pith…

THE RANGER TAKES AN UNHOLY TURN …FUCK YOU BILLINGS & MAY TOP-TECH AUTO BURN DOWN INTO THE INBRED SOIL FROM WHICH IT SPROUTED.

A week in an off-the-map ancient ski town, Rossland, B.C., which lies just above the scrawny neck of Idaho, was a great escape from the over-trodden billion dollar-mountains we’d been riding the past few weeks. Parting with the couple who became our skiing, laughing and drinking companions, whose condo generously became our luxurious mountainside home, we raced back towards the American border.

Of course we were stopped, searched and hassled as we rolled back onto our native soil. Profiled…the Jeep packed to the gills with over-stuffed duffle bags, snow and camping gear piled to the canvas roof and two huge steel ammo containers full of spare parts, apparently two road-haggard young men can’t cross the border without raising suspicion anymore. Sure it would have been nice to stash some sweet, cheap B.C. bud back with us, but we weren’t stupid. We had nothing to worry about except the annoyance of a burly woman who couldn’t understand our heavy load, even after we told her we were on the road for an indefinite haul. Finally, after the beastly woman ripped everything out of the Jeep and threw it on the frozen concrete like a bear digging through a dumpster, we were reloaded and burning away from Canada. A stop in Whitefish for a few hours of sleep and a restock of what the border patrol was stiffing for and we were back screaming southeast across the Montana highways towards Colorado.

Starting before sunrise, we’d covered over four hundred miles on the familiar vein of highway 90/94 that cuts across the monstrous state of Montana, cruising carefree through the crisp sunny February day. But then it came down on us, the shit-storm began while I was pushing the Jeep on a straightaway just outside of Billings. There was a knock that came from under the hood like a ball peen hammer had been whipped against a tin shed and then suddenly the oil pressure gauge jumped down to zero. The engine cut out and every warning light on the dash flashed on as I drifted the powerless machine onto the shoulder to a halt. “What the fuck?” was the obvious reaction, the Holy Ranger had been running strong for some three thousand miles of brutal winter driving and then out of the great blue, wham, it drops cold…Dead, the engine won’t turn over yet there is nothing mangled or burning under the hood. AAA gets a tow-truck to us in one painfully long hour of baffled cursing and chain-smoking on the side of the desolate highway. The “mechanic” that the American Automobile Association recommends proves to be one of the biggest testaments to their bullshit reputation, and lands the Jeep in the hands of the most crooked, back-alley repair shop I’ve ever seen or heard of.

Our dealings with Top-Tech Auto start off on the normal level of inconvenience that comes with the backwards nature of car repair. By the time the Jeep gets inside the shop, it’s too late in the day to expect anything to get fixed or even a professional estimate, so we hole up in a cheap hotel on the industrial side of Billings. Filled with nothing but frustration and rage, our communication with Darin, the white-trash epitome of a low-budget “mechanic” degenerates down to weasely lying about his utterly dumbfounded attempts to fix the Jeep. For three nights we drink our disillusioned anger into submission in cheap hotels and even cheaper bars trying to ignore the suffocating desolation of Billings, the last place in the entire country to be stranded.

Three nights, three hotels and over three grand for a blown camshaft, and we’re still forced to rent a car to get down to Colorado so I can meet up with the family in Vail and Max can fly down to Florida for a beach binge. We leave Billings with the worst taste a town can leave in ones mouth, a bitter hatred towards a place all due to the bullshit that continually spews from one man. Darin, the mop-headed mustached dimwit who somehow runs Top-Tech Auto, drives a Cadillac Escalade and throws his failing marriage in our faces whenever we demand answers about the Jeep. We talked constantly about hurling bricks through the large dirty windows of his shop, and probably should have in retrospect to obtain some sense of reckless vandal justice. That bastard wasn’t worth nearly half of the three thousand seven hundred and fifty-two dollars he swindled out of us.

The breakdown of the Holy Ranger proved to be the single biggest downer of our entire three months of pure mobility and madness. Besides the obvious financial blow, the real tragedy was our complete loss of faith in the greasy blue collar American mechanic. Granted, they are a breed of man with questionable integrity, yet they possess keen wit of the ability to breath life into automotive freedom, the most symbolic necessary evil of our times. Without these mechanically educated, beer sweating laborers with no qualms about sticking their heads inside the treacherous steel and oil innards of anything with at least four wheels, life as we know it would rumble to an ugly halt.

July 17, 2008