Our guys are nearing their destination. Little by little, sunny California is approaching David, Jason, and Otto. However, don’t think that being southwest of Michigan means that their misery is done. I just got off a call with them and conditions somehow haven’t improved much. The Mustang is chewing through tires, they stayed in what sounds like the worst motel in America, and it sounds like Otto wants to ride in the Golden Eagle while it’s on the trailer? Road madness is setting in as David’s terrible move continues westward.
Jason has informed me that their starting point of this leg was Weatherford, Oklahoma. Their southern route is taking them even further south than I expected. Jason told me that for this leg, their destination was Sante Fe, New Mexico. It’s a route stretching about 464 miles that saw them rolling through the top of Texas. And, amusingly, our team couldn’t even get their day started without some sort of shenanigans.
Jason Tries To Convince A Completely Wrong Hotel To Give Him Shampoo
Jason told me that their departure hotel didn’t have shampoo. At first, he figured that it wouldn’t be that big of a deal and that he could pick some up from a gas station. Apparently, he was wrong because he couldn’t find any shampoo at a convenience store. That’s when he concocted a brilliant idea: What if he walked into a more expensive hotel and asked for shampoo? Jason did just that, and walked into a Holiday Inn, asking the front desk for shampoo, claiming that his room didn’t have any. Unfortunately for him, the front desk didn’t buy it.
Also, if a Holiday Inn is a major upgrade, then you know that our guys are staying in some dirt-cheap accommodations. I’m not sure these guys have a price floor. And trust me, it’s going to get way worse!
David Burns Rubber
David was a man on a mission on Day Four. He had nearly died just the day before as a result of shower spaghetti and apparent cubic feet of mashed potatoes. We’re still not entirely sure why David effectively consumed a bucket of mashed potatoes, but his stomach hated him for his life choices. Despite all of this, Jason says that David was more energetic now than at any other point in this trip.
See, about seven hours away in Sante Fe was a person that David wanted to meet. This person is someone that David was far more interested in meeting than even the seller of the best holy grail Jeep on Earth. The motivation to see this person was so great that David increased his speed in the Mustang from 60 mph to perhaps 75 mph. Neither Jason nor David knows for sure how fast he was driving, but David says that the anticipation of meeting this person easily added 10 horses to his old pony car.
In fact, he suggests doing a drag race with someone you want to meet at the end of the track. You’ll easily gain free horsepower!
Unfortunately for him, the Mustang wasn’t nearly as excited about this as he was. At the beginning of this trip, David said that his brother’s 1966 Ford Mustang was wrapped in Douglas tires that were awful in anything but dry weather. Apparently, they also have alarming tire wear, too. The Mustang apparently has control arm bushings of the Bluetooth variety, and the suspension and steering need to be freshened before it could get an alignment. That means the car is just grinding down the tires.
In an effort to increase the longevity of those tires, David and Jason pulled off to swap the rear tires with the fronts. Despite their southerly position, things were still bitterly cold, and Jason made sure to emphasize how much it sucks to swap wheels when it’s cold and windy. It was a simple job made miserable by more of that relentless cold that they’d been facing for the whole trip. Also, the Mustang looks the way it does because David has a lot of junk in his trunk, and dirty hands…
Jason also tells me that during one of their stops, David encountered other people trying to fix a car, and he fed them hot dogs. During this trip, David and Jason have noticed that people seem to react more to the Golden Eagle than the Mustang. Lots of people have said something about the Golden Eagle, but the Mustang didn’t get any attention until some totally sloshed guy came over while David was swapping the wheels.
Jason Suffers In The Wagoneer
In our call, I asked Jason about how the Wagoneer is doing. As it turns out, Jason was able to fix the CarPlay issue, and all it took was for the infotainment system to crash, necessitating a hard reset. Apparently, just crashing your Stellantis infotainment system will fix it. Jason described the situation as annoying, to say the least. That’s when David countered with something that surprised us.
Jason, Otto, and I learned something about David during the call. The Mustang doesn’t have a radio of any kind. That means David is just sitting there, driving the Mustang in a direction. He describes the experience of driving the ‘Stang down the highway to be similar to sitting at a desk and doing nothing at all. Jason and I begged him to buy some headphones or something because holy hell, that sounds boring. But David is determined to drive this whole thing in dead, cold silence. Clearly, road madness is setting in for both Jason and David. It seems to me that Otto is holding the group together.
Discovering Cadillac Ranch And A Scaled-Up Dodge Caravan
When our team reached Amarillo, Texas, Jason and Otto checked out one of the most famous roadside attractions in America. Much ink has been spilled about the fabled Cadillac Ranch and its buried vehicles-turned-art pieces. The tailfins of these vintage American autos have pointed to the sky since 1974 and have served as an art installation for anyone who encounters it. Jason and Otto wanted to leave their mark but found themselves unable to access the parts they wanted.
While the father and son duo were exploring that American landmark, David was supposed to be buying new shoes. But he already had shoes, so he went exactly nowhere. Yes, it seems that on every one of the Autopian’s recent trips, David has found himself in need of at least one piece of clothing. See, David has clothes, but they’re all oil-stained from top to bottom, terrible if you need to look clean at a destination. Perhaps with enough time, he’ll get an entire outfit!
Later, they happened upon this USA Corporation Europa. So far as I could find with various models for sale, this RV manufacturer took Dodge and Chevrolet chassis and built RVs on top of them. What we’re looking at here is the Dodge version, and the front end is an absolute giggle.
It’s almost like the company took the front end of a Dodge Grand Caravan and decided to scale it up.
Power comes from a Dodge V8 and the interior is also a smattering of the Dodge parts bin. And yes, the company was really called “USA Corporation.” Has there been a more generic company name?
Our Team Sleeps In The Worst Motel In America
Thus far, this entry hasn’t been so bad. A lot worse could have happened! Well, buckle up, because David’s love for everything cheap ends up biting them all in the arse.
David, Jason, and Otto planned to stop at a motel for their night stop. Online, this hotel was advertised at a bottom of the barrel $58 a night. When David called the motel, the price then raised to $75. But hey, $75 for a room with two beds is still cheap, so they continued. But when they got there, the price went up to $100. Tired, our team lifted a Benjamin from their pockets and got their room. And…I’m not sure I’ve heard of a worse motel in this entire country.
Jason started off by calling the motel a total craphole. He provided me pictures but followed them up by saying that they just don’t do the motel justice. Somehow, everything was terrible. For starters, when they opened the door, they immediately noticed that the floor was parabolic. At no point was the floor level, and that jacked up all of the furniture. Every bit of furniture sat at an angle, sloping toward wherever the floor took them.
Ok, that’s weird enough, but then they noticed that everything else in the motel room was also crooked. Every light switch was crooked, as were the outlets, and Jason even noted an outlet that was completely hanging out of the wall.
This is when David chimed in to say that everything was so crooked that the shade on a lamp was sitting at a good 30-degree angle. Guys, I think you rented a funhouse for the night!
Jason said that everything in the room was so low quality it was if the room had a level of contempt about it. The room was like if the owners of the motel intentionally tried to figure out what was the least they could get away with and still sell you a room. I mean, they even used the same Goodwill artwork for both beds!
There was spackle all over the place, splashes of paint that even a colorblind person could tell was the wrong color, weird poorly-repaired holes in the wall, and random wall repairs that don’t match and don’t make any sense. There was also a closet that didn’t actually have an end to it, just another opening. Oh, and apparently there was a side room of some kind, and it bafflingly had just a closet, a desk, and a sink.
Otto notes that it was like a prison and nothing worked well. The beds felt itchy and they had to check for bedbugs. They’re fairly certain that they didn’t find any, but things looked sketchy. Otto said that everything was so cheap there was no Dr. Pepper. Instead, the vending machines served generic drinks like Dr. Thunder.
Ah, and I forgot something. Apparently, the cops came by at 1 in the morning, asking Jason why he was sitting in the motel’s parking lot. That sounds about right for a hotel like this.
More Bad Ideas, And Do They Know Where They’re Going?
During this conversation, Jason and David made a large number of comments about the position of the sun. It seems that they weren’t entirely sure whether they were headed east or west, and neither of them seemingly knew where the sun’s position was. I’m not sure how you lose track of the sun on a clear day, but that sounds like what happened, and it took them quite a bit of time to figure out that they were headed in the correct direction. Like I said, road madness…
I also asked about the Jeep Golden Eagle, and that took them on a whole different tangent. Jason and David said that Otto wanted to ride in the Golden Eagle. And, well, there is a photo of Otto eying up the beast of a rig. But while the pair were talking about that, Otto cut in and said that he absolutely did not want to ride in the Golden Eagle.
David and Jason countered by saying oh no, he totally did want to ride in the Golden Eagle. To settle this debate, Otto took the phone and told me that he’d love to sit in the driver seat because it looks cool and it’s sort of stupid, but he declined because he didn’t think that there would be any WiFi. That’s when Jason assured him that he could ride in the driver seat of the Golden Eagle, there definitely will be WiFi, and they’ll tow the Golden Eagle around a parking lot or something with him in it.
So, uh, I guess that’s going to be a thing!
Our band of heroes expect to reach David’s new apartment by Saturday. However, because of reasons best explained by just saying “California,” the power company will not be turning on his apartment’s power until Tuesday. That means that David will be living like a caveman through the weekend and part of next week. He’s still not sure how that’s going to work out, but he’s pretty sure he’s going to be sitting in his powerless apartment while it rains outside.
Thus, somehow, the entirety of David’s move will be miserable in some way, which is totally on-brand. The team tells me that their next stop is Omega Mart in Las Vegas before doing the final leg. Then, David will be home. From our team in the field and from me, we wish you a happy start to your New Year! We will return in 2023 with even more fun. Since their journey isn’t over yet, watch it go down on our social media pages.
Godspeed to everyone on this journey. None of it makes sense to many of us (including me) but it does make for good reading.
Worst motel in the world ?!?!?!? Call me when you find used syringes under your pillow, under the bed and above the shower cubicle, like I did once in Johannesburg as a backpacker back in the 90s. Or when the receptionist is a hooker moonlighting as a receptionist to save all the legwork of looking for Johns, as I discovered in a seedy little port hotel in Santos Brazil, when she said as she handed me the keys: “Anything else you need, just call…ANYTHING !!. Now I am an ugly enough mofo to know that she was not saying that because she was into me. That hotel there in the photo looks like a Hilton to some of the places I stayed in while backpacking around the world David.
Driving across country with failed front control arm bushings is a terrible idea. Keeping my fingers crossed that you guys make it there safely.
If day 4 was 4 days ago, which day is it now? Where, and when are they? Did anyone see Jason, David and Otto, or are they stuck in a parallel universe after taking a wrong exit? Or is this a late effect of the shower spaghetti? So many questions…
Well, they were planning to go to Omega Mart next, an alternative version of your local supermarket, which definitely does feature a portal to a parallel universe.
I feel like we need Mercedes to do an entire article on USA Corporation.
So, David is legitimately a basket case is what I’m getting from these articles. I mean I knew about the cars, but this goes a bit beyond. I suppose it does help explain things like selling good drivable cars so that you can keep non road worthy shitboxes when you’re moving halfway across the country.
Hearing about the poor condition of the Mustang (and the lack of prep for the move) had me questioning whether I would ever speak to this person again if I were helping them on this move. But then I thought back to the time my buddy told me that there, “was still some air in the brake lines” as we commenced driving up Pike’s Peak. I was beyond livid and demanded he stop, but we made it up and down. We’re still friends, so I suppose that’s my answer.
“That means that David will be living like a caveman through the weekend and part of next week. He’s still not sure how that’s going to work out, but he’s pretty sure he’s going to be sitting in his powerless apartment while it rains outside.”
If the dude can drive cross-country without a radio, I’m pretty sure he’s not even going to notice he doesn’t have power until Monday evening.
Before this whole thing started, I wanted to meet with and hang out with David; maybe enlist his help in wrenching on my truck or something.
Now? Shower spaghetti, consuming yards of mashed potatoes on a road trip, hours of silence with only the noise of the road to keep you company?
I mean, I thought he was just eccentric. Travelling across the country to get twrenchfoot and rescue an old jeep? Cool, nice success story. Travel to Oz and do the same minus the ailment? Awesome.
Now I’m looking at those and all the others in a different light. I’m starting to wonder if he is completely there.