"Shasta Snow Trip"
page 2

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Friday, 2-Feb-01
    Well, I've got to start somewhere, so it might as well be at the beginning.....
Brian's house at 4:00 in the morning....

    Stu and I arrived in a nicely warmed up '60 Doublecab to see the Sundial awash with the light of a halogen floodlight and the shop lights, the hazy silhouettes of Brian's other VW projects as they lurked around his shop, and upon dismounting, found Brian himself at the bench with a hammer in one hand and an alternator in the other.  It turned out that he had been up all night installing his new kick panels, doing some final wiring on his CB, and replacing his alternator which had nasty bearings and a fan which was loose with an out-of-round hole.  Well, to make a long story, the alternator he replaced it with turned out to be bunk, so he had to pull it again and put the old one back in....."It'll last the trip" sez he.  More on that story later....

    Babs appeared with coffee, and Aaron showed up, and we helped Brian stow the last bits of gear, which included a compressed air tank, two snowboards, a spare headlight, a spare generator for me, and a Guinea Pig named #6 and at 5:00, we headed out Sweetwater Springs Road from Guerneville, CA.

                            

    This road was a nice start to our adventure...it was fairly easy, and coming down the other side of the hills to Westside Road was a nice test of everyone's brakes.  We quickly found that using the CB's to communicate was great fun, although I was having serious doubts about the intelligence of my decision to purchase a RadioShack handheld unit which I had mounted to the overhead vent access panel with Velcro....

    Westside Road took us to Hwy. 101 North near Healdsburg, and it was upon this leg that the first of our "incidences" occurred.  Brian's right taillight went out due to a shifting battery, and then all of his rear lights began blinking in some sort of strange sequence, rather Close Encounters-like.  We pulled off at the Independence Lane exit and he fixed that problem, and off we went again...this time to Hwy. 128 and to Geysers Road, where we got some of our first video footage. 

    Geysers Road gave us a chance now to test the steadfastness of our drive trains...as Brian put it over the radio:  "I think that if anyone was going to blow an engine, it would have happened by now!"  Referring of course, to the very steep and twisty hills which we had all just crawled over in first and second gear.  Every bus was running like a top, however, and the only disaster we had then was that I had to stop going up one of those grades to fetch a runaway hubcap, which lived in the bed of the truck for the rest of the trip. 

    Brian just reminded me of Mercuryville...with a sign that said "Population: 2"....I guess I musta blinked!

    A great road that one was!  The sun was up, but lurking behind some sullen but not threatening clouds, and the colors in the hills were in high contrast.  The terrain was fetchingly festooned with rocky outcroppings amidst copses of oaks and knolls of high grass, and 'round every bend was another refreshing vista of hills and forest.  The geysers themselves, with their roiling clouds of steam and hi-tech geothermal plants sprouting out of the sides of the hills, made for some groovy viewage! 

We stopped for a quick break at a nice wide flat area, and discussed some route planning stuff...there was a cool sheer dropoff into Big Sulphur Creek, and a majestic oak nearby.  These, and the birds all a-twitter, with the creek a-gurgling, made for a stoking morning!  All this peace and quiet was too much, however, and we were all amped to get back into our rolling dins, and be on our way....

    Once off of Geysers Road, we took the longest stretch on a primary highway that day...up 101 from just north of Cloverdale to Ukiah, where we stopped for fuel for our steeds and ourselves (9:15-ish), and then on to Willits, where we made a quick stop at Safeway so Babs and Aaron could get a few last-minute supplies, Brian zonked out for a few (Babs had taken the wheel as we entered Willits), and I called Michele at work to tell her how extremely well everything was going and how I really was wishing that she wasn't missing this!

  

    Back on the road....through Willits, and then a left turn onto Sherwood Road on the north end of town...and the adventure coninues...(insert Star Trek theme here)...next destination town:  Covelo!

This shot may or may not have been of Sherwood Road, but it is indicative of that road early on...right after we left the paved bit...

Our pattern was similar throughout the trip...Brian and Babs leading the way, Stu and myself in the middle, and Aaron taking up the rearguard, although we did switch places from time to time.

  

  Next!  Shasta 3

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