The Road to Austin

It’s been a while since our last posting but I’m sure by the end of this update, you’ll understand and forgive us. Daniel and I are now in Austin, Texas but we spent quite a bit of time working and playing in Baton Rouge before we left. During the week of Thanksgiving and even several days before, our friend Mrs. Theresa Dreesen was able to find Daniel a lot of work to do. Mrs. Dreesen is skilled at faux finishing forlorn pieces of furniture and making them look gorgeous again and she was kind enough to teach Daniel the trick of the trade. Daniel caught on right away and she put him to work painting several pieces. Furthermore, she put us in contact with her friend, Mrs. Phyllis Eyre, who also had plenty of projects for Daniel to do, whether it be painting furniture or painting walls! It didn’t even seem like work half of the time since we got to know Mrs. Phyllis and her husband, Byron, and enjoyed having dinner with them and getting to know them. Even though we planned to leave Baton Rouge before Thanksgiving, we were thankful for the jobs and new friends staying a little longer provided.

Daniel working on a distressed finish.

On top of being thankful for work, we were extremely grateful for the Dreesen/White family to invite us to have Thanksgiving dinner with them. This would be the first year that we weren’t around our families for Thanksgiving and, while we did miss them very much, we thoroughly enjoyed spending our day with our new Baton Rouge family. The only unpleasant part of the day was that my bike lock was cut during the night and my brand new bike was stolen.  It was a pretty rotten thing to wake up to on Friday and put me in a bad mood for most of the day but with the encouragement of Daniel and my mom via telephone, I accepted that it was not the end of the world. When Saturday, the 26^th finally came around, the aura was bittersweet as we said our goodbyes to our dear friends, especially my young amigo Jack. I will truly miss learning about fire trucks and hearing pirate songs all day long. We want to sincerely thank Bryan, Julia, and her parents for taking us in. You guys have huge hearts and we think you’re the greatest people in the world! When we finally got on the road, it was smooth sailing for quite awhile. We drove over bayous and past beautiful farmland. We scoured the swamplands with our eyes in hopes of seeing a gator, but alas, no such luck. Maybe one day!

It wasn’t until about 110 miles from Baton Rouge that Daniel happened to look down at the dash and notice that the temperature gauge was almost in the red. Of course, we were in the middle of nowhere with no one but cows to help us. We drove a few miles to the nearest exit and pulled over at an abandoned gas station with steam billowing from under the hood. When Daniel opened the hood, the entire engine and road underneath the front of the bus was soaking wet. All of the coolant had erupted out of the overflow tube on the reservoir. We called my dad, who was once a truck driver and knows a thing or two about engines, especially big ones, and told him what the problem was. From hundreds of miles away, he gave us different scenarios of what could have happened, the most feasible and easily fixed being a broken thermostat. We decided to try and drive to the closest town in order to find someone to help us. We only managed to get two miles down the road before the temperature gauge was in the red so again, we pulled off at the closest exit. This time the gas station wasn’t abandoned but it was still in the middle of a cow field. Daniel decided to call our roadside assistance, Good Sam, and see if they could have someone come tow our bus. Well first, they told us they wouldn’t send someone to tow us since we weren’t on the side of the road and we were in a safe parking lot. They said they would rather send out a mobile mechanic if they could find one. Unfortunately, it was Saturday on a holiday weekend and no one would be available until Monday. It seemed we were stuck.

We sat in the gas station for a few hours, on the phone every now and again with Good Sam or my dad. I finally decided that I just couldn’t spend the weekend in a cow field and we were going to make the 15-mile journey to the closest city, even if it took all day. Daniel called my dad and he told us to slightly unscrew the cap on the coolant reservoir to relieve some of the building pressure. We followed his instructions and hit the road, keeping the bus under 55 mph. To our pleasant surprise, Big Easy made it the whole 15 miles to Lake Charles, LA without overheating. On Sunday, Daniel called around to different auto stores to see if he could get the thermostat and install it himself to save money but unfortunately, no stores had it in stock. We figured a mechanic would probably have to order the part as well since it isn’t very common and we were disgruntled at the thought of camping in the Walmart parking lot for much longer. Then, with high hopes and a hint of desperation, we thought to ourselves, “since the bus didn’t overheat on the way to Lake Charles, maybe we can get even further!” We decided to try it and, with the cap on the reservoir slightly open, the bus made it 200 miles to Giddings, TX before it overheated again. We stayed the night there and the next morning we made it the remaining 50 miles to Austin, where we happily met up with Daniel’s cousin, Lesa Cox and her family.

We spent the evening chatting and getting to know Lesa and her family and went out for a delicious dinner at Chuy’s, a local tex-mex place that has delicious jalapeño ranch dip. We stayed the night with them and rode the metro train back to Big Easy in the morning. Big Easy is staying in the parking lot of PeopleFund, a nonprofit organization where Lesa works that gives loans to local businesses that have a hard time getting them from banks. The business is kind of enough to let us stay there since it is much closer to downtown than where Lesa lives. We have still been going back and forth to her house, though, where she gives us warm food and lets us take hot showers! The joys of family!

On our first full day in Austin, Daniel found the thermostat part we needed and spent the morning putting it on. Even though he is not a mechanic and has never been trained in automotive repair, he admirably pushes through and figures it out for himself, with a little help from the bus manual. Even though we never had the problem professionally diagnosed, we really think that this was the issue. Furthermore, Big Easy hasn’t overheated since, so keep your fingers crossed for us that we fixed it! After the repairs, we headed to 6^th street and had lunch at a local, open-air pizzeria. We wandered up and down the street that everyone told us to visit and explored shop after shop. My personal favorite was a musical store that had everything from guitars to music related paintings to guitar shaped toilet seats. It was pretty awesome afternoon.

The next day, my birthday came early in the form of finding a great vintage road bike on craigslist for only 60 bucks that my mom kindly gifted me, along with a heavy-duty lock. It might be a little rusty, but its just my size and rides like a dream. Needless to say, I was very happy with that early birthday present. Thanks again mom! We spent the remainder of the day riding our bikes through parts of Austin and then went back over to Lesa’s house for dinner with her family.

The following day brought us a new trouble. We began the day by driving about 30 miles south to Bastrop, a town greatly affected by the Texas wildfires this past September. We drove through miles of burnt woods and saw piles of rubble that were once houses. We saw tiny green sprouts trying to grow up amidst all of the devastation and two little squirrels chasing each other in what must have once been a lush, green home to them. Seeing all of this destruction was incredibly sad for us, but it was interesting to experience first hand what we had only heard about on the news. One of the most intriguing things we noticed was how one property was completely destroyed, yet the other was hardly touched. We drove back to Austin discussing the seemingly pure randomness of nature’s fury. 

Two squirrels playing in the burnt woods.

Remains of a house.

Melted fiberglass boats.

 

Little green sprout growing out of the ash.

Road through all of the burnt pine trees.

When we made it back to the city, we decided to transfer more vegetable oil over to the tank inside of the bus since we originally planned to leave Austin on Saturday, the 3^rd.  Unfortunately, what we failed to think about before we left Baton Rouge was that all of the veggie oil that had been sitting and separating while we were there would get mixed back up again during the journey to Austin. Therefore, when Daniel tested the oil, there was water in it. Needless to say, we were quite frustrated. Our only options were to travel on to Albuquerque using diesel or stay in Austin for longer and wait for the oil to settle again. Since we don’t have much by way of funds and because of the kindness of Lesa’s family and work, we have decided to stay in Austin for another week and hope that the water separates out of the oil during that time. Keep your fingers crossed for us! We decided to treat ourselves after such a frustrating afternoon so we made a trip to Spider House, an awesome restaurant/venue with a huge outdoor patio and fire pit. We went there at the recommendation of our friend, Christina, and we were not let down. Between yummy pizza and margarita specials, we thoroughly enjoyed dinner. Also, we got to hand out some cd’s by our number one Richmond band, ROMA, with the hopes that they will be invited down for a show some time!

With one more week in Austin, we have a lot more exploring to do and maybe even some green businesses to meet. Even though it was an unexpected change of plans, we are having a great time getting to know Daniel’s extended relatives. We will continue to keep you updated on the veggie oil crisis, as well as all of the fun we are having down here in Texas!