TO THOSE WHO THINK OF FOLLOWING IN OUR TIRE TRACKS
For the benefit of those who are planning such a trip and in answer to
the many questions that have been asked us since our return, we have
compiled the following pages:
The subject of car equipment, driving suggestions, garage and road notes,
I have left to E. M., who has written a part of this chapter.
At the end of the book is a small outline map of the United States
and the route we took marked on it with divisions, each indicating a
day’s run. On separate pages are enlarged, detailed diagrams of these
divisions, drawn to uniform scale, giving general road surfaces, points
of historical or topographical interest along the road, and thumbnail
outlines that suggest the types and relative sizes of the hotels they
represent. Each little symbol means a modernly, even a luxuriously
equipped house; good food, good rooms and private baths. The mileage
between all these best hotels is clearly indicated, so that a tourist can
plan the distance he likes to run at a glance.
East of the Mississippi there are plenty of high-class hotels, and
although fine ones are building in every state of our country, in many
sections of the West those dependent upon luxuries will still have to go
occasionally long distances a day to get them.
From New York to San Francisco, by way of the Rocky Mountains and Los
Angeles, is about 4,250 miles; which divides itself into about four
weeks’ straight running, including the side trips to the Grand Canyon,
to San Diego and Monterey, but not including extra days to stop over.
To make it in less would be pretty strenuous, but perfectly feasible.
Allowing no time out for sightseeing, accidents or weather delays, we
arrived in San Francisco in four weeks’ running time, including the
run to San Diego (two days), but we skipped a stretch of Arizona and
Southeastern California, a distance that would have taken about three
days, which would have made our own entire distance time twenty-nine days.
Some days we drove thirteen or fourteen hours, others we drove only
three or four. We never ran on schedule, but went on further or stayed
where we were as we happened to feel like it, excepting, of course, our
one breakdown and the two times we were held over by rain. When roads
were good and the country deserted, we went fast, but the highest the
speedometer ever went for any length of time in the most uninhabited
stretches was fifty miles an hour. At others it fell to six! For long,
long distances, on account of the speed laws or road surfaces, we
traveled at eighteen to twenty. Between thirty-five and forty is the
car’s easiest pace where surface and traffic conditions allow. East of
Omaha we were never many hours a day on the road. Between Omaha and
Cheyenne, and again between Albuquerque and Winslow, finding no stopping
places that tempted, we drove on very long and far.
TO THE MAN WHO DRIVES
BY E. M. POST, JR.
If I were starting again for the West, I should want an American car. A
_new_ car of almost any standard American make would be better for such a
trip than the best foreign one.
In the first place, our own cars have sufficient clearance—ten inches. In
the second place, spare parts are easy to get. Especially is this true of
the moderate priced cars, which are sold in such large numbers that even
the small country garages must carry supplies for them. But the important
advantage is sufficient height. There are many places, particularly in
New Mexico and Arizona, where with a low car you will have to fill in
ruts so that your center can clear the middle of the road; and you will
have to pile earth and stones on the slopes of some of the railroad
crossings, so as not to “hang up” on the tracks.
Beyond the state of Colorado, which has magnificent mountain roads, if
your car is a foreign one, you should have extra-sized wheels put on
it to lift the frame high enough. Of course, you _can_ get through, by
destroying your comfort and temper, in road building, and jacking the
machine over places impossible to pass otherwise, and arriving in a very
battered condition in the end. Another qualification besides height in
favor of an American car, is endurance. American manufacturers have
solved the problem of building machinery that needs little care and can
be jolted without injury, where the more complicated European machinery
under like treatment goes to pieces.
With a foreign car you are furthermore at a disadvantage in using metric
tire sizes. You can always get the standard American sizes, which in the
tubes will fit your metric casings all right, and for that matter you
could probably at a pinch and temporarily use a standard casing. Metric
size can be found in such places as New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and
San Francisco, but shoes have a way of exhausting themselves without
regard to your position on the map.
At Los Angeles or San Francisco you can get your metric equipment for
the return trip so that if you start with new tires all around and two
spares, you should have no need of buying tires on the road. Mine are,
according to average American equipment, way under size for the weight of
my car, and my six shoes carried me through easily. In fact there was New
York air in two of them when we arrived in San Francisco.
[Illustration: SOMETIMES WE STRUCK A BAD ROAD]
In the matter of what to carry: New tires, of course. For any but a very
heavy car two spare shoes are plenty. Tubes you can buy anywhere. I only
had five punctures all the way—and no blow-out. More than two extra shoes
would be a hindrance because of their weight. A small shovel is sometimes
convenient but not necessary east of New Mexico, and with a high car not
necessary at all. African water bags are essential west of Albuquerque,
but not before. Fifty or a hundred feet of thin rope may be very useful
if you happen to strike mud or sand stretches, especially if two cars
are making the trip together. In the way of spare parts, I should
suggest a couple of spark plugs, extra valve and valve spring, fan belt,
extra master links for a chain-drive car. Tire chains with extra heavy
cross-pieces for all wheels are indispensable through the Middle West in
case of rain. And see that the tools that have been “borrowed” from your
tool kit have been replaced. Repairs on the road are aggravating enough,
not to be made more so through lack of tools. Now that people carry spare
rims and almost never seem to put in a new tube and pump it up on the
road, they neglect to carry a pump and a spare tube, but if you should
have three flat tires in one day, you will appreciate a spare tube and an
old-fashioned tire pump that works!
I carried thirty-five gallons of gasoline in my tank, which gave me
a radius of three hundred and fifty miles on a tank full, with which
I was never in any danger of running short. I should say that a two
hundred-mile radius would be plenty, except across the desert. You _can_
buy it even there, but at about three or four times the regular rate. You
may go many miles before you come to a hotel, but gasoline you can buy
anywhere. Good shock absorbers all around will probably save you a broken
spring or two. It will pay to look over your springs after each day’s run
and if a leaf is broken, have a new one put in before attempting to go on.
In the Middle West, automobile associations or highway commissioners
do magnificent work. Roads are splendidly sign posted, and in the
dragged roads districts, the rain no sooner stops than the big four- and
six-horse drags are out. Follow a rainstorm in a few hours, and you will
find every road ahead of you as smooth as a new-swept floor. Hence for
the patient motorist, who can spare the time, there is always an eventual
moment when there are good roads.
A few of the bad roads of the Southwest are so rocky that you have
literally to clamber over them, but about seventy per cent of the road
across New Mexico and Arizona, in which I include the road across the
Mohave Desert that I covered later, is a fair, and occasionally fast,
natural road. The streams are generally easy to get through, and at those
that are sandy or too deep, the automobile association keeps teams
standing on purpose to see you through.
A FEW SUGGESTIONS ON DRIVING
Don’t try to drive from New York to San Francisco on high gear. You will
often have used “first” by the time you strike the Rocky Mountains.
Don’t, then, subject your bearings to an unnecessary strain by forcing
your motor to labor as it must, if too steep a hill is taken on too high
a gear. See that your hand brake can lock your wheels. On a five-mile
grade one brake may burn out, and on most cars in this country the hand
brake is next to worthless from lack of use and care. Letting the engine
act as a brake is a good practice on long descents.
On going through sand or mud that looks as if it might stop you, change
into a lower gear and don’t lose your forward momentum. It is easier to
keep a car going than to start it again. Fording through streams instead
of crossing on bridges is common in the Southwest and many of the streams
have bottoms of quicksand character. Before fording a stream make sure
that the water is not going to come above the height of your carburetor.
Then start and stay in first until you are out on the other side. The
idea is to go through at a constant speed with no jerk on the wheels.
In high altitude your carburetor will need more air, as there is less
oxygen in a given volume of atmosphere than at sea-level. This means
also that a gasoline motor has considerably less power in Colorado than
at sea-level. Don’t be discouraged and think your car is failing you when
you find that you have to crawl up a long hill in “second,” upon which
you think you ought to “pick up” on “high.” Not only is your motor less
powerful than at home, but the _hill is steeper than it looks_. When you
get back to sea-level it will run as well as ever.
The hardest thing for a stranger to guess seven or eight thousand feet up
in the air, is height, grade or distance. You see a little hill, a nice
little gentle incline about half a mile long at most; then gradually from
the elevation of your own radiator out in front of you, you get some idea
of the steepness of grade and you find from your speedometer when you get
to the top, that it was a short little stretch of three miles.
One other point: on high altitudes you will have to fill your radiator
often. Water boils more quickly, and this added to the long stiff grades,
will cause a lot of your cooling water to waste in steam—even in a car
that at normal altitude never overheats.
[Illustration: IN ORDER TO CROSS HERE E. M. BUILT A BRIDGE WITH THE LOGS
AT THE RIGHT]
REPAIR WORK ON THE ROAD
You will find a few garages anxious to please, beautifully equipped and
capable of the finest work. The garages of Europe are not to be compared
with our best ones. Garage equipment of the newest is to be found
frequently, and all the way across the continent. The greater majority
of garages are neither good nor bad; and again a few—a very few only—are
incompetent, careless and lazy, the men having the attitude that they are
doing you a favor in robbing you.
If you know enough about your car to do your own repairing, or know
what should be done well enough to superintend others, you will have no
trouble. Furthermore, if you actually oversee everything that is done—you
_know_ that your car is all right and you don’t have to hope that nothing
has been forgotten by a man who knows that he is not going to be the one
to suffer if his work is not what it should be. Also you know your car’s
weaknesses and in driving can save them. I find garage men who take pride
in their garages, glad and willing to serve an owner who takes that much
interest in his machine.
On rare occasions, a first-class man resents your persistent
superintendence, as though it were a slur on his ability or good
intentions. There was a case in the Marksheffel garage in Colorado
Springs—it was one of the best, by the way, that I have ever encountered.
The car had been driven over 30,000 miles without ever being taken
down, and without other care than my own. And before going into such
an uninhabited country as the desert, there were several parts that I
thought it safer to put in new.
Taking the crank case off and fitting new gaskets, two men worked on it
until late into the night. I did not do any work myself this time, but
stood watching the men, so interested in the efficient way they were
doing the job, that I was unconsciously silent. At the end of about two
hours, one of them burst out with:
“I guess you’ve had some pretty tough experience with dishonest
garages—is that it?”
“No,” I told him, “that was not it, but that I always wanted to know the
exact condition of my engine. Otherwise I might get into serious trouble
on the road somewhere.” The situation being thus explained, his former
resentment melted entirely, and a few hours later we parted warm friends.
In the case of this particular garage, as well as those whose names are
listed in the garage expense accounts (pages 260-277), you can certainly
leave the repairs to them, unless your engine is to you what a favorite
horse is to a lover of animals—something whose welfare you do not want
for a moment to be in doubt about.
On the whole, to a man who has had any driving experience at all, and who
chooses a proper car, most particularly if it is a new one, the trip will
not present any difficulties. And the experiences he may have will prove
an incomparable school for his driving and for his ability to tackle new
problems with the means at hand.