Our New Year's Day trip to visit Bob Moreno at The Works in Eugene was not without incident. To begin, with the greatest aplomb and self-assurance, I unintentionally drove to someplace in Portland that was not Cameron Lovre's house. I have a richly-deserved reputation for unreliable navigation when south of the Columbia River and, after all, I'd only driven there without difficulty any number of times before. It doesn't pay to get cocky.

After giving ourselves a tour of the neighborhood and stumbling onto the right street, we met up with the rest of the "unclub," as we call our local group of Volvonauts. Cameron and his friend Karen in Cam's tan 122S, Shayne and Sarah Green in their red 122S wagon (the Radio Flyer), Peter Eulau and Teague Oviatt in Peter's prize-winning 1800E (Teague's own 122S is apart for restoration), and Marsha and me in our could-use-a-paint-job 1800S were soon heading down I-205. Traffic was light and we had fun zooming past each other snapping mugshots out the side windows until we pulled into a rest stop to decide on the route to come. Weather permitting, we'd planned to divert towards the coast on scenic (and fun-to-drive-on) back roads. Weather did permit, sort of, and we departed the Interstate at Salem.

I soon found myself hard-pressed to keep up with the others through the "twisties." The car was running fine, but (for the moment), there's nothing but two holes in the cowl where windshield squirter nozzles should be; not a small lack in a Northwest winter. The rain had stopped after rinsing lots of mud onto the pavement, and driving through the wash thrown up by trucks as we passed them on the two-lane, with a low winter sun peeking out of the bright haze dead ahead of our front glass, I couldn't tell the difference between mud, standing water, potholes or stray cows through the overriding glare of windshield streaks. Eventually, the others realized we were missing in action and slowed down to near-posted speeds to let us catch up.

Outside the town of Monroe, Cam had something to show us. Crossing the road on foot, trudging across a farmer's newly-plowed field and trespassing across a marshy copse of tall grasses, we came to the remnants of an old racetrack. Remnants of bleachers and an announcer's tower still stood, if slouchily. We wondered what sort of cars had once run there -- it seemed too narrow for sports cars, too curvy for midgets and too grand for go-carts. None of us knew the history of the place or when its glory days had been. Maybe they had chariots, for all we know.

We learned about the Monroe area's famous clay, though, both from experience and from Peter, who works with tile and ceramics professionally. After crossing the field both ways, our boots were ready for the kiln. We spent a while stomping around in puddles, shuffling through weeds and kick-boxing tree trunks before anyone dared get back into the cars. Continuing onwards, windshield conditions were much improved by light drizzle, and we pulled into Eugene and The Works mid-afternoon.

One thing I've learned from previous visits to The Works is that it's harder than Hades to leave. From when I first say, "Well, we've really got to go; see you next time," to when we actually pull out of the parking lot takes, on average, three hours. It's not just hard to stop inspecting whatever exotic cars are under restoration; it's the small Volvo pieces that always sucker me in. That's not just a boring old Amazon dashboard over there, it's a dead-nuts perfect Amazon dashboard under an aura of mirror-polished paint. The ungainly hunk of throttle linkage that runs behind a 122's heater box takes on a whole other dimension when it's deeply chromed. Bob has two shops and there are entirely too many corners to look into -- and just when you've really steeled yourself to walk out the door no matter what, Bob is sure to say something like, "Oh, did you see the engine block yet?" and you might as well start over.

We finally, if reluctantly, got away hours after dark in a windshield-friendly rain. Almost by coincidence, Cameron and Peter escaped at the same time, and we formed a three-car convoy up I-5, the most direct route north. It wasn't twenty miles up the road that our 1800 suddenly lost power and we limped off the highway at the first exit, pulling into a closed gas station.

Well, I knew what this was -- while the rest of the car has gradually turned into something pretty solid, the fuel tank still has problems (I don't know for sure if it's rust, old varnish deposits or what, but it needs to be boiled out and still hasn't been) that make it necessary to replace the fuel filter every three or four weeks. I'd only run one week on this, the last filter of the last batch I'd stocked away in the tool box, so I hadn't worried about it for this trip -- wrong! The only thing to do was to take the filter loose and shake/flush/blow all the crud out of it that would come out. That usually gets us home if I don't try any big-throttle stuff.

It got us another fifteen miles, no more. Not Cameron, nor Karen, nor Peter, nor Teague happened to have a spare filter stashed away. After a bit of head scratching, I took a skinny screwdriver and poked a big hole right through the filter's paper element. That got us the remaining hour-and-a-half home running presentably, although the car still felt a little congested. I was plenty happy to back down our drive into the garage and switch off, much later than planned. As much as I enjoyed seeing the group and visiting Bob, this particular drive had been more of a strain than anticipated.