The weekend before last we decided it was definitely time for a break.
Posted on | November 7, 2007 | 1 Comment | Share!!
You know when it’s time…. It’s that time when everything in life seems a little more aggravating than it should be and you just need to refocus.
Well, that was us, so on Friday we boarded the dogs, rented a cozy cabin in Black Mountain, NC (just down the highway from Asheville) and holed up for a few days!
One thing’s for sure, it was just the solution to the collective funk we were in! We poked around the town of Black Mountain on Friday, took in South Eastern Animal Fiber Festival (SAFF to the knitting world) on Saturday, logged 8 to 10 miles of much needed hiking around Mount Mitchell, and then ended with … ahem … car trouble when we tried to leave Monday.
More on that in a bit.
I’ll start off by saying that Black Mountain is one of the coolest little towns you can find! It’s kind of how I imagine Asheville once was before it exploded into the grand mountain metropolis that it is now. We didn’t get to speak too much to the locals, but I gathered from the ones that we did, and the newly cut landscape, that this quaint little place is on it’s way up; for better or worse.
Big looming consumerist cloud aside, Black Mountain still had it’s small town flavor. Every street was dotted with awesome independent coffee shops, a few mom and pop restaurants, lots of little hobby shops to get lost in, with only a couple fast food joints and chain grocery stores on the outside of town. The one coffee shop we stepped into, The Dripolator, “proudly served” Raleigh’s own “Larry’s Beans”!!!
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So, where were we? Oh yeah!
One old school thing we noticed about Black Mountain right off the batt, is that 90% of anything that had an open sign hanging on the front door, got spun around to “closed” at , or around, 6PM. So… visitor beware! This predicament found us sitting in a genuine German restaurant Saturday night with very little for Mel to eat (she doesn’t eat red meat) outside of authentic sauerkraut or bread.
I’ll let Melinda tell you what she ended up eating. 
Aside from these family run establishments, there is also an ABC store to get your drink on, “Take a Hike Mountain Outfitters” to help get your hike on, and the standard 24 hour gas stations that you have when you pull off of I-40. Oh and there’s a natural foods market in town that also sells B100 biodiesel out back, that is, they do until gets colder. Then they sell it in various blends to combat gelling.
Ummm… like I said, a little more on that later!
The next morning found us surrounded by colorful fiber, skeins of yarn, spinning wheels, FO’s (Finished Objects) and dreams of FO’s. It’s called SAFF and from what Mel tells me, and what I’ve seen first-hand, it’s a pretty big deal for 
knitters on the east coast.
We browsed a bit, Mel bought some fiber to spin, some yarn to knit, and a book on sweaters! She also caught up with the spinning guild that she’s a member with, volunteering at their booth for a bit. On top of all of this, we had the good fortune of catching up with Gryphon, Mel’s friend that she designs for. Gryphon’s a wonderful person and an amazing artist to boot. She’s also good at creating super cute children!
Here’s Lea. Isn’t she just adorable!
It was awesome to see them again (we met first at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Fest)! It’s still a fledgling business relationship, but it was pretty cool seeing one of Mel’s patterns for sale in a booth at one of these fiber festivals. We’re pretty grateful that she tapped Mel to produce a design for her business.
The day ended around 5pm and we retreated back to the cabin for a little bit before we met a friend of Mel’s from the spinning guild, Catherine, in town for some dinner. All told, it was an awesome 24 hours!
The next day brought us into the clouds of The Smokies! Mel’s going to have a full write up on our day of hiking around the peak of Mount Mitchell, so I won’t dwell too much on this day, but it was just what the doctor ordered! We were cloud-locked for the first half of the hike, with VERY limited visibility, but as the day waned we began to see the sun burn through and the views… dear god, the views were incredible!
When we had our fill, we took the Blue Ridge Parkway out and headed home. But not before we stopped at one of the many pull-offs the parkway provides, for some more much needed photo ops!
When we got back to the cabin, we were exhausted. I started a fire in the wood stove, grabbed some wine and settled in. I read a book and Mel wound some yarn she bought from the day before! Pretty damn perfect!
The next morning we woke to frost! It’d dipped down into the high 30’s the previous nights we were there, but the last night, well, that night dipped down into the 20’s…
Which finally brings me to biodiesel. I’ve been running 100% pure biodiesel (or B100) in my VW Golf for a couple years now, and without getting into why or political agenda, I’ll say it just makes sense and leave it at that.
There are many great reasons for running Biodiesel in your engine and only a few severe draw backs, all of which can be circumvented with a little planning. One of the draw backs is, that typically, B100 tends to gel at temps that dip below 45 degrees Fahrenheit. By “gel” I mean, your fuel turns into something resembling cottage cheese. So when I saw the frost on the ground, I knew we were done for. After the initial “Oh… shit…” I ran out to my beloved car and popped the the hood to find chunks in the fuel line.
I wish I could say it was the only time I’d run into this situation, but because of this fact, there was a ray of hope!
See, when you get B100 to raise in temperature after it’s gelled, it magically becomes liquid again (well, not really “magically”, but you get my drift)! So I quickly put the car in neutral, and, with Mel’s help, I pushed the car into the sun’s rays that were just barely peaking into the valley where our cabin was nestled in.
An hour passed and the Golf was covered in beautiful sunshine! Out in the sun, it was easily over 40 degrees, so I figured an hour or a little more should’ve been enough. I checked the external fuel line and sure enough, it was liquid. We even poured hot water all over the fuel components under the hood to be safe. It finally got to be around noonish so I went out to start the car and EUREKA!!! It started! It ran! It ran for more than 5 minutes! I was skeptical but I honestly thought that we were in the clear, so we piled all of our junk into the car and headed out.
But we only got a mile or two from the cabin when I felt the engine falter, sputter, then die completely when I hit the gas. CACHUNK!
And that my friends, is when stuff got interesting.
See, we were in the middle of nowhere. No friends or family could pick us up. There was no food within walking distance to fill our growling tummies. We barely had any cell phone reception and even if we did, we had no known resources to call on. In short, it was a real emotional test on yours truly. Luckily, the only person I was stuck in this rut with happened to be my soul mate and best friend in whole wide world! Without gushing too much, I will say this. Mel is a saint! I love her so and the trials and tribulations of this day only strengthened that notion. She could’ve bitched, she could’ve blamed, she could’ve lost it and she would’ve had every right do so. Facts are, is that this entire situation could’ve been prevented and it was thoroughly my fault that it wasn’t.
Enough said.
It was a clogged fuel filter and I took much solace in the fact that I knew how to replace and fix it, but first I had to find a VW parts seller or a garage that worked on them. Luckily, earlier in the day, when we were struggling to get the car in the sun, a neighbor across the way saw us and came over wondering if he could help. We weren’t having any problems at the time so we thanked him and let him get back to his day, but before he left he said that if we DID end up having issues that we should give a guy named Chris a call, that his garage was just up the road, and that he was was a pro with fixing VW’s (what a nice guy this neighbor was! Seriously.).
So we grabbed a few essentials from the car, locked it and hoofed it back to the cabin which, thankfully still had the key where we left it. We first called the owners of the cabin to let them know about our woes and they were just outstanding, saying we could stay one more night if we needed to. Next we dragged the phone book out and realized we never got the name or number of the garage from the neighbor when he stopped by. So I ran over, talked to his wife (I think?) and found out that Chris the mechanic’s garage was named “Asheville Vee Dub”.
We called him and I gotta be up front, Chris is probably the coolest mechanic in the world. He listened to our predicament and actually DROVE several miles to bring a fuel filter out to us! He even picked us up at the cabin and drove us to our car! When we met him he was everything bit as he sounded on the phone. Just a kind, about my age, hippie that loves to work on VW’s.
When we got to the car, I quickly swapped out the filter and tried to crank it over. The Golf flat out refused. At the time I had thought that WAY too much air had gotten into the fuel lines and I had read (and witnessed) that when that happens the engine will take a while to turn over, or it just wont period. Chris thought it was either the fuel relay not sending juice to the fuel pump, or the pump was just dead and needed to be replaced, to which I thought “OUTSTANDING! GOD does this situation suck!” Add to that fact that we had to get a tow to Chris’ garage and that he wasn’t sure he would have the parts on hand, and Melinda and I quickly went from feeling down, to out and out down trodden.
It didn’t get any better either when we called for the tow and we were told they would be there “in a bit”. But luckily we waited in the car only an hour if that. A big teddy bear of a man got the car all situated on the truck and we were off.
Coming up the highway we saw the sign for the garage to which Mel giggled “I can’t believe it actually IS called Asheville Vee Dub”, and you should’ve seen this lot. All along the front parking lot was dozens of old vintage VW buses! Some were in rough shape, others were just pristine. Very cool! We paid the tow guy and got down to business.
After a ton of tests it looked like the fuel pump wasn’t getting any juice which meant it was the relay which was good, cuz relays are cheap for most part. But then things weren’t adding up, causing some confusion as well as some manuals to be pulled off the shelf. Eventually Chris leveled with me and said that he predominantly worked on old VW models and that my Golf was actually only the second VW car he had worked on from that generation.
I took a deep breath, looked out at Mel sitting patiently, knitting out in the
dirt lot moving her position periodically to stay in the sun that was now quickly heading below the horizon. What a fix we were in! We had no idea if a cab could pick us up at that juncture and at that moment we had no where to stay. We had to do something and sleeping in one of the vans on the lot (which Chris actually offered up) was not an option as it was going to be colder that night than the night before. I mean, Mel and I are no strangers to roughing it but that was a little extreme with no gear on hand. I was just about to ask Chris what our options were when he pointed at the manual he was pouring over and said “AHA” with a smile.
Turns out the Golf didn’t have the priming pump he was looking and testing for and there was just too much air in the fuel lines and the engine. He geniunely apologized, we bled the engine and the Golf turned over with a victorious rumble!!! Mel cheered from across the lot saying that all she could see was my insanely wide grin through the windshield. We shook hands with Chris and thanked him profusely. No mechanic I’ve ever run into, drove parts out to me, took my car in at the last minute and stayed past closing time to make sure he did everything he could do.
Definitely top notch, and definitely a great and interesting guy.
Wasting no time, we piled into the car and it surged forward bravely after a 6 hour nap. Starving, we got some Thai food in town (EXCELLENT!!!) and as the sun went down, so did our anxiety. After we filled our bellies we grabbed a coffee and headed east to flatter land and warmer temps.
It was a bitter sweet ending for sure, but seriously. It could’ve been a hundred times worse! Sure it was stressful! But this trip taught me all over again that total strangers aren’t always bad and that when you can just calm the hell down, an answer will often reveal itself.
Fantastic weekend recap. You know, I *just* finished rereading “into the wild” and while you didn’t plan that ending for your lil adventure, I couldn’t help but find several parallels in your weekend recap and tale of woe. Glad you guys made it safely, with the help of angels. and remember ‘Life’s an adventure that brings you to where you need to be, when you need to be.’ I’m sure two hippies like you made his day too! hehe
Love ya,
Jenn