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M715 Roadtrip - CA to NJ

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Day 5 - 4/11

After waking up nice and warm, mostly just drove today. Got into Amarillo, TX late at night, decided to get a hotel so we could have hot showers, etc.

4/11 10:09 PDT

4/11 10:11 PDT

4/11 10:15 PDT

4/11 10:16 PDT

4/11 12:56 PDT

4/11 12:57 PDT

4/11 13:23 PDT

4/11 13:24 PDT

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4/11 14:11 PDT

4/11 14:12 PDT

4/11 16:11 PDT

4/11 16:42 PDT

4/11 16:52 PDT

Day 6 - 4/12

Got up, showered, checked email/uploaded pictures/etc on the hotel's marginal wireless. Went to the jeep, found someone stole our toolbag from the front! Texas, the state where people steal tools from a jeep on easter sunday. Things taken include our nice hand-made jumper cables with heavy gauge wire, insulated non-shortable clamps, LED polarity indicator, and Anderson plug to connect to the jeep's power system, the remote for our winch, which was another hand-made job, much fancier than warn's remote, a good pair of sunglasses, my multimeter, my good test light, two cigarette lighter to molex plug cables, two molex extension cables, a handmade spotlight on a big magnet, some spare electrical parts (terminals, wire, etc), a brand new LED flashlight, and other items I'm sure I'll remember when I go to use them and they're not there. Yay texas. Then, when we went to start the jeep, it made bad noises... which quickly turned to worse noises and lots of smoke as the starter grenaded. Pulled the starter, found the windings and commutator ripped apart, the brushes shreaded, etc - other than the field windings, not a salvagable part in it. Got a pull start from some lowlives (best term I can think of - and they were looking for either a drug dealer or a hooker as best as I could tell) in a truck, and headed towards MO on the "don't turn it off unless you're parked on a hill" method. Got a few looks at gas stations filling it with it running, but otherwise no problems. Stopped at a store (can't remember the town), backed up a hill on the side of it, and stopped to get some things. Asked the clerk if he knew of any local junkyards - he replied by saying the person to talk to had just walked in the door. The owner of the town's only towing and salvage company (with one tow truck... parked facing downwards on the other side of the same hill we were on, due to the same problem!) said he saw us park, and knew we needed a starter motor before we even asked him! After showing him the starter to refresh his memory ("Ya shelled it!"), he said he knew for a fact we wouldn't find one in that or any nearby counties. His suggestion was a yard 62 miles away. Stopped there, by luck ran into an employee who was there on easter sunday, but they didn't have one either. After admiring a nice Deuce wrecker ("they use that a lot... mostly towing tractors out of fields"), decided to head straight to MO and give up searching that day. Saw lots of nice wind turbines - good to see renewable energy in use. Got to MO too late to bang on a relative's door, so slept in the jeep down the street.

4/12 11:38 PDT