Gray Power: A Cellar Dweller Adventure

Yesterday was the debut of the Cellar Dwellers' brand new sketch comedy show, "American Splenda" up in Franklin, PA (ya know, that quaint little town near Oil City). Driving there is always a slight predicament for us all, and since it's so far away we try to take as few cars as possible. For this show, four of us decided to pack everything we could in Joe's car (a 1980-something Chevy Caprice Classic) and cross our fingers it gets us there. No offense to Joe, but his car wasn't necessarily in the best shape (actually it was his brother's). He had thought ahead and added some more oil to the engine, gas to the tank, and air to the tires. It didn't have a radio or turn signals, but it had alot of character (and that classic Chevy droopy-interior-roof). Joe, Andy (our light and sound guy), Larry, and myself all packed into the car and set off for what ended up being quite the adventure.

Packing this thing was only the beginning. You never really get an idea of how big the trunks are in these old boats until you stuff about twenty 7 ft poles almost completely inside, along with twenty 5ft poles, a large box of t-shirts, performance clothes for three, and a bag of curtains. All of this was no problem for the Caprice. What was a problem was getting the trunk secured. Larry had this crazy little gadget called a ratchet strap, which is basically a bungie cord with a simple machine attached. It was hard for us to find something on the car that wouldn't rip off if we hooked it on to it, and once we did find something, actually getting the ratchet to ratchet was another story altogether. After about twenty minutes of Larry and Joe struggling with the trunk, and me and Andy exchanging glances of slight befuddlement, we piled in the car and hit the road.

Things went swimmingly at first. But we all know that cars can't swim for very long, and the Caprice swam for even less! After about twenty minutes (and about five minutes on toll road Rt.60) Joe's "over-heated" light came on. The ingeniously designed Chevrolet didn't have a heat gauge or anything, so whenever the light turns on it's already too late. We would have to pull over immediately before the engine started smoking! The closest exit was the mysterious town of Moravia (which is said to house the only vampire in Western Pennsylvania, Count Drac-en'at).

When we took the exit we were met with toll booths asking for 50 cents. All of us soon realized that we had given our last bit of change to the first toll booth, and that this one required exact coin only. That requirement is one of the worst ideas PennDot has ever had. We sat at the booth for about ten minutes, all of us frantically searching for change. All we could come up with was .35 cents. So we tossed that into the bucket and sped off as the alarms sounded. After we got far enough away from the booth so that we couldn't hear its piercing scream, we pulled over to the side of the road and popped the hood.

The car had plenty of coolant (in fact the coolant tank read "Full and Hot", which meant that the coolant wasn't getting where it needed to go... this could mean a broken water pump). Larry and Joe know a thing or two about cars. My only solution was to take enough coolant out so that the tank read "Full and Cold". We cleared away the piles of dead leaves blocking Joe's vents and then decided that we should press on instead of turning back. We were already running behind and we couldn't afford to arrive in Franklin late. So we hopped back in the car, blasted the heater, rolled down the windows and got back on to Rt. 60.

At the next poll, which asked for $1.00, we were able to speak with an actual person:

Joe: Excuse me, we had an emergency and had to pull off in Moravia, but we didn't have any change... so I owe you guys fifteen cents.
Worker: Oh... don't worry about it.
Joe: You sure?
Worker: Yeah, it's nothing to be concerned about.
Joe: Oh, okay, thanks!

Sure, it was nothing for her to be concerned about. We'll see if Joe gets a ticket in the mail over the next week or so. We paid our tolls and then carried on down the road.

As I mentioned before, the roof to Joe's car has a droopy interior. This is found quite often in old Chevrolets apparently, and the only way to fix them is to use thumb tacks to hold the fabric up. This works great, and adds a little bit of style to your ride, but also makes things much more extreme (and dangerous.) The wind whipping through the car would often make a pin fall down on us, and I had to save Larry's life by reaching under his bum to grab a push pin before he sat on it. A few fell on my head, but luckily it was usually the blunt end of things that did it.

Along the way to Franklin we stopped at a gas station, and still everything looked good in the engine department. The coolant was now back down to "Full and Cold", which didn't really make any sense. We guessed that the engine was just burning the stuff away, instead of using it like it should. But Larry agreed to look the other way and we all decided to ignore the problem (that's how problems disappear, after all).

The rest of the trip was without incident. I was constantly on the phone, calling James/Ben and Dave/Nang who were all drive up from other directions at different times. Everything seemed to be going according to plan, despite our heated issues. That was until Joe's key fell out of his ignition. We aren't really sure why that happened, but I instantly knew something was wrong when Joe yelled, "Holy shit!" and started dangling the keys in the air. We all had a good laugh, and weren't really that concerned since the car was still running fine.

"American Splenda" went splendidly, and we had a really nice and responsive crowd there. This has made me quite excited for our Beaver County performance, which is in two weeks.

After the show was done, and everything was packed up, we headed for home. We weren't as concerned this time with the heat situation, because it was markedly cooler outside. So we took our time, with the keys out of the ignition, and road home without any problem. That is, until we arrived at our exit off of Rt. 60.

We needed to deposit .50 cents to get off the road. We had the change, we were ready. Apparently the machine was not. Something was a little off when we pulled up and there weren't any numbers telling us how much to deposit. Joe tossed in the two quarters and nothing happened. The toll booth machines weren't turned on! We sat there for a few minutes in disbelief that this was happening to us again. Then Joe exclaimed, "Screw it!" and we drove past, alarms blaring yet again. I guess you could say that it allowed this trip to come full circle. This blog entry can be a record that we paid our freaking tolls (or at least offered to), so PennDot better not come knocking!

It's having these sorts of adventures that just makes being a Dweller all the sweeter.