| Jacumba |
[Jan. 30th, 2008|03:19 pm] |
I am a fool, of course, and decided to buy—against all advice and common sense—a famously unreliable car just days before my cross-country journey. As I said, it was a completely irrational and totally bourgeois move. But the new car did have some amenities my old one lacked: like heating, an air conditioner, and brakes. Nonetheless, it comes with cringeworthy predictability that just 341 km into my roadtrip, the clutch disintegrated.
The trip began well enough, zipping South down interstate 5 on the California coast, with huge waves crashing on our famously beautiful beaches. And the mountainous terrain of Camp Pendleton turned verdant after the recent rains. About 30 km from the Mexican border, I turned East on I-8, which crosses the mountains of the Tecate Divide, down into the desert of Imperial County.
It grew dark and I grew hungry. I was delighted to find that Old US-80 follows I-8, and along the old road are the forgotten towns, frozen in time by the strong preservative agent of an Insterstate bypass. I followed the blue roadsigns with the fork and the knife over a silhouette of a plate in Descanso and Alpine. Old restaurants on old mountain roads often have very good atmosphere and the camaraderie of locals in a remote place. The Descanso Junction Restaurant looked good, but it was closed. I darted about in the dark, listening to the strangely comforting voice of Ira Glass in the first episode of The American Life, "New Beginnings."
Following the knife-and-fork sign again, I pulled off I-8 and drove the three miles into Jacumba, high in the mountains and spitting distance from the Mexican border, where a large RESTAURANT 9 AM - 10 PM sign indicated promise. I parked and wandered through an abandoned patio into the bar. The restaurant was apparently closed (the early hour notwithstanding), but I asked anyway. "No food here. Not in this town." There were three or four folks gathered around the bar, locals as far as I knew. It was the kind of place where you are surprised to find you have a common language, where you know but do not believe that you are still within the bounds of the Current Era and the United States.
Disappointed, I walked back out to my car, pulled out of the parking lot, and set off on my way... but then... no clutch pedal! It had just disappeared, nothing for my left foot to push on. I drifted to the side of the road. Upon inspection I found the pedal flush with the floor and loose.
It had failed with such decisiveness, I thought it must be something with the linkage from the pedal to the clutch itself. I popped the hood to take a look, noticing at the same time a U.S. Border Patrol truck idling just a few meters away, lights out.
I followed the clutch cable to the lever that actuates the clutch. Everything visible was in working order, but the actuating lever hung limply. It was very cold and windy. Clearly I was not going anywhere. "Well, now you are fucked," I thought to myself.
The Border Patrol turned on his brights and sped off to a new hiding spot.
I bundled up a bit, and head back to the bar to ask to use the phone.
As I reached for the phone, one of the presumed locals, a caucasian man with a white beard, piped up: "I used to be a mechanic—I could take a look."
On the walk back to the car, he swore at the cold. "Tomorrow, I'm getting out of here, going home." Home was San Felipe, down in Baja on the Sea of Cortez.
He inspected the clutch linkage, and came to exactly the same conclusion: "Well, you are fucked."
We pressed through the wind back to the bar, opening the heavy door and entering the warm interior. The man was about to sit down again, when he thought of something and said, "Well, can you get it in gear?"
I said yes—the clutch was stuck in the engaged position. Well.
"You can drive it then! I used to be a trucker. I can show you how."
We reversed our steps through the cold wind back to the car. I handed him the keys and we got in. He introduced himself as Frank.
The secret is to start the car in first. This requires a good battery and a strong starter, something my car apparently possesses, but which are rare on older volkswagens. The car lurches forward, you give it some gas, you're in motion. Frank demonstrated how, by synchronizing the engine speed with the transmission speed, you can shift directly into gear without declutching. We toodled around town in this manner, in the dark, stumbling on railroad and dirt roads and getting as lost as you can get in such a small town. It is a completely effective means of driving as long as you don't have to stop, since the procedure for starting is not the healthiest thing for the starter motor.
"You're probably terrified right now, eh?" he asked. But in truth I was thrilled with the adventure.
We found the restaurant again and Frank bid farewell, sending me off on my way. I drove all the way to El Centro, pulling into a motel that happened to be accessible via only right turns. I should have driven West instead. It turns out that nobody in El Centro will touch a VW. |
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