We made it!

Hello to my family and friends,
Yes, my friend Gareth and I made it to Utah. Our trip was fairly smooth, with no major problems. Of course it wasn't without it's hic-ups. Gareth drove to my house on Sunday evening. We planned our route soon after he arived, we hadn't yet decided what we wanted to see or do on the way. We went and picked up a bike from my friend Marshall's house. I'm so glad and greatful I have bike to ride around. Anyways, after talking for a while we decided to visit the Grand Cayon. After more college age rational thinking we decided to leave at three in the moring. This would have alowed us to arrive near the Grand Cayon the next evening. Sounded like a great plan. Little did we know. So we headed out, we had to pick up a chair for someone in Rockwall, after that it was up to Amarillo and then a straight shot to Flagstaff, AZ on 40. It turns out Gareth's little truck isn't running quite right. We found out very quickly that we could only cruise around 60-65 mph, that was going on flat land. Going up hill things quickly digressed. We weren't in a hurry though so it was ok with us. Anyways, just outside of the DFW area Gareth wanted to sleep, which I had been doing. So about 30 min later Gareth is asleep and I am driving, slowly. All of the sudden Gareth jumps and kinda yells out reaching for the dash. This of course sparks curousity, I ask him what happened and he told me he thought he was still driving. This of course made me feel very safe throughout the rest of the trip, NOT! We had a very smooth drive most of the rest of the way. We stopped just before Amarillo and tried to clean out the in-line fuel strainer. It was really dirty but it didn't help much. After a quick snack we were back on the road. Our next stop was on the way to Albaquerqy. About an hour away from Albaquerqy we ran into some hills, and one of them felt like we weren't going to make it up. So we stopped to see if we could figuere out someway to make the truck run better. One reason could be that all the vaccum hoses are mostly just plugged in somewhere with an educated guess. Anyways Gareth decided to pull the carb apart a bit to see if we could clean it out. After we got the truck back together it wouldn't start. After about a half hour of tinkering the truck finally started and we were on away again, and surprisingly the truck ran a little bit better. In Albaquerqy we decided to stop at Autozone to buy an ingintion coil, as well as stop at Walmart. We wanted to get some snacks, I had to get eyedrops. While we were in Walmart Gareth thought it would be a good idea to try and cook some pizzas in the engine comparment, the air filter housing was the perfect size to set pizza on. I told him it sound like we should at least try it. In the busy parking lot we made some PB&J sandwhichs and Gareth preped the pizza. After all this we pack up and get ready to leave. Of course the starter on the truck starts acting up again so we have to push start it. We seemed to be well practiced at push starting so we went for style this time. Each of us pushed on his side of the truck and then at the last second we both jumped in, poped the clutch and took off. All the while this little girl was "yelling mommy mommy look look" almost as if she was accusing us of stealing the truck. So we were on the road again. I drove for a while, and then let Gareth take over. It was now around 1 or 2 in the morning the next day. Gareth made it through flagstaff, and we stopped at a rest stop and caught a few hours of shut eye. We both suddenly woke up in the morning at the same time, it was a bit weird. Anyways we headed to the Grand Cayon to hike for the day. Gareth and I hiked a trail down into the Cayon. We didn't want to go all the way down. I would say we hiked about 3 and 1/2 miles down. The way back up was much more difficult. We found a guy on the side of the trail, he wasn't looking too good. We gave him some water and waited on him. We hiked back up barely making it out, yes we are out of shape. I went back to the truck and Gareth went back down with some water to check on the guy. He gave us 20 bucks for helping him. After leaving the Grand Cayon we just wanted to get to Utah, with as little stopping as possible. It was already about 4 in the afternoon. We did stop and eat dinner with the money we were given. We finaly arrived at our destination at 2:30 in the morning.