Wheelin’ and Dealin’

Our on-the-road lifestyle is wonderful 99% of the time. Even on the rough days, I stop and think about where I am and what I am doing, and I realize that things are pretty great. But every once in a while, there is a day whose only purpose is to remind me of how awesome every other day is in comparison. This was one of those days.

It started out with minor mishaps:

1. We’d both been fighting through a nasty cold, and this day was no exception. Being sick always sucks, but being sick on the road is worse. Especially when you have just reached the northeast, where a cold spell has just hit. It unfortunately made it harder to enjoy how beautiful Vermont and New Hampshire are in the fall (although I did fight through it to do my first ever trad lead in NH).
2. After stopping at the gym, my shower overflowed, filling the entire bathroom. All my clothes – as well as my purse – were completely soaked. I ended up having to put on the driest items I could find, and run out in the cold to change as quickly as possible. Fortunately, my headphones and phone don’t seem to have suffered any long term damage.
3. Upon reaching Boston, I dropped John off and went to go park. I found a parking garage and was heading down a steep ramp to go underground when it suddenly became abundantly clear that the van didn’t meet the height clearance. I had to reverse up the steep incline (while a bar continued to loudly scrape the roof), getting cars behind me to move out of the way. The parking garage was too narrow to turn around in so I spent the next 20 minutes backing poor Ludwig all the way out, while cars repeatedly had to move out of my way. It took so long that by the time I left the garage, I was charged for the full day (which the attendant graciously waived when my emotional state became clear).

We finally left Boston in the evening, and headed up towards Acadia where we would be meeting up with my parents. We had just made it into Maine, when our front left wheel started making some worrisome grinding noises. What we hoped was a simple rock in the wheel turned out to be a much larger issue. What we now know is that the wheel bearing completely disintegrated and got to a point where the only thing keeping the wheel on was a thin washer and we were riding metal on metal. The extreme wobbling of the wheel caused damage to the steering knuckle and the brake pads.

Of course, we didn’t know all this at first so we spent an entire day taking things apart, replacing the bearings, replacing the brake pads, and repeatedly testing it out.

We had to use a pulley puller in order to get the old bearings off, since the distorted knuckle held them in place.

Poor Ludwig…

John greasing up our first round of new bearings.

Our progress came to screeching halt when we finally realized that we needed a steering knuckle; a part that Ford stopped making years ago and can only be found in salvage yards and used car part shops. After hours researching online and calling around, we found that the nearest one was 42 miles away.

How to get there?

• Bike: A long but doable distance for John. However, the route followed an interstate, which is less than ideal.
• Roadside Towing Assistance: Our insurance gives us free roadside assistance, with up to 13 miles of towing, and $3.50 for each additional mile. This still would have cost us over $100.
• Rental Car: We aren’t covered for a rental, and the cheapest ones available weren’t particularly cheap.
• Kludge Something Together

Naturally, my MacGyver opted for the fourth option. He managed to re-thread the knuckle by hand, sand down the distorted portion, hammer the back-up washer flat, replace the bearings yet again, and reassemble everything. It was just enough to get us to the salvage yard and up to Acadia in time to spend one night with my parents.