Back to the story........The night before, in the Motel, I got the word out Via the internet of my plight. Folks far and wide were sympathetic. One of the most concerned was Linda Lambert from Albuquerque, NM.
Now I don't know Linda and her Husband face to face, but we have emailed one another over the last few years, and I was going to stop by her place on the Way back from Daytona for a visit and a meetup. She had gotten an email out that said she would come down (some 400 miles) and pick me up if I wanted her to. Mike Seidel, from OH, called my cell phone with the message, thanks Mike.
Scheesh, I thought.....that is a lot of effort for someone you hardly know.........but I would get to meet them and maybe get to ride around ABQ a bit on one of their multiple bikes. Hummmmmm, that sounded like an upturn to events.
Since the possibilities of finding a truck In ABQ seemed much better than podunk FT Stockton, I decided to accept her offer. Linda left ABQ at 2pm in her husband Steve's Nissan 350Z . It was a Valentine-1 equipped Freeway burner.
She was there that Sunday evening by 8pm and we were back at her place by 3am. It was a mercy run way beyond the realm of standard expectations. I felt like I knew Linda after a 7 hr trip with her in the car. She kept up a conversation for all but the last hour where I wasn't responding very well. I slept in on Monday.
So suffice to say that I spent 5 days with the Lamberts. I worked on her ST1100 with success. It needed it Carbs cleaned. I rode some of the local hills. We ate good food. Two noted dinners were a local southern BBQ joint that was run by an old Negro Gentleman in the style of the deep south, and another evening we had Raggin Cagin food. I had never had Cagin crawfish before. Cool.
I also looked in the classifieds for a likely transport vehicle, but Linda spied a 72 Dodge Van less than a mile away at a residence. The '72 really interested me because that is the first year to be smog exempt in Ca. I went to look at it. It had 'me' written all over it. But it had set for two years before the widow decided to sell her late husband's pride and joy.
It was a mess really. Certainly not cleaned up for the sale. As I wondered if it would make a trip to Ca, I was getting cold feet. I could just see me in the middle of NM with a dead Van........ and a dead motorcycle inside. Hummm....how would I be able to salvage that situation?
You have to understand, that this van only had a used battery put in it, and one of the tires, that had gone flat, replaced. That was the extent of getting this vehicle ready for the sale. The Wife's brother had done the work, and he drove it up from the farm some 35 miles, he said. He was a savey 35 year old feller, and he said the van really ran good.
I took it for a test ride of 2 or three miles, and I couldn't put my finger on anything really bad, but it wasn't very confidence inspiring either. The van looked to have a new alternator on it, and a box of new parts in the back that the guy had, just in case, and it wasn't leaking oil anywhere. All good signs, So I decided the old owner was one who took care of the important issues.......I was at least hoping for that to be the case.
But as a friend of mine said, "no guts, no air metal" or "Faint heart never fu@ked a fair maid", so I pulled the trigger on the deal....not really expecting an air metal...or the other thing, either. Mostly I was just hoping to get home. I was keeping all fingers crossed.
I had been offered the Lambert's ST to tour around NM as much as I wanted.....and as Steve told me stories of near and far Indian places to see, I was temped to use up a bunch more hospitality, but my mind kept returning to the task at hand of getting home. The nagging problem of getting home was ruining a possible good time.
I decided to leave the next morning, Saturday, for FT Stockton. Let me say here that The Lamberts were an oasis in the middle of nowhere, and my eternal thanks go out to them.
