Break Down Elm Creek, NE.
October 1, 2008
I’ll begin with where I am now. A cheap motel by a busy street in Kearney, Nebraska. I did not sleep well as I was awoken very early by a guy talking on the phone in the next room. I was up late because my computer wasn’t getting on the internet here so I had three people in my room staring at the computer screen close to midnight. Furthermore the video I shot of everything yesterday is just gone. Last night I was numb to that but this morning I feel like going on a killing spree over it. Starting with that guy on the phone. Then the next stop on the killing spree is all those happy fucking nerds at Apple with their little colored t-shirts. I’ve fucking had it. Just to avoid confusion - it recorded, the video went into the computer and then once that happens, as I always do, I erase it from my camera’s disk. God Dammit.
Anyway - yesterday.
I left Denver early on I-76 to Nebraska where I hooked up with the 80 until I could then get on with Highway 30 which is the Lincoln Highway, the first highway in America that went coast to coast. It’s a nice way to go through this part of the country. It runs parallel to the interstate and the railroad. The speed limit is 65 (I rarely made it to that) and the speedway is interrupted periodically buy a small town.
Just outside Lexington, Nebraska Tinaseville began feeling funny. I started to feel a pull in the steering. Then the battery light came on, which was strange. Then came the temperature light so by Lexington I pulled into a gas station. Pulling into town I recognized that the pulling was actually a result of the power steering going out. There I bought some coolant and some dinner - in this small town there were two Chinese restaurants and little else. 
It’s an odd little town. Across the street from the Chinese place I went was a small African grocery and Somali community center. Close to half of the signs on these couple of blocks were in Spanish. The guy at the Chinese place, who was from Hong Kong, told me that the Tyson meat plant is responsible for 60 % of the jobs in this area. Apparently Tyson does beef here, not chicken. That’s what I was able to pick up from a guy who spoke so-so English and had complained to a co-worker that he had a fever - yes, he served my food. Yes, I feel the beginnings of a sore throat.
So after about an hour of letting Tinaseville cool down I put the coolant in and put in some more transmission fluid and gave it a go. The battery light remained and the power steering was still gone but everything else seemed fine. For a few miles. Then the temperature light came on again. I wasn’t overly concerned because there’s another light that will come on if things are real bad, which tells you to turn the engine off as soon as possible. Well, that light came on a couple miles later.
With the sun setting on Tinaseville I tried her again. The battery light remained but none of the others were on. I was 25 miles from the town of Kearney. I hoped to reach Kearney because it looked like a place that would have establishments with wi-fi. I wanted to update the site and then figure out what to do and where to go from there. It was about 7 pm.
And then all the lights except the heating lights came on. The ABS, Check engine soon, Battery, Restraint - maybe a few more. My completely uneducated opinion at that point was I hadn’t been experiencing engine problems but electrical problems. I could feel Tinaseville bucking slightly - as if there was a fuel pump problem - and I know from experience that it was probably the computer not sending enough fuel - and not an actual pump problem.
Then all my lights went out. Inside and out.
I was in a race. A race against sundown and to be in a good spot when I finally came to a spot.
That spot was a little outside of Odessa, NE. about 12 miles from Kearney. It was about 7:15 - 7:20.
The tow got there after 8. In the meantime I had some quiet time with Tinaseville. I reminisced. I told her to let go. I sang that Tina Turner song from Mad Max, “We Don’t Need Another Hero.” At least I sang that part of the song. Maybe another line or two.
For several hundred miles every town I went through had a kind of picturesque quality to it but Kearney, or this part of Kearney anyway has much more of an interstate feel. It’s going to take some serious walking to get to the mechanics and I’m not sure yet how to go about where to keep my stuff and what to do if it’s curtains for Tinaseville.
It’s now 7:52 am and I should give the mechanic a call and try and sort some of these things out.
I’ll leave you with this though. When the tow truck put Tinaseville back down on the ground, her dashboard lit up. I don’t know if that means she’ll start now or what, but as I climbed back in the truck to get dropped off at the motel, she was a little less dead then she was on the highway.
