December 27, 2013

by Stephen Jan in Minden, LA

Time: 7 Days

Distance: 2,151 miles

Odometer: 308,438 miles

We left Monroe Louisiana, bellies full of complementary crawfish generously provided by Coney Island Riverside. The plan was to beeline it to Phoenix, Az, our final stop in the United States. Phoenix was where Esperanca was based. Phoenix was home to Mike’s welcoming family. Phoenix has an REI. As our last stop before our jaunt into Central America, the team was pretty excited to get there as soon as possible. A smooth journey wasn’t meant to be.

Sometime after 9:00PM, with Ken at the wheel, there was shift and the ambulance began to steadily decelerating. I originally assumed that noob driver Ken just veered a little too far to the right, and the rumbling was from the rumble strips along the shoulder, but we were in the middle of our lane. The vehicle continued to slow until we pulled over.

Back in 2010, I took the intro class to the Automotive Technician Curriculum at Bronx Community College. After a semester of lectures and testing about cam shafts and power strokes, I was pretty confident that if the car were to experience any issues on the road, I would be completely clueless. 13,000 miles, 2 rallies and 3 years later, I managed to picked up only one useful tip. As obvious as it was, i never thought to do it until I observed Steffen Skoglund, the Norwegian rallier who hitchhiked with us between Rabat and Marrakech: look under the car.

I stepped out of the ambulance, and before even looking under the car could see the left rear tire engulfed in smoke. I inspected the underside of the car and could see fluid splashed all over the rear driver side rim. I immediately got Ivy Lane Auto on the phone. While Steve did not do the pre rally inspection, he had always been a trusted advisor in all things rally related. After some discussion, he suggested a possible break in the transmission line. We spent the next 30 minutes standing around in the cold, waiting for the follow car to bring us some transmission fluid. We had high hopes that pouring 5 quarts of transmission fluid would do the trick and get us on our way. No luck. We ended up calling the tow truck.

Last time, Mike missed the ambulance-on-tow-truck experience. This time he was in the thick of it. He made several calls to tow truck companies. It took a couple calls, but he managed to locate a towing service willing to haul our beast of a car: Nolen Towing Services, the largest operator in the region. Daryl the tow truck driver was a character all right. He was a fast talking Louisiana native with all the charm of a southern man. As he worked his chains, levers, and winches, he showed us pictures on his phone. He recounted story after story of gory accident scenes to which he’s responded - blood everywhere, mangled cars, and dismembered body parts. That did wonders to calm us down.

Darryl unloaded our ambulance in front of David’s Transmission, about 5 minutes from Southern Inn Motel where the rest of the team waited for us. Our dreams of a Mexican New Year wasn’t looking good.