Saturday October 4 Ann and I were preparing Patience and Moby to be mobile once more, after a couple of nights as guests of Melinda and Ray Baker. Melinda and Ray volunteered a couple of seasons in the Everglades before finding a more-or-less permanent volunteer position in New Mexico. For five summers and perhaps a couple of winters they have been campground hosts and visitor center staff at the BLM-managed Rio Grande Gorge Recreation Area south of Taos.
As we coiled the water line and stuffed the power cord we noticed that one of the dust caps was missing from Patience. The dust cap, which fits presses into the inside of the axle hub, covers the end of the axle. Its job is to prevent debris from getting to the wheel bearings.
Gee whiz, fits and starts, another mechanical problem. Since leaving Eugene we have reconfigured the way our bikes fit onto the bike rack to be better balanced and not sway so much. We have fiddled with Patience’ tire pressure also to minimize sway. In Sacramento Ann had a shop add many more D-rings to Moby’s interior so that we could properly secure the many totes, duffels, and backpacks containing our gear. Ah well, we thought, , surely we could get a replacement dust cap in Taos easily enough. How wrong we were.
I am used to California and South Florida, where weekends are the same as weekdays when it comes to retail and service establishments. This is not the case here in small-town Northern New Mexico. The tire shops and the full-service auto parts houses close at 3 pm on Saturdays and don’t open at all on Sunday. Of course we began our search for a dust cap on Saturday afternoon.
This left us with AutoZone and Checker Auto Parts, which seem to take the Costco approach to auto parts. They stock the most common items, leaving the specialty items to more traditional stores. Would we be able to find our item at either of these two stores or would we be forced to wait in Taos until Monday?
I am used to California and South Florida, where weekends are the same as weekdays when it comes to retail and service establishments. This is not the case here in small-town Northern New Mexico. The tire shops and the full-service auto parts houses close at 3 pm on Saturdays and don’t open at all on Sunday. Of course we began our search for a dust cap on Saturday afternoon.
This left us with AutoZone and Checker Auto Parts, which seem to take the Costco approach to auto parts. They stock the most common items, leaving the specialty items to more traditional stores. Would we be able to find our item at either of these two stores or would we be forced to wait in Taos until Monday?
At Autozone we found a dust cap that fit, almost. We need a 2” inside diameter and the one we bought measured 1 31/32”. You wouldn’t thing that a measly 1/32” would matter that much, but the cap would just not stay on. After a spin around the large parking lot Autozone shares with a grocery store, a lady came running over to us with the dust cap in hand. “I saw it rolling across the lot and thought it might be something you needed,” she explained.
So, a rainy Saturday night was spent in that most scenic of Taos attractions, the Walmart parking lot. During the night I was awake more than once thinking about our dust cap, a $4 part that could cost us a day and one half of travel time.
This morning, Sunday morning, we checked the weather on the internet. The forecast for the plains of Southeast Colorado and Eastern Kansas called for 15-20 mph winds today and tomorrow. The difference would be the direction. Today they would be from the west, pushing us along. Tomorrow they would be from the southeast, nearly a headwind. We really should be traveling!
It occurred to me that I might be able to modify the slightly-too-small dust cap to work. I could pry out the edges so that, while the cap would not fit smoothly, I could hammer it in to stay. So I modified the cap and it stayed in—for a block or two. I modified it again and once again it stayed in—for a mile or two. Fits and starts. That is how we live our lives.
Ann suggested we somehow hold the cap in. Ann is nothing if not the Queen of Velcro. She carries around rolls of the stuff, both hook and pile. Sadly, no matter how thoroughly we cleaned the hub, the sticky-back Velcro would not stick to it. Neither would the old standby, the material that holds together all things, duct tape.
Finally, the non-mechanically minded person’s second best friend came to the rescue. What a wonderful invention is the bungee cord! We were able to bungee two cords, at right angles to each other, through the holes in the rim and across the dust cap to hold the dust cap in place.
It works! We are now eastbound on Colorado route 160 across a high plateau dotted with scrubby junipers, cholla, and cows. Our destination for tonight on this drive past grazing cattle—Dodge City.
