time again!

U.S. 26 West turns into a fine ES road out past the exurban splatter of Ontario. It streaks and twists and swoops through high prairie hills -- 3rd and 4th gears and overdrive -- with very little traffic, slowing through wonderful little wind-blown towns, then long curving stretches where you're likely to be crossing the same ranch for 20 miles. Near the town of John Day, alongside the John Day River, we checked out dinosaur remains at a little national park, then hooked north on Oregon 19 to visit our pal Charlie.

Charlie's an old Volvo man -- three 122s -- and a mule guy. He and his wife Jody own eleven mules, a horse and a jackass and they just bought 88 of the most beautiful acres I've ever seen near the one-building town of Kimberly, Oregon. The John Day runs along their spread, a trout fishing stream right out of a movie. This area looks like the red canyon country of Utah, except the canyons and buttes are tan, not red. After a night and most of a day hiking around Charlie's, we hit it again and streaked up little two-lane 19 and 206 to Biggs on the Columbia River. Motoring along the Mighty Columbia, we cooled it: There are lots of cops and too much traffic on the big road through the Gorge.

Those little back-country Oregon roads aren't always paved real well, but we'd hammered over them anyway: We had a date with Phil & Marsha Singher (yup, that Phil & Marsha) at Carson Hot Springs, a funky old establishment on the Washington side of the Columbia. After a good hot soak and a bite to eat, we chased Phil's sweet-running white 1800S west to VClassics Central in Vancouver, Washington.

We liked those two right off and wouldn't have minded staying, but we were expected in Seattle that night, so we headed out after a short visit -- which is when when I first heard it: Tinka-tink, tick-tinka-tink. "Whazzat?" Judy asked. "Dunno," said I sagely, and I pulled over to check under the bonnet. "Maybe it's a leaf stuck 'twixt fan and radiator." I'm an optimist. I looked. It wasn't that -- but then I couldn't hear it anymore either, so we went on our way, ripping up I-5 at 85. Off the freeway and tooling through a Seattle neighborhood to Judy's cousin's place, we heard it again. I mentally went through this possibility and that, but nothing made sense. The car ran great.

The next day, having parked Judy with her cousin for family reunions, I headed for Ballard, another part of Seattle. The sound appeared and disappeared. The next day on the way from a boatyard to a buddy's house, the noise returned while I was stopped for a light at a busy intersection. It turned from a ticka-tick-ticka into an ear-splitting squeal. It was embarrassing. I wanted to hide under the dash. But, there was nothing to do but drive gently for my buddy's house. The screech's pitch rose and fell with the engine revs. Busted ring? Bearing? What!?

There was a knot in my gut -- who wants car problems 3,000 miles from home? I managed to sleep some that night, but the next morning I still couldn't figure out where the racket came from. I pulled the fan belt lose, thinking it could be water pump or alternator bearings -- and it still screeched. Damn! I borrowed my pal's van, fetched a stethoscope at the auto parts store and narrowed it down to the bellhousing. To be sure, I jacked her up, put her on stands, slid under and listened from below. Yup -- bellhousing. A magnet on a stick and another on a string wouldn't fetch anything out of the bottom of the bellhousing. I was fishing around through the clutch-fork portal, which was useless. I couldn't get the magnets past the clutch, and I sure as hell couldn't see anything.

There was no choice: I postponed a couple of appointments, bought some throw-away clothes at a second-hand store, spread my tools out beside the car and told myself it wouldn't be so bad... And it wasn't, mainly because the World's Best Brother-in-Law, Robert Rosen, came over and cheered me on -- not only that, he did some of the truly awful stuff like getting those impossible Allen screws holding tranny to bellhousing -- And, he volunteered to wrestle the tranny/OD out and onto his chest! I've done that a few times over the years and was most appreciative! Bob drives a very nice yellow '73 ES, incidentally: If you ever meet him, give him respect. He's one of the world's kindest men.

Needless to say, we pulled the driveshafts, the transmission/OD, the bellhousing, starter motor, and flywheel. And there it was. A little &*%$ing machine screw that had been tinking around in there, then lodged between flywheel and block. It was one of the six screws supposed to hold the rear main seal housing to the back of the block.

"Why'd that fall out?" I asked the oil pan. Hmmmm. I tested another screw in the seal housing -- and unscrewed it with my fingers! The rest barely required a wrench. All had lock-tite on 'em. "Damn!" I said more than once. I'd built this engine some 24,000 miles before in California and was very careful about it -- I thought! Of course my dad died in the middle of the job and I had to fly east for six weeks, but the rear seal installation was after I'd returned from dealing with that. Only thing I can figure is I put the seal on carefully with pre-lube (I remember that part), spun in the new screws and wobble washers hand-tight, with red lock-tite. Maybe the phone rang and I forgot where I was. Maybe.

Of course I had to wonder what else I may have gotten sloppy about, but there was nothing to do at the moment but replace all the screws with new ones and use the really strong lock-tite and new wobble washers. I'd looked for screws with drilled heads so I could safety-wire them (damned if I wanted to do this again!). Couldn't find drilled screws that size. OK then, how about thin sheet-steel strips cut and drilled to capture two bolt heads, the ends of the three little steel plates (for six screws) bent up against the flats of each screw-head? Good idea, but there wasn't any steel of the right kind around nor a way to cut and drill it where I was, and it was Sunday.

I called Phil. He thought new screws and washers and gobs of strong lock-tite should be safe enough, so that's what I did -- I lock-tited the wee-wee out of those screws and the washers and torqued each one four pounds past spec. Some 7,000 miles later, all's well (knock on wood).

Two and a half days were lost under the car, but toward the end, while tightening the last bolts on the driveshafts, I was sort of sad the project was coming to an end: I'd gotten intimate again with my little car. I'd replace the O-ring on the speedo unit in the overdrive, given her a new, sealed pilot bearing while I had the tranny out; I'd cleaned up this, wire-tied that and she looked really nice and tidy. She also ran like a striped-assed ape. (They're reputed to be very fast.) No bum noises, nothing lose; no clunks, rattles, leaks or foul smells. She was nearly perfect again.

There was no time left for a wussy little test drive to make sure it all worked right -- I headed for Canada, a quick blast up to Vancouver, British Columbia, where I had magazine stories to gather. Wife Judy had flown home from Seattle to work, so now I traveled solo. While I missed her company, the car felt faster without her 112 pounds plus luggage. Not that I could take advantage of that in Vancouver, where I was reminded of just what terrible drivers Western Canadians are. Tailgating and other numb behavior is normal. The good thing is they drive really slow so when they slam into each other not much happens.

The highpoint of my Vancouver visit was running up through a gorgeous fjord north of the city in an Aston-Martin afloat -- a very expensive, high-zoot 60 mph speedboat with Nardi wheel, big horking V-8, fine leather seats, custom hardware and a mahogany deck that went on forever out ahead of the cockpit. Zipping through the fjords in that boat was part of my job -- I had to do it.

On the run south a couple days later, the sky opened up. It would be the only rain of the entire seven-week jaunt, but migawd, what a rain! This wasn't one of those interminable wimpy mists the Northwest is famous for, this was a gully-washing sombish! And it kept on a-pouring all the way from the Canadian border to the ferry on Whidbey Island, nearly a two-hour run with the wipers on high. I had to drive through it fast to make the night's last ferry to Port Townsend. And of course the whole time I whistled the theme from "A Man And A Woman."

Several miles from the ferry, on a dark two-lane, I thought something was wrong with my eyes -- the world was growing dim. I noticed I was looking ahead harder and also could barely read the gauges. I tried high and low beams, the driving light on and off, the fog light too, and I tried to turn the instrument lights up -- but they were already on all the way bright and still I could barely read the numbers. Hmmm. Then, backing off down a hill, the car backfired and rumbled like an old sheet-rocker's truck with a busted muffler. What th...?

On the ferry, I popped the hood. Yup, the new fanbelt had stretched and, being all wet, it was slipping around the alternator pulley. I was mostly running on the battery. The alternator had a lot of drag that night, working it's hiney off powering just about everything electric on the car, including serious European halogen headlights and both auxiliary halogens. When doing that screw job in Seattle, I'd replaced the old belt with one an inch longer to make fitting and removal easier. There was maybe 1/8" left on the adjustment bracket -- just enough to fix the problem -- and the ferry ride was exactly long enough to accomplish the task out of the rain in the shelter of the car-deck.

The next morning, I strolled outside with my first cup of coffee and I recognized my car. I'd seen it like that before. Until that fast run through the rain, the green ES had stayed amazingly clean: It hardly looked like it'd been anywhere, let alone 3,000 gonzo miles coast-to-coast. But that next morning, swirls of dirt applied to the sides at speed covered the shine -- it looked like it'd been somewhere and driven there in earnest. It had that 50-mission look, with windshield opaque except where the wipers swept. There were thick brown and grey speed streaks over fenders, hood and roof.

That look is only good so long as you don't rub up against it and leave shiny patches. Do that and it just looks like a dirty car. A high-speed patina must remain pristine, which means being careful getting in and out. Of course I ruined it the next day while checking tire pressures, so the Green Streak spent some time in a you-wash-it place.

My work and play completed around Puget Sound, I romped down the Olympic Peninsula's two-lanes on a brisk sunny day and back to Phil & Marsha's place. We had a non-car publishing project to do, spiced with several of Marsha's great meals -- and I got to meet some of the guys who make ipd happen -- a treat as well. Three (or was it four?) days later, I was due in Redding, California, 430 uneventful interstate miles south. After a long day's drive, I decided on a really good dinner in a high-priced yuppie joint (I was on expense account; I'd eaten enough cheap food for a guilt-free splurge). After night in a motel by a river, it was on to a busy photo job in Redding. With that frantic morning over, I relaxed awhile in an artsy coffee house to change the air in my head before striking off over the Trinity Alps bound for the Northern California coast, my old stomping grounds.

A couple of issues ago, I told you about U.S. 129, a really great highway in the hills of North Carolina. Nearly as good is California State Highway 36 from Douglas City on Highway 299 down to U.S. 101 near the Avenue of the Giants (redwood trees). If you're ever running between San Francisco and Portland or Seattle and have a couple extra hours -- and like to drive twisty two-lanes less-traveled -- try these roads 'tween Redding on I-5 and U.S. 101 at Rio Dell. You'll want to know your car is healthy, for there's scant help out there, and in lots of places if you go off the road, you go way off -- like way down there, crash-tinkle-tinkle.

After a hot-shoe run down 36, keeping the pace anywhere near legal on four-lanes-and-curving 101 was a challenge. Sixty felt like thirty, so I whipped off in Redway for a personal internal speed-need adjustment. Coffee and apple pie in a local Choke & Puke did the trick, and then with Pele Juju on the stereo, I rode easy on to Marin County in time for dinner and backgammon with an old sailing pal.

Even with all that time on the road already, after I arrived in my old hometown of Sausalito, whenever there was a break in my whirlwind three-week visit, I'd take off again in the ES to visit friends out in West Marin or Sonoma County -- more dashes over familiar twisty two-lanes through wonderful countryside. What a great car! But all good things must end, and there came the day I had to travel on. I had obligations further south -- on Monterey Bay, then in El Lay where I try never to go, then in Arkansas, fer gawdsake, and on back to Appalachia, way south of the Smith & Wesson line, down where it seems murder and mayhem are misdemeanors and littering's a popular hobby.

This tale's not over yet. Next, the trusty 1800 ES runs the coast road through Big Sur to Santa Barbara, then runs out of gas in Malibu where a blonde, then a brunette come to the rescue. We made L.A. for Halloween, which seemed fitting, then spent a day in Long Beach gathering a story on the "Baywatch" boats. Next came desert sprints to Santa Fe, Taos, Roswell, New Mexico, and on across never-ending Texas and a pause for film in Hope, Arkansas, President Clinton's hometown: Would film from Hope expose itself?

Tune in next time...

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