Once fed, I now think and move like a slug. There's a crowd of senior citizen women circling around our cars outside. I cannot face them just yet. I am heavy with German sausage and eggs. My head leans to the left like the top half of overfilled sack of potatoes. NO! No potatoes. Nothing Idaho for awhile, please. Seven glued a toy cop car to IFSM this morning. It has three different sounds depending upon the button you push. Like the three or four different attitudes we got from the police yesterday. What a day.

We'll be in Portland in seven hours. Tex will stay with the gang and Seven and I will make a beeline for Jill in Corvallis. I can hardly wait to see her, and to touch home base as it were, to stand for a moment on the spot of my departure four weeks and 4500 miles ago. Unbelievable.

As we prepare to pull away from Donna's Diner, Donna and her daughter Melody make us a gift of two matching battery-operated ashtrays shaped like toilets. You push the flush lever and your butts disappear accompanied by an electronic flushing sound. Brilliant. Adios kind Pomeroy.

Crawling through the town of Waitsburg, WA, we get our hackles up when a local cop passes us, then whips around and, so says Tex, puts on his lights. But there are several cars between him and us, so it's hard to know whether he's after us or what. Tex says, "This job of driving for you is getting a little intense." In a pre-emptive strike maneuver, we pull into a gas station and look back. The cop has disappeared. Duke breathes a sigh of relief. Then it's anyone's guess how to get out of Waitsburg, town of terrible signage. We wander the streets a bit before reconnecting with highway 12.

Duke is really starting to express his displeasure with this long and constant abuse. Climbing a hill awhile back he started throwing a bunch of oil that then burned on the exhaust manifold and sent plumes of smoke rising up behind us. So bad was it that for the first time ever I saw smoke coming out of the glove box. And just now Duke hiccuped for the first time since Jill and I were returning from the Jazz Festival parade we did in New Orleans last year. Jesus, Lord help us to make it to Portland safely.

The Crawl

Down and out in Umatilla. The final home stretch and Duke ain't gonna make it easy on us. After many thousands of miles we've come at last to a tiny town on the Oregon border. Full circle. Well almost. Sometimes you have to be careful what you ask for. When I left Corvallis four weeks ago, I probably asked God or Duke to get me from Oregon to Minnesota and back. And well he did. A few miles shy of the Oregon border and Duke announced his triumph and extreme fatigue with a hiccup and a sigh. And another hiccup. And another. And so on. With every jolt of the engine, we lost power speed and conviction.

For several hours and for several stops, doing 30 mph tops, Tex and I wrestled with what might be the cause. Tex said electrical; I said carburation. At the NAPA in Umatilla we put our skills to the test: I ran to the telephone and Tex ran to the trunk for tools, and ultimately to lock the keys inside. As someone said, here the plot sickens. After screaming at the heavens awhile and searching in vain for a spare key, I gave in and let Tex tear out the back seat.

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Last update April 1, 2004