While you are reading this, I am probably at the Canadian—U.S. border (if it’s around 4 p.m.), on my way to Portland (between 4 p.m. and 9:30 p.m.), or have arrived safe and sound in the destination Oregon city …
Yes, constant reader, yours truly has returned much too early from what was to have been a joyous sojourn to Oregon and Washington states.
C’est la vie.
Oh, what a beautiful day was this April 8, 2004. A brilliant sun limned the azure blue sky, which stretched as far as the eye could see. Once through the border crossing — no mean feat in these post 9-11 days — the journey along the I-5 — through Blaine, Bellingham, Mount Vernon, Arlington and Everett, and beyond Seattle — was everything that I might have wished.
Update, Sat., April 10, at the end of the item. Click on the link below.

Corinne waited for my arrival in Portland, the journey was proceeding in a most spectacular fashion, when approximately 20 miles past Seattle, the temperature gauge on my trusty olde Volvo shot right up into the red (yikes!). I pulled the Volvo into the first available service station, and discovered that the radiator’s overflow tank was empty.
Checking the hoses and the fan belt (brand new and recently installed) to see if each was snug (they were), and giving the engine the once over (I know as much about the mechanics of the combustion engine as most people know about computers, which is to say, not too damn much), employing my Fido cell phone I called upon VanRamblings’ David Cubitt for some able automobile maintenance diagnosis. David felt the problem as I described it to him sounded like a rupture of the radiator core.
As some children of my acquaintance might say, “Whatever.”
How to get home (this being my goal once I indentified the problem; I mean, it’s a long weekend, nothing was open and not likely to be til Saturday, and …).
Anyway, failing utterly to follow tried-and-true AAA procedure, I purchased four bottles of Bar’s Radiator Stop Leak, and a gallon of antifreeze at a nearby Wal-Mart (hey, it was close by!), and every 50 – 80 kilometres (30 – 50 miles) on the journey back to Vancouver, I pulled my 1979 Volvo 242GT (I just love that car) off the road, poured in a Bar’s, filled up the radiator reservoir tank with Bar’s and antifreeze, and … here I am home, safe and sound. The Volvo will go in to the shop for official diagnosis on Saturday.
In the meantime, I’ll continue to post on VanRamblings.
All’s well that ends well. Hmmm.
Update, Saturday, April 10: Took the Volvo into Marc’s Auto Repair this morning. Turns out that the problem was a relatively inaccessible S hose, flush up against the passenger compartment, which had developed a small tear. Once the hose was replaced, all was well again (I still have to take the Volvo into Blenheim Motors, on Tuesday, to have a new temperature gauge and sending unit installed, and have the head gasket retorqued, but otherwise …). All and all, not so bad.

Raymond Tomlin

Raymond Tomlin is a veteran journalist and educator who has written frequently on the political realm — municipal, provincial and federal — as well as on cinema, mainstream popular culture, the arts, and technology.

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