Oxford circa 1955
Tag Archives: series
Jammin’ in the Rover, Man
Bob Marley’s 1976 Series III, which has been parked in front of the reggea legend’s former home (now a museum) for the past 25 years, is being restored for the Bob Marley Museum. The old Rover was said to be Marley’s favorite vehicle.
Thanks to the Jamaica – Star for the story.
Power, Power, Power
In all honesty, I would have been happy with a Bobcat, but I was given a John Deere backhoe, because “bigger is always better”. I had canceled the delivery on Friday due to a week of straight rain over ground that was still frozen just a few feet below the surface. Every path to the new cabin site was a mucky mess. Then I was told that the backhoe had been delivered a day early, and it was sitting in a driveway about a half mile from where it was suppose to be.
We would figure out a way to make it work. Sorta. Somewhat. In a manner of speaking.
The ground was, of course, too wet for such a large piece of equipment, which is why I thought a Bobcat would be more productive. But one plays with the equipment that’s delivered. I cut down a forest of trees that were in the path, we did a good job of getting the drive “formed”, considering the melting muck. There was no chance of getting the backhoe into where the new cabin will go, however. So the actually site work, and the new hole for the outhouse will have to be done at a future date. Tomorrow the Typar will go down, then we will start to haul rock (re: tailings) in, and build the new driveway from the current drive out to the new cabin location.
The backhoe is a blast to run. In fact it drives easier than The Rover, and with about the same amount of levers. I think The Rover might be a tad faster on the road though. Overall, an extremely hectic weekend, but a very productive one as well.
The ‘Oxford & Cambridge’ Question
‘Cambridge and Oxford’ on the Stillwell Road, Burma.
A while back, Alex asked me a question on why these two Rovers were called Oxford & Cambridge. I was then scolded by another reader for not giving more information in that post on “The Oxford & Cambridge Far Eastern Expedition”.
Well, I was traveling without the laptop, and uploading posts through the phone is simply a pain in the arse.
In 1955 six Oxford & Cambridge students set off overland from London for Singapore. It turned out that only one student, Nigel Newbery, was from Oxford, but the name of the expedition stuck and the two Land Rovers were then referred to as “Oxford” and “Cambridge”. In fact, they were painted Cambridge blue and the darker blue of Oxford.
The expedition left Hyde Park and crossed the English Channel to France. From there they traveled through Monaco, Germany, Austria, Jugoslavia, Greece, Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Burma, Thailand, Malaya and Singapore. The trek to Singapore took 6 months and 6 days, traversing 18,000 miles.
Rover Adventures Under the Big Sky
I-90
We had a little bit of everything on this day.
First there was the stark surrealness of Little Bighorn. Quite honestly, I don’t care that the edit feature on this computing device does not recognize “surrealness” as a word, because I control this blog, not the Ghost of Steve Jobs.
I found out that one can piggy back onto the wifi of a tour bus in the parking lot of national monuments. Up till now I thought the buses had no real function.
When one wanders for too long among the dead, one must pay the price of the rising mercury. It was 92 when we passed through Billings.
At Little Bighorn, I met a fellow who was driving up to Chicken, AK to work at a mine. He had a Toyota pickup with one of those little Scamp trailers behind it. He said he’d watch for me on the highway up, and that he’d stop if he saw me on the shoulder. Note: he didn’t say he’d help, just that he would stop. The conversation made me wish that the Rover was running a little better.
We experienced head winds between Billings and Bozeman that made me cuss & cringe. I saw a wild turkey cross I-90 that was felled by a gust and bounced several yards eastbound until it finally gained its footing and dignity. The poor bird had my sympathy, and I told the turkey so.
The NAPA electric fuel pump crapped out on me while climbing a steep incline. That was discouraging. It either died or could not pass through the vapor lock veil. I pulled off at the next exit & replaced it with the backup pump while parked in a field.
We hit a t-storm west of Bozeman that forced me to pull over because the wiper couldn’t keep up with the rain and hail. Hail makes a very unique sound on an aluminum roof, I must say.
Crossing the pass into Bozeman was torture. That’s all I’m going to say.
Finally, I exited on Hwy 2, which took us on a beautiful drive through a river valley to Lewis & Clark Caverns State Park. It turned out that the place was packed with kids on some sort of retreat, but I stopped anyway. For the most part they avoided me, but I did overhear the quote of the trip so far when a group of them walked to the shower house as I drank a scotch & read some Hunter S Thompson. One of the guys in the group said, “That guy is living the life… He has a fucking treehouse on his truck.”
Custer National Forest
The view from my tent:
Custer National Forest, Montana.
Custer National Forest
A nice drive without the headwinds, and the MPG rose back up to 13.5. I’ve given up on the idea of anything higher than 14 without doing some engine modifications.
I stopped earlier than I had to with the gain of an hour heading into mountain time, but I reached my goal of Custer NF, with free camping, so I pulled off, set up camp, then hiked about until hunger overcame me. It’s a beautiful forest, with stunning open vistas once one gets away from the main roads. I stumbled upon a herd of pronghorn today while out walking. They allowed me to get fairly close, so they must have known I was unarmed. I also walked up to some bovines, one of which allowed me to scratch between its ears.
The gas tank has made it two driving days on the Ivory soap.
I ran into another Alaskan here in Custer. I wasn’t overly chatty, which seemed to put him off a bit, but it wasn’t worth the effort for me to try to talk over that knocking, diesel Suburban of his.
Sprung
While performing the standard leak check, the CEO of MAO Inc noticed a problem with one of the front springs. Namely that one of the U-bolts holding the spring to the front axle had sheared.
Two U-bolts were available at the Waconia NAPA the next morning and they were installed right after that.
I would love for that to be the only hiccup until I get to Squarebanks.
Prairie States
After doing the pre-run check on The Rover prior to leaving The Puddle in Kansas, the host paid me a visit. I guess the camping around “The Racetrack” was free, and the host encouraged me to stay 4-5 days to “enjoy the place”. He was genuinely disappointed to hear I would be driving off within minutes. Nice guy, somewhere in his 80’s, and I sort of felt bad dissing his park, but it went away as I tried to check the rear diff fluid level and not get stuck by broken glass.
When I started up again, it was still 88 degs and by the time I hit Stockton, KS it had dropped down to 77, but The Rover ran well.
I met up with two whitetails on Hwy 183 with a death wish. I should have nailed one with each wing, but the high beams allowed me to stop in time and the deer simply blinked at me in the bright lights. I kept going until I approached Kearney and I-80, where I pulled over for the rest of the night.
The trek across Nebraska & Iowa went easily in the drastically cooler air. I did hit a cross-headwind in NE that kept me from being able to use the overdrive which drove my mileage down to 11. In general however, it varied from 12-14, which is what it did the previous year. Still… Disappointing & not what I’m looking for.
West of Des Moines, I man came up to me while getting gas and asked where in Alaska I was from. When I told him, he said he had lived in Valdez. Then he went on to ask me if I knew several people up in Alaska, and was taken aback when I claimed to know none of them. I then confessed that “I was a bit misanthropic,” which only confused him further, but he continued to talk to me.
Podunk, Kansas
I was on the road early, but the ninety degree weather was on us by 11:30am.
Plan B was to bail into any state park that showed itself when the heat became unbearable, which happened around 1:30, and the Rover and I were parked under a shady tree by 2pm.
It’s a strange park, and I don’t even want to name it. There is a puddle of a pond, which is no doubt stocked with some small fish, with a dirt road running along its shore. It kind of looks like a gravel racetrack with a pond in its center. People have been driving around & around slinging gravel since I arrived. It’s either a cruise destination or a drug drop off point. I have not decided which, and the characters seem to be running 50/50 in favor of each I hate to disparage the place, in case it is beloved by the local community, but it really is a bit of a dump.
I’ll eat dinner shortly, then crawl under the truck to check all fluids, while trying to avoid the broken glass scattered about. Afterwards, I will venture further north, although things have not cooled down yet. I’ll get to I-70 for sure tonight and may try for I-80 or beyond depending on how I feel. The votes are even, and I will cast the deciding vote when the time comes. Isn’t democracy a wonderful thing?
The Rover was running just fine this morning and I shut things down before the temps became too nasty. Besides, my feet were really hot today, which just may become the deciding factor in the future. I figure that right now I am 12 Rover hours from Knoxville.
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