Trip to Slabs 2001

Roger Woods Web Page

Trip to Slabs October 2001

Part of the fun was getting there. Had a bunch of mechanical problems with two different transmissions on the PU. The second finally went out in California after I got to the Slabs. Here are some comments about getting there and the place itself.

I sent this query to Trailer Life and they said they wanted to see the completed article, but required a lot of pics at private RV parks with rigs and folks having fun. I don't stay at private CGs. A lot of folks I met along the road and when camped were barely making a living and using public CGs to survive while they tried to feed their families. So much for getting the completed article published.
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Things Often Look Their Darkest, Before They Turn Totally Black

Sometimes full timing in a RV rig isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. No big deal. You pays your money and takes your chances.

One scenario is familiar to anyone who has ever dreamed of full timing, perhaps after retirement, with a pickup and travel trailer rig. Get the truck, hook up the TT, head for the wide-open road, and live happily ever after.

It might turn out that way.

A long-time friend gave me a ’85 Ford 150 pickup and a 17’ 70-ish Golden Falcon travel trailer. The trailer grossed out at about two and a half tons, at least that is what the title reads. He had replaced the engine, the clutch, and some other things, handed me the titles, $1000, and said: "Get the hell out of Dodge! Enjoy the road."

I got!

I had a few bucks saved, and my Social Security check was deposited into my bank account. What could go wrong? The good times were just waiting for me on the road. Plenty of cold beer, maybe a mature, good looking lady to spend some quality time with, and a chance to again pick with an old rock and country music band! Instruments and
amplifiers were stuffed in the back of the pickup.

I headed south on U.S. 13 from Parksley, a small town on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, toward the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel. The truck purred along, and the trailer smoothly followed behind. I reached into the cooler on the floor, pulled out a beverage of my choice, popped the top, lit up a cheap Phillies cigar, slipped a cassette of an old country band I used to pick with into the radio, and settled back. Gonna be a great trip to the Slabs (Niland, CA).

Paid thirteen bucks toll for the tunnel. Rolled about a mile or so south.

Then the stuff hit the fan. It didn’t stop for the next week.

Big tractor-trailer rigs seemed to come from nowhere behind me and thundered past. Speed limit was 55. I was doing about 50. The trucks probably 60+. When they passed me, my rig would be sucked in toward them, immediately pushed toward the rails on the bridge, then sucked back in again. The trailer began to violently fishtail as I tried to control it with a combination of slight brake pressure and small corrections in the steering. That was probably the wrong way to handle it but I never found a better way. I realized I needed a sway bar, and a heck of a lot more experience if I was not going to be buried in a pile of aluminum and steel junk along the shoulder of some highway. First lesson. If you can’t keep up with the big rigs, you are in deep doo doo.

More fun was to come.

The highway is dual lane, until it gets to the two tunnels on the Bay Bridge. In the tunnels there is one narrow lane headed south and one north. I was almost to the bottom of the first tunnel, doing about 50. In the oncoming lane a half dozen tractor trailers were barreling toward me, pedal to the metal, pushing a hurricane of wind ahead of them, right into my rig. The hurricane winds slammed me sideways toward the wall.

Instant panic.

Thought: Are you sure Hank Williams did it this way?

Whoops! Wrong song. Wrong question.

My trailer was fishtailing so much I thought it would clip the railing along the side, but I managed to regain control and got started upgrade toward a light at the end of the tunnel I was sweating to reach. I shifted from fourth to third gear and anticipated a nice easy run out of the tunnel and back onto the dual roadway.

Wrong!

From 50 mph I immediately want down to 30, pulled it into second gear and dropped to 20. What the hell was going on? By the time I reached the exit from the tunnel, I was down to 15 with the engine screaming and threatening to tear apart. (Later, going across bridges on the Charleston, S.C. bypass, it got even worse.) The carburetor had been replaced with a new one, but I didn’t think about it as I slowly plodded up the grade. When I finally got out of the tunnel and back into the sunlight, cars and trucks were backed up behind me for half the length of the tunnel.

I let off the gas to shift gears as I slowly gathered speed.

The first explosive after-fire out the exhaust pipe sounded like a cannon had been fired next to my ear.

I jumped, and spilled half my brew. (Barq’s root beer)

My cigar went flying to the other side of the cab and landed on a greasy rag next to the hand cleaner. Smoke immediately welled up and filled the cab. I reached beneath the seat for a fire extinguisher.

I quickly rolled down my window, as I steered to the emergency pull-over lane. Stinky, greasy smoke reduced my vision to almost zero… flashing blue lights peeked out from the left rear of the trailer… I could barely see them…a siren sounded… Just what I needed. A cop on my big fat butt! Was a fire truck far behind?

It got worse.

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After I posted this on Solo Net, etc., I got a few email messages that I kinda left folks hangin' there when I did not complete the story. I hadn't completed it then, or now, either. Here are some of the replies I sent:

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Yep, there is a heck of a lot more. Two failed attempts to get to the
Slabs from the Eastern Shore of VA then a final success with a 
automatic tranny that would not stay locked in third gear all the way 
from VA to the Slabs.. Talk about lousy gas mileage. First two tries 
from VA were with a four speed manual that kept slipping, etc. Last 
attempt, successful, was with an old auto tranny from a 85 Ford 
Thunderbird. Piece of crap, it was. What they hey!

Then shortly after I got to the Slabs, third and reverse gear in the
tranny went out! A revolting development!!! Shades of William Bendix!

Folks, I ain't making this up!

That required an overhauled auto tranny, C5, to be ordered by my honest
mechanic friend in Exmore, VA, and shipped to me. At his cost. $460.
Then, installing it, when Builder Bill, at the Range, held the 
tailpiece of the tranny on his ample belly while we tried to get it 
to fit. But, that is another story. Plenty of beer and cigars flowed 
over the two days it took us to install the new tranny.... We spent a 
few hours each day downing some cold brew, playing music at night and 
did a few things to get the tranny installed. 

What the heck, we was on Slab time. 

Never pass up a chance to have some cold beers and socialize, light up
cigars, and never do today anything you can put off until tomorrow.
Worked for us. 

I will write some more about the attempts to get to the Slabs when I
get there and can spread out my log books in the TT. I can't do that at
Sis's house.

******

I ended back in VA two times, in part to the carb problems but, also,
to the completely shot manual 4- speed tranny that nobody bothered to 
check when they put in the new engine. 

Only when I pulled that tranny and moved the tranny shaft did I find it
was loose and probably shot. It had at least a half inch of play. Not a
good sign. Disassembled it and gears were shot, shafts scored, etc. I
checked with the dude who did the engine replacement and he told me he
never moved the tranny shaft to see if there was excessive play. He
apologized for not doing do. What the heck, I bought him a beer. Then,
I put in an unknown auto tranny from a T-Bird...

Had to make major modifications to the fuel and computer control of the
PU engine to solve the problem. What I did not know when I started out
was that a former owner of the PU had removed the catalytic converter
that was a major control part of the computer system controlling the
action of the computerized carburetor. 

With the converter missing, there was no way the carb would function
properly and it would always cause major problems. Until it was
replaced by a carb from a 1978 straight six Ford engine.

But, that is tale for the future. The PU runs great now. Mileage sucks
when pulling the trailer, but that is be expected unless you have tail
winds, which I did from CA into west Texas on the way back from the 
Slabs. Mileage shot up real fast as I was headed east.

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    To see some actual photos of the Slabs and learn more about them, go to Desert Dutch's Page.

    As time pernits I will add more materials and supplement them with some other stuff as I pull it out of my road log and journals. Or find the files on my old Puke Bell computer that is stored on the front seat of the PU.

    There was a post on one of the groups of the type I have often found. Someone drives around the Slabs, never stays more than an hour or so, then proclaims how undesirable it was, how they hate it, would never stay there, and recommend no one else do so. One dude just drove around for a few minutes, left, and posted a message that there wasn't anything good there. Wrong! Different strokes and all that. Those kinds of posts I respect but don't agree with. One such comment appeared on a Web page so I wrote the Webmaster:

"The writer of that is just plain wrong! I have to wonder if he spent a winter there and got to know folks who were there. I stayed there from November 2001 through May 2002 and found it a great place. Plenty of good folks: singles, married couples with and without children, etc. Plenty of elderly folks there and all perfectly safe!

"Very few problems, most of them petty, and the local cops patrol regularly. A fire department and ambulances are based in Niland and they are there when needed as fast as they can drive the four miles or so."

I read a bunch of adverse opinions about the Slabs before I went there.

When I arrived I found plenty of parking spaces. According to some year-round old timers, the last two years fewer folks were coming there. I parked my travel trailer in between two tall trees (tall bushes?), across from Builder Bill’s slab, (more about him here) and was sheltered from the worst of the AM and PM sun and the heavy winds. Most folks there were from the north West Coast, California, and Western Canada. A few from Minnesota. Saw one from Virginia, one from Tennessee and a few from other eastern states.

There was a good article about the Slabs in the February 2001 edition of Trailer Life. Unfortunately, I didn't get a copy of it before I had been there a while.

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