Travels with BillyBob Log

WHAT'S NEW is a chronological listing of updates to the BillyBob site.

TRUCK LINKS including vendor sites for old parts, custom parts, and tools as well as sites for classic car and truck organizations

STORE Operating in association with Amazon.com, books, recordings and tools can be purchased.

PLANNING for the restoration including project schedule and cost estimates.

TRAVELS WITH BILLYBOB With apologies to Steinbeck, this area of BillyBob's Garage will be used to log the trips BillyBob and I make together.

WORK-IN-PROGRESS is the restoration of parts of BillyBob that I can accomplish without a garage.

PRE-RESTORATION includes log entries of minor repairs and and adventures between time of purchase and the time when I started restoration, a piece at a time.

JR'S KORNER JR's Korner is the history of BillyBob before I got him authored by my brother, Wm. C. Kephart.

BILLYBOB MAINTENANCE Ever changing detailing, oil change, lube, etc. maintenance routines specifically developed for BillyBob, including required tools, materials and procedures.

PARTS SHOP The Parts Shop is a repository of How-To articles. Things that I have done over and over enough times to have developed a procedure. This gives me a checklist and saves brain cells.

STEALTH SHOP Urban residence design with large integrated shop and separate living quarters for a relative or renter.

7. Macungie Run

Day 3 SITREP

'Sposed to be a reasonable bar and restaurant in the hotel. I wouldn't know since it's closed on sundays. If the continental breakfast served in the same place is any sign, I'm glad I missed the experience. Took me over ninety minutes to find tonite's lodgings. Everything's booked up in Athens. I finally found a Holiday Inn Express up the road in Commerce, Georgia at the intersection of US 441 and I-85. Then, I had problems programming that location into "Mother". The Garmin didn't have a location for that street address. I got close by programming for intersection and fixing a point using the arrow keys on the map view.

Monday, June 11th 2007
Day 3 PRE Check

Checked all BillyBob's fluids (oil, tranny, diffie, brake fluid, coolant, battery). and tire pressure again. All fluids were ok this time including the diffy and the radiator. The left front tire is still down a few pounds but I put the tire gauge in the cab with me in case I find another disfunctional air machine. Everything else is good. When I went to load up the cooler with ice, the ice machine was empty. Another reason not to come back here.


1.	Date and Time	June 11, 2007 10:00 AM
2.	Odometer	20,806
3.	Comfort Supplies	Cellphone, AAA+ membership, reading glasses, my lucky WWII Army Air Corps mechanics cap, cheap aviator sunglasses, small cooler with water and trail mix
4.	Roadtrip Supplies	Inventory
5.	Prep	pack up, mount navigator

Engage

It's not as hot yet as it was yesterday. The weather channel predicts that I am heading into a violent storm pattern. Since I'm not trying to follow a scenic route on this leg of the trip, I let Mother run point again. Mother is taking me on various state and us routes thru the Georgia heartland. There's a lot of small towns and hamlets separated by mostly forested stretches. I only ran into one construction delay and that was early in the day. I'm looking for a gas station with a squeegee to wash the bugs off the windshield.

Most of the small towns I'm passing thru are a mix of the old and the new. Some downtown shopping districts are coming back and being spruced up. My first gas stop did not have the windshield squeegee but did have a working air machine. Got ice for the cooler too.

Between the towns are these stretches of rolling forested hills. Starting to find out how BillyBob handles grades. Back in South Florida his biggest challenge is a drawbridge approach ramp. He's doing ok here but wait 'til we get to the Blue Ridge Parkway.

It wasn't until two in the afternoon that the sky started to darken a bit. I had not eaten a meal since the previous morning so I decided to stop before the sky opened up. Pulled into a Sonic. Nebber been to one of these before. Took me a few minutes to figure out how to order. Got a double bacon cheeseburger . . . What a gut bomb! Mushy burger (might be soy fer all I know). Couldn't taste the bacon. It was as thin as paint. I like the concept of this place. Too bad they're using the gimmick to push bad food.

I was thru the rain patch in less than twenty minutes. It washed the bigger bug chunks off the windshield. At the second gas stop they had squeegees and I got the rest of the bugs. While I wuz doing that, a beautiful young lady pulled up at the next gas pump. Due to the resulting divided attention, I fergot to post the odo reading for the gas mileage calcs. I was a mile down the road before I remembered it.

I thought Mother would bypass Athens since we were going to Commerce and it is located to the north but, she took me right thru the college area. There were a lot of college kids on the street. Athens has a lot of steep hills too. We were on the downslope of one of those hills, coming around a blind curve at about forty mph. This was a stretch of four-laned street. I was in the outside lane. On the inside lane was a car stopped to make a left-hand turn. I put on the binders to slow down. Behind the stopped car was a late model pacific rim suv. He got stopped. Behind him and next to me was a seventies or eighties chevyvan camper. No way in hell he could get stopped in time. I was far enuf back by this point that he could go for the lane change. He somehow pulled it off, missing the suv by inches and clearing my front bumper by about five feet. I'm glad he made it. He turned at the next light. Probably on his way home to change his skivvies.

It was rush hour now and I was getting close. At one point, Mother took me thru a residential development when I got off track. Then, she took me down an old road with crumbling asphalt that I would be wary of if I didn't have the navigator. It reminds me of the movie where Chevy Chase went down a similar road, was arrested by John Candy and Judged by Dan Akroyd. In the back of my mind I was remembering that I had picked the destination for Mother by placing a location on the map. Basically a dartboard guess. It was raining again by now too. Imagine my surprise when I came out at a sidestreet directly across from the hotel!