Utah Attempt #1

This was the first of two attempts during my fourth year of college to drive to Provo, Utah, to visit a friend named Katherine, with whom I'd fallen in love during Christmas break. I left at 9:30am on Friday, January, 6th, which was the friday of the first week of classes. I had decided to go on this particular friday because the following monday was Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday, and there would be no classes.  Furthermore, I only had a single class on Tuesday, so I had decided to skip that class and come home from Utah on Tuesday. That way I could spend 3 full days with her. I had originally planned on leaving after my last class, at 4:00pm, but when I checked the weather Friday morning it looked like it could get nasty. So I decided to leave as soon as possible, and I missed all of my classes.

I was mostly afraid of bad weather in Wyoming, so I hadn't bothered checking Iowa weather. Stupid me, I hit a big storm in Council Bluffs and had to go about 35 mph for 60 or 70 miles getting through the storm. Finally I did get through, into beautiful weather in Nebraska. By the time I had driven a couple of hundred miles into this state, the clouds were all gone and the sun was shining. I stopped for gas and the temperature was in the upper 50's. It was great, and I kept driving. A few miles east of Kearny I began to feel tired, so I turned off into a park, parked the car, and slept for about 15 minutes before taking off down the road again.

The sun was still bright when I awoke, and after driving a few miles west of Kearny, I glanced at my battery guage to find that the voltage was way low. I pulled off the interstate at the next exit and drove to a Total gas station. I left the car running, for fear it wouldn't start again if I shut it off, and visually checked the engine. The alternator belt was still on and the alternator was turning, so I figured that the alternator itself was probably malfunctioning. I walked into the gas station and asked the attendant if there was an auto parts store or a mechanic nearby. She replied that I would have to drive back east to Kearny to find anything like that. So I took off down the interstate, annoyed at having to backtrack. The voltage was down to about 10 volts, and it was still dropping. I knew that I didn't have much time, and Kearny was 9 miles away. So I pushed the car a little harder and drove 90 miles per hour all the way back to Kearny.

I turned onto the main street in Kearny and began driving north, looking for an auto parts store. The battery voltage was almost down to 8 volts by this time, and soon the car started behaving erratically. The tachometer quit working, the orange needle getting stuck in strange positions, and I knew that the car was about to die. So I turned into a nearby grocery store called Bogaart's. As soon as I parked the car in a space, it died. I turned the key, and then engine wouldn't even turn over. It was dead. I walked to a nearby bank and picked up some cash, then went into the grocery store and used a pay phone. I looked up the first parts store I could find in the Yellow Pages, then called the store. Surprisingly, they had an alternator to fit the car, so I was in luck. I fished around in the back of my car for tools, gathered them up, then started taking the old alternator out.

I didn't have all the right tools, but I figured out how to get everything apart and I ripped the alternator out in barely 15 minutes. The sun was going down, and I wanted to get the new alternator put in before sundown. So I walked about 10 blocks down to the auto store I had phoned, lugging along the old alternator. When I got to the store, the attendant behind the parts counter took the old alternator and went in back to find a new one. Quite a few minutes later he came back with the old alternator and said, "Sorry that took so long. At first I couldn't figure out how to hook it up to the test machine, but I tested it and it is bad." So I said ok, and the guy got a new one. Then it took him another 10 minutes to switch the belt pulley off the old alternator onto the new one. But finally we got everything sorted out, and I went up to the register to pay. Across the lane I saw another guy who was sorting out some little plastic wire holders he was purchasing. I realized that he looked very familiar to me, like a relative, and I knew that I had many relatives in Nebraska. So after I paid, I asked him, "Excuse me sir, what's you name?" When he told me his name, I started laughing, and walked over to shake his hand. This stranger I found in the parts store is my uncle! He lives about 50 miles south of Kearny, and is my father's only sibling. I didn't recognize him at first because we had seen each other in a few years. It was such an incredible coincidence that I met him at this store. Gary said that he was getting some plastic wire holders to use for the installation of a GPS system in a combine. He also mentioned that he had never been to that parts store before. So my uncle drove me back to the supermarket where my car was parked, and we installed the new alternator. I wired up jumper cables between my car and Gary's truck, and I started the car. To my chagrin, the battery voltage remained way too low. With the new alternator, it should have jupmed up to its normal position very quickly. We waited and waited, it got dark, but the battery still would not charge. Then Gary and I went back to the parts store where we convinced the attendant to dig out my old alternator and test it again. Sure enough, it was ok. The original alternator was not bad after all; the first guy mis-diagnosed it. So the problem with my Shadow remained unsolved.

I could not go on, and since I couldn't work on the car at night, I decided to get a hotel room at a hotel right next to the Dodge dealership. Gary and I charged up my battery somewhat through the jumper cables, and we both drove our vehicles to the hotel. I got a room, and then we ate dinner together at a nearby Country Kitchen. After dinner, Gary gave me his phone number before leaving for his home, so I could call him the next day if I didn't diagnose the source of my car's trouble.

Some time later, I ventured out into the cold Nebraska night to inspect my car and search for the cause of my problem. I activated a small trick which caused the Shadow's main computer to read out a series of error codes which are useful for diagnosing problems with the car. Unfortunately I did not keep a list of the meanings of the code numbers in the car. I did have a list on my computer, but I had no roommate and my room was locked. I went back to the hotel and called a friend who lives in a nearby dorm. I had him access my computer via the network, with a password that I gave him, and I told him where to search for the file. Cameron quickly found the file and opened it on his computer. I told him which code numbers to find, and he read off the meanings of the codes over the phone. From the meanings of the computer error codes, I knew that there was something wrong with the wiring or the power module. Deciding that I would continue my efforts to fix my car in the morning, I called Katherine and talked to her for an hour or so. I related to her my unfortunate predicament, and we expressed our mutual yearning to be together. I wanted to see her very much, but this setback had thrown a huge monkey wrench into my weekend plans. I didn't know if I should continue on to Utah, or drive home in defeat. Katherine, being the near perfect woman who she is, told me that once I got the car fixed, I should do whatever I thought was best. This was an amazing thing to say; Katherine is truly a wonderful woman, who is in touch with the spirit of the Lord, as her primary concern was for my safety. She was very understanding and calm, and did not reflexively express her disappointment at the circumstances as anger, like others have done. Feeling better after talking to Katherine, I watched the weather channel for a while before going to sleep. The weather channel said the mountains in Wyoming were supposed to get 6-12 inches of snow. I thought, "Great."

The next morning I performed a few little diagnostic operations on the car, checked the wiring, and decided that the power module was bad. The power module is a circuit board inside a plastic case next to the battery. I didn't think any of the stores in town would have one. I called a bunch of part stores, including the Dodge dealership, and nobody had this esoteric part in stock. Out of all of the stores that I called, the soonest that anyone could get this part was the following Tuesday or Wednesday. Great! I didn't want to be stuck in this town for 4 days! Finally, in desperation, I called a junk yard. They searched a cross reference list and told me that they had an equivalent part from a different Dodge car. I was elated. Luckily, the battery had retained some charge from the previous night, allowing me to drive the Shadow to the junkyard, where I borrowed some tools and swapped in the different power module. The junkyard only charged me $50 for it, which is less than half of what the module would have cost new, so I felt lucky. I started the car, gave it a little gas, and the voltage meter shot up. I was very happy. I decided that I wouldn't be able to make it through Wyoming, and briefly considered driving south to Albuquerque, west to Flagstaff, then north to Provo. It was an extra 700 miles out of the way, and I might have actually done it, if the weather forecast hadn't called for bad weather in the Midwest on Tuesday. I had no desire to drive back to Iowa through bad weather too. So I took off east, back to school. I drove through the area of the previous day's storm, and although there was white snow everywhere, the road was clear. I found out later that interstate 80 had been closed in Wyoming due to too many accidents, so I wouldn't have been able to make it anyway. I made it back home that evening and called Katherine. We were both disappointed that we couldn't see each other, but I told her that I would try to make it the following weekend.

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