I waited for the sun to get a bit higher in the sky,
this part of the mission was all about timing, I had three hours of driving to get to somewhere that I would do a mid-day park-up at. Those hours would get me across the Mojave and into a small range of mountains on the western edge of the Sonoran desert, the second of two deserts that I would cross that day. Being that I was driving east, those three hours needed to be timed between the sun strait in my face and the hottest part of the day . . . during which time there's really only about two hours.
Not only did I not want the sun in my face, I didn't really want it shining on me from the neck down . . . for hours, I also didn't want to be running the "Mean Green" through these deserts during the hottest part of the day . . . during the hottest season of the year, . . . pre-monsoon. . . dry . . . cloudless skies . . . , so I waited, but not to long.

What was my mission?
Retrieving the Drive-unit and Cooling system's Heat-exchanger out of the "Beast", which has been, in a kind of storage, at Spence's place . . . on the eastern edge of the Sonoran . . . eight hours (strait run) and two deserts away.

The Sun is high enough for me to depart. I do a stop on the eastern edge of what is called civilization out here, a stop to top off fuel for the "Green" and water for us . . . "no services for a 100 miles" is the message DOT gives us as we head east, they mean nothing but a few dwellers that live on the far edge of the crawling Sprawl working it's way in from the west . . . and they fade out of site behind us rather quickly.

" One hour of driving into the un-settled lands is farther than most people can walk out of alive", an old quote from some wilderness survival guide, back when there was wilderness. Now we call most of it "Wastelands", the result of "Man's" obsession w/ claiming, using/abusing, altering, and in the end, abandoning most of what they lay their eyes on.
Luna and I aren't really concerned about the warning, we often spend large parts of our time parked-up farther into those "Wastelands" than most could walk out of alive. I'm also packing all that I need to survive extended time out here, . . . water (about 15 Gals), two crates of dried food stock, a pistol crossbow, lots of hand-blades, radios (two-way), and the key item . . . my ride . . . a two wheeled / self-powered transport. One hour (at pavement speed) into the Wasteland's I can ride out of in a day, one hour on a dirt track I can some times ride out of faster than I got in w/ the "Green". Of course Luna (my baby killing dingo) would help me hunt and find water.

Two hours of `cross desert travel has the "Colorado" in view . . . not really the water, but the green shadow that lays in the low areas, where the water drains to. In our sometimes 60+ miles view this green ribbon of veg can be seen from a long way off. Every veg-life out here has it's own shade of green, and that life also has certain water needs. If you're any good you scan a valley as you cross into it and map the water table . . . how much . . . how deep . . . If you stop and look at some of the veg, you can tell how long ago it rained (months), and how much (little), . . . how far down do I have to go before I catch up w/ the water draining down hill, mostly under the sand. It's sandy enough that water can't really stay on the surface for long, that doesn't mean it's not here . . . it's just hiding. Small water doesn't stay around in the open for long, too much dry air.
The Colorado, the river that cut the "Grand" Canyon, also . . . silts up behind dams, . . . plays home to a bridge from London, . . . is swarmed by power-boaters, while having it's substance drained off to water Green-courses, desert Cities (that let go their rain-water and waste the gray), and big arid MonoCrop-lands. By the time it trickles into the Gulf of Cali there's little left.
There's a crossing that's south of the Semi-Nomadic winter havens, and Power-boaters' playgrounds, I use it. I'm now below 500', it's too hot, . . . the Green's not running right, the air's to rich. I've been watching the temp gauge climb as the day got hotter and we dropped in elev. I can almost use it like a clock . . . mid-gauge = mid-day. As the drive-unit had more trouble losing some of it's 190 heat to the 100 air, it started heating up anything that was close to it, the metal of the drive-unit cover, the floor of the cab, and us. Even the scavenged, rubber, mud-flap off some freight transport, re-cut to fit the floor pan, was starting to be unpleasant. The heat inside the cab was being vented by the input of, almost as hot, air from the outside. An air gap between the drive-unit cover and the body, where 37 year old weather-stripping fails to fill the space, had been venting hotter and hotter air onto the side of my foot. At some point when I could no longer re-position my foot to avoid the heat from that venting I grabbed a small ink-text pad, as long as my foot and twice as wide, that was near by and used it to block the air from my flesh. I could have put on my boots, a grim thought on a day like this, and driven till they got too hot to wear, the text pad seemed a better idea.
A stop for more fuel before heading into the desert on the other side. There's a small range of mountains less than an hour from here . . . I'm headed for there.

Beyond Hope (Hope is a town) the road turns toward the mountains and climbs a low-elevation pass. At some point the small bridges over the washes coming down from the hills needed to be rebuilt, it must of been easier to just make a new road . . . because they did. Near the top of this pass the roads were close together w/ many cross tracks from one to the other. I pull the Green off the pavement and cross-track to the old road. Once there I roll up to an ancient signpost, the site where I'll spend the next few hours, hiding out from the sun.
The signpost pre-dates the current age of occupation, from before a plague sailed forth from the Atlantic and Dis-ease crawled up from the south. It's a small, natural, rock pile (small to us, only about 10' high). On these rocks, hand chipped, are glyphs . . . full of info (to some, I don't have the right receptors). I can interpret some of the glyphs as local game, knowing what lives here helps me know how to hunt it. There are also grinding holes worn into other close, flat rocks, so I know to look for everything from mesquite pods to chia seeds. A "rest area" that pre-dates every mode but foot travel.

After about four hours of laying in the shady breeze-way that the Green makes (when set up right), the day cools enough to cross the desert that lays ahead of me.
Another hour in I cross the Gila river, the whole river valley was filled w/ Salt Cedars, Tamarisks, one of the plagues brought on by early desert landscapers, the Railway, and others. This Veg-life, tree sized, takes over any riparian area that it gets into, sucking the water up and forcing out most Native Veg. It's a cancer that crawls along the blood-lines of the desert, the rivers. It's sad to see it wasting one of the few desert rivers that has water all year.


While running the "I", on a primitive auto-pilot, I pass a personal-transport moving slowly. A bit later, after shutting down the AP system and pulling out of the flow to check on one of those sounds, that don't usually happen but when they do they need checking, that same transport pulls up behind me (It's like I have a neon sign that floats over me flashing "Ranger"). A quick evaluation tells me that their heat-exchange has either lost too much of it's fluid, or it's just not suited to this region. I wander back, after finding nothing wrong w/ the Green. "Do I have water?", they have an empty Gal container, even full it's not enough to keep one of them alive for more than a few days and deff not enough for their transport. I give most of two gal to the transport and fill the empty. They ask info on the nearest civilization and a Mech-wrencher. I have little hope for their transport, they've been having trouble keeping it running and it's burning lots of Drive-unit lube. It's new enough that the chances are it's Drive-unit is made of some light weight alloy, the kind that warps when over heated. Time to scrap it.


Finely I roll into Spence's compound, . . . no one's here. I pull out my com-unit and link-up w/ an un-encrypted wave, I've an "E" saying that he's at a Life-Bonding ceremony and will be home later. I transform the Green and spend some post-road chill time listening to a local, music, broadcast wave.
Later I notice a 2nd degree burn on my foot from the over-heated air venting, the blister will be gone in a day or so.


The next day I start the tear-down of the Beast.


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A week later I'm ready to hoist the Drive-unit out of the Beast. I've done all the appropriate things, sustained myself on the traditional diet of beer & caffeine (w/ the occasional grain and cheese) . . . cursed magical words . . . smeared my blood into the metals already stained w/ old leakages of Mech vital fluids . . . all while disconnecting the limited neural-network . . . removing the links to basic mech functions . . . and pulling feed-lines.
This part was going to need help from someone else. The timing was right, it was the end of the week and Spence had a two-day off from the foundry.
The Drive-unit was hooked up to a Mech-lift, not one of the new automatics, this one carried no programming and had to be work manually. I had purchased it instead of doing some two week long rental from one of the shops. Chances are that it would get re-configured in the future and become part of the developing Stake-side hauling trailer. We then carefully lifted and removed it through one of the side entrance ports. It was now time to do a full cleaning and any minor repairs on this Drive-unit before temporally crippling the Green by doing the same tear-down.


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I've successfuly turned my Home/Transport/"Ticket out of here" into a metal can, . . . it no longer takes me "out to get supplies", or gives me my "own room" if I decide to stay the night in a friends drive-way. It sits in the Mech-work zone, parts and pieces in little clusters around it, . . . lifts and stands, containers of mech vietal-fluids, solvents, paints . . . I wake up looking at the front of another rig, 3' behind me.
Drive-units, Gearboxes, Drivelines, Crossmembers . . . it's all part of some puzzle, two puzzles really.
Two puzzles that I'm taking apart . . . then . . . I have to put one back together. . . a new one . . . using parts from both . . . and in the end it needs to be a working rig again. Now remember. . . the puzzles aren't the same . . . they're related, but not the same. Just swapping Drive-units also means dragging along the Gearbox (linkage won't connect to the other), changing Crossmembers, moving over brackets, feed-lines (the 302 uses different mech-links and feed-lines). While it's open space I scrape, clean, repair, paint.

Prepairing to give the Drive-unit another lye bath . . . in gloves, gogles, and resperater . . . I thought about how man had once worked w/ animals, instead of Mech-creatures, for transport, hauling, lifting, etc. At that time it was poss to wash them w/ things that we would wash ourselves w/, feed them w/ things that grow from the ground . . . year after year . . . Their exhaust was in-turn consumed by Veg-life that fed us and them. Not that all laybores, human or animal, have been treated well in our history, but it did play into making a compleat circle of intake / exhaust. Now we wash them w/ things toxic to us, feed them w/ feeds that are carcinegenic and should be prevented from touching our skin, and can die from even breathing their exhaust. If the mule kicked me, an oxen stomped the shit out of me, or I was gored by an elephent, it would be somewhat personal and maybe I deserved it. If the Mean Green was crushing my foot or had dropped some part, that I was working on, on me, . . . or even moved off a lift-stand that wasn't comfortable enough, it would be w/o any caring or feeling on the subject. Not because I had been mean and abusive. I could have fed it the best of fuels, kept it supplied w/ quality parts, tended to any body-cancer, and still it would calmly stand over my crushed and/or pinned body till someone came and dragged it off. It would prob get sent to a Mech scrap-yard, if no one was willing to take it on, to maybe get parted-out (not likely w/ a mech of this age) or more likely get crushed. It wouldn't be personal, not that it doesn't have a personality, it just wouldn't be personal.

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Reciently I've been watching the clustered piles of pieces getting fewer, they're not being stolen, thoe that is a poss here. I put some energy into that not happening right after I first got here. It's amazing how practicing martial arts, staff being my prefered practice, in the front yard not only gets rid of wrenching frustation . . . it also creates some kind of warding spell. Not only are you able to leave your rig unlocked, doors open, for over two weeks w/ parts laying about, but it also gives you the power to just look at someone and they'll avoid your space . . . even if it happens to be the shortest distace between point A & B, . . . they'll take the long way.
No, the decreasing parts piles are because most of them have gone back into the Green.
The Drive-unit is mounted (cleaned and w/ some new paint) and all the parts and pieces that are required to go w/ it have been prettied-up and are getting relocated. The Heat-exchanger, that I picked up after playing BumperCows in `05, is mounted and painted. A few more trips out on my two wheeled ride, in triple didgit temps, for gallons of coolent, bottles of Drive-unit and Gearbox oils, filters, and it should be ready to attempt a starting.

While I was out gathering such things, over the last few days, I would notice that there were far more people driving their transports around w/ the windows open to the opressive city heat than could be cedited to broken enviromentel-control units. Are these people that are looking for better milage, . . . hate freon and other such chems, . . . or maybe they just are avoiding the system shock that comes from constantly moving from over cooled air to extreme heat? I don't know. I do know that we see each other, we are able to make eye contact. Unlike the one-way glass encasing most of the transports, which is great for fixing your hair and face paint, rigs w/ open windows create some kind of bonding. It's like saying that you're not afraid of the world we live in.
I've always thought that if you don't like where you live you should leave.
Don't move out to the desert, install a pool, grow a yard (after scraping the land empty w/ a Mech-blade), fire-up the enviromental-control, spend all your time inside watching the Video-feeds, and complain about the weather. Those of us that live, or spend most of our time outside would be happy if you went somewhere else . . . somewhere that you liked, . . . seems like a win - win situation.


It runs!
Poorly at first but after fluids get circulated, fuel mix gets adjusted, and old carbon gets blown out . . . better. This is a good thing . . . I'd not even started it before pulling it from the Beast. True, I have a history w/ this Drive-unit but . . . the last time I ran it was six months back. I would have hated all this work to put in non-working unit . . . some times we just rush ahead.
A bit of testing tells me that the drive disengagement-unit still needs some adjusting. I roll underneigth w/ wrenches.
. . . too much, but I do relocate it out of the work zone. It's face gets remounted and another adjustment underneigth happens. I'm now ready to transform the inside to travel mode and see how it feels. A run to a public water-filter to refill my water containers proves that it's working well enough, next step . . . test drive to Bis, a hundred miles from here.
My plan is to drive down, spend the night, return the night after. I opt to leave in the morning. I figure if I brake down during the day my chance of getting help will be greater, if I leave at night and brake down no one will stop and it will be tomorrow before I get any help . . . I'd just have to spend the night on the side of the road.
I spend the night packing in extra things that have been laying around, drinking beer, and celebrating the fact that the Green is running again. In the morning I send out some last minute "E"s before braking com connection, get a full tank of fuel, and hit the "I". It runs smooth . . . and fast, I have to work to keep it below 70.
A few days from now I'll be doing the eight hour run back across the deserts . . . and so Summer begins.

Mission compleated.