1 Leaving with Too Much Weather in My Head
I left Clarksburg, a pewter sky overhead. The storm that pelleted the town two nights earlier had moved off to the east. Josie idled rough, her four cylinders coughing like a Wednesday night prayer meeting choir that had sung too loud.
Thirty miles later, on the long straight knife of Missouri Route 20—one of the original 1922 highways—a different cough—my own—answered Josie’s sputter. It began as little more than a tickle. By Higginsville it had settled into a gravel rattle. Each hacking cough now snapping muscle across my chest. We had descended into the fever alley.
I kept driving because that is what I do when confronted with a physical aliment: nod, adjust the mirror, and apply light throttle.
2 The Double Betrayal—Machine and Flesh
Past Knob Noster, the van began her own rebellion. Press the accelerator, and she’d surge, then—just when confidence returned—drop power in the span of a heartbeat. Not a stall, more like a stutter. A mule buck. RPMs dipped, came back, dipped again. My chest answered with its own stutter: two coughs, then three. Van and driver in mismatched duet, each accusing the other of sabotage.
Near Rocheport I pulled onto the shoulder. The Katy Trail cut the bluff above, its sycamores already shedding copper leaves onto the asphalt. I lifted the engine hatch. Nothing obvious: no loose wires, no vacuum hose off the plenum, fuel lines dry. But the air-cooled engine radiated heat hotter than normal—as though Josie, like me, nursed a fever.
Temperature outside: forty-eight and falling. Temperature inside my skull: climbing toward the moon.
I closed the hatch, eased back onto the blacktop, and resolved to push west until both coughs— hers and mine—forced surrender.
3 Night at the Fill-and-Go
Darkness caught us just before Prarie Home on highway 87. Somewhere I found a truck stop squatting in a halo of sodium lamps, and pulled under the awning. Diesel pumps chugged beside idling Peterbilts, their drivers clawing incremental sleep before the next logbook entry.
Inside the store, fluorescent lights hummed off key. I bought cough syrup, two packets of lemon tea, and a well-done hot dog. The cashier, a woman with half-moon spectacles on a beaded lanyard, asked if I needed anything stronger. I laughed and coughed up a lung.
I parked out on the fringe of the lot, along with drivers in cars with fogged-up windows. I folded down the rear bed. Night settled like wet wool. The fever marched to my temples. Cough after cough ricocheted off the tin top ceiling. The worst spasms sparked my vision around the edges, constellations forming and bursting behind eyelids.
Out past the truckyard chain-link, prairie grass rattled under a north wind. The sound made me homesick for Brenda’s kitchen, where onion skin crackles just the same. I let the homesickness keep me warm until exhaustion inked out the lights.
4 Morning Without Mercy
Dawn came colorless. Frost covered the windshield. I cracked the sliding door; prairie air knifed inside, chilling my fever sweat.
Josie fired on the second try—bless her—but the idle still hunted. We rolled onto a nondescript two-lane backroad. Forty-five minutes later she hiccupped three times in a row. I coasted to the dangerously narrow shoulder. Semi-trucks screamed by, setting the van rocking like a canoe.
I waited, engine running. The sputter evened out. I practiced some deep breathing exercises but they devolved into coughs. My vision exploded with stars at the edges.
I plotted a course to Wamego, Kansas, not for any particular sightseeing or cultural experience, my survival instinct had kicked in, and I needed a shelter from the storm, a place where both Josie and I could heal. (In hindsight, I sorely regret not having ventured into the “OZ Museum,” where “all things Oz” were on display, from the original movie through Michael Jackson’s remake.)
Wamego happened to be the hometown of a friend of a VW buddy—Kevin—whom I’d never met; all I knew about him was from his postings online and several phone calls and texts we exchanged when Josie had me flummoxed.
Kevin sang the praises of Dave Cook who owns several VWs, including a bus and a Westfalia (pop-top camper) Vanagon. Dave was supposed to be a brilliant troubleshooter, and if anyone could figure out Josie’s intermittent bucking, it would be Dave. But first I had to get better.
I camped out in Dave’s driveway for a few days. On the first day I surrendered and sought medical care. Wamego had a walk-in clinic attached to its healthcare center, and I took advantage of it.
5 Four Walls of Fluorescent Mercy
Wamego’s urgent-care lobby smelled of Lysol and plastic upholstery. A television mounted too high on the wall broadcast headlines about October retail forecasts: “Optimism despite supply chain woes.” I chuckled, then coughed. My name was called by a nurse whose badge read Lillian. Her voice was the color of chamomile: “Let’s fix you up, hon.”
Flu test negative. Strep negative. “Likely viral bronchitis,” the doc said. He was all business with the bedside manner of a Marine sergeant doing inspection. He printed scripts for cough suppressant and antibiotic “in case of secondary infection.” I told him I lived in a van older than the foundation. He grunted, eyes on the electronic chart, and advised rest, warmth, hydration, the usual quartet of impossible instructions for travelers who sleep in Walmart parking lots.
I tracked down the Wamego Phramacy on Lincoln St. and handed over the scripts. “We can have these for you in 20 minutes,” said the clerk. She asked for a local address. I gave the license plate number of the van. I tried to explain. No dice. I relented and supplied my home address. She typed it without a blink—Wamego must see its share of highway nomads—and handed me a brown bag of pills labeled with warnings: May cause drowsiness. Take with food. I bought beef jerky and an orange and called it a meal.
I gulped down the first antibiotic and climbed behind the wheel. Her engine settled into a patient thrum, as though mocking my earlier despair. Body still ached; but the mechanical crisis, at least, had bent its knee.
6 Shade Tree Alchemy
I’d been hunkered down in the driveway of the Dave Cook family going on a couple of days. Trying to get both myself and Josie healthy again.
Because I couldn’t exactly be going out and meeting people—my voice alone would've scared a small child—I decided to just ride whatever viral demons rested in my bloodstream. The doc had given no definitive diagnosis; probably bronchitis of some kind, hence the antibiotics and antihistamines.
I then turned to Josie and Dave’s expert assistance. We were trying to nail down why she would intermittently “buck” on me.
Dave suggested perhaps the coil was breaking down when heated to maximum temperature. To simulate actual road conditions, Dave grabbed a heat gun and we pummeled the coil from close range. A quick check with a voltmeter showed the coil putting out less juice than it should have. We stopped at a local auto parts store, bought a new coil and installed it.
Then we went to check the dwell angle of the points inside the distributor; the points control the timing of the spark sent to the plugs. The dwell was well out of spec, and we readjusted. At some point I thought to pull the coil wire out of the distributor cap, and when I did, I was shocked.
The firing end of the coil was completely, utterly corroded. As was the hole in the distributor that it plugged into. It was a wonder how it was generating any spark at all. I then pulled the spark plug wires, and three of the four were also corroded.
So we went and bought a new distributor cap and installed that after we cleaned all the wires up.
Finally, we retimed the engine because we had messed with the dwell. Whew.
Sad to say, further on down the road, the problem remained; she still bucked at me a few times, but only after I’d driven her hard for four hours straight. The search continued.
7 Dusty Morning Resolutions
Two dawns later I could swallow without knives dancing in my throat. Cough had dropped an octave from gravel to sand. The fever receded like creek water after a storm, leaving debris: rubbery legs and a head stuffed with cotton, but nothing I couldn’t drive through.
Josie started crisp. I turned her nose south on Highway 50, bound for the Oklahoma line. Outside the window winter wheat shimmered hopeful green across plowed rectangles of earth. Somewhere behind, Marshall’s kindergarten greeted Monday with a yawn and a grandmother. I pictured Gloria smoothing a child’s cowlick, and a fresh dose of strength bloomed under the healing ribs.
8 Lessons from the Slow Lane
Illness on the road is a peculiar tutor. It strips the nickel-plated romance from travel, for one. It makes you count the cost of loneliness and the humiliation of coughing in a crowded pharmacy line with strangers stepping back.
Somewhere near Arkansas City, where the Flint Hills fall away into wide cattle flats, I realized Josie’s brief mutiny and my own viral uprising were twin reminders: partnership is fragile. Ignorance is no plea when a vacuum hose whispers of rot; arrogance is no cure when the lungs complain of neglect.
But partnership, once mended, may prove stronger at the splice than at the original weave. I pressed the accelerator. Josie rose to the call, steady as a sermon. My breath did not hitch; the cough waited, patient but defeated.
The road ahead curved south into winter’s promise—Arkansas pine smoke, Mississippi river fog, Georgia red clay, and finally the sandy loam of home. Christmas lights would be twinkling on the porch by the time I crossed the state line.
I settled deeper into the seat. Josie hummed. The land stretched wide and wind-scoured, ready to test us again. I let myself rest, let Josie rest. This journey is serving up different rhythms than I’d anticipated. This wasn't the plan, but perhaps what I needed.
So together we pressed on—the van, the fever-faded driver, and the quiet knowledge that the road, like grace, makes room for those who limp.