Wheeeeere's Johnny Day Two

The day started with a visit to the Mercedes-Benz Classic Center in Irvine, California. Charles, the parts guru, met me as I arrived and introduced me to the facility. As I was looking around Mariella arrived and gave me a personal tour of the Center. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many 300 SL’s in one place at the same time, all awaiting restoration. Mariella told me they have about 40 people working at the center of which 20 work in the restoration shop. Restorations take from two to three years and there is a two to three year waiting list. I suspect they are very selective of the cars they take in. The Center has several classic Mercedes on display, including a fabulous red SSK, a Pagoda and a couple of Fintails. They also had the obligatory Mercedes-Benz accessories for sale, some of which I could not pass up. In all I spent about 45 minutes looking around and then ordered some window seals for Johnny before heading out.

My second stop was in Banning, CA for gas and to pick up a few emergency supplies such as JB Weld, duct tape and a fire extinguisher, just in case. For armed is for warned, or something like that. Who knows? I am a bit dyslexic. The obligatory Starbucks drive-through was next. Back on the road I spotted a sign for the Palm Springs Aviation Museum, so I thought, why not? That killed about an hour looking at the WWII and Cold War vintage aircraft. I was chuffed to see one of the hangers was named after an old acquaintance, Bob Pond of Reno Air Race fame, or infamy, depending on your point of view. Bob also brought cars to the Monterey Historics, which is where I first met him. That guy was always living the dream.

Initially, I figured I’d make Pima by sundown, but yet another diversion sidetracked that plan. Instead of heading on I-10 to Phoenix and then down to Tucson, I decided to ignore Waze and turn off on CA-86 to catch I-8 at El Centro. That way I’d miss the Phoenix rush hour traffic. CA-86 takes you along the Salton Sea and I thought what a great picture that would be if I could get a shot of Johnny along the shoreline. It really didn’t look too far off the road to make happen, but as always in the desert what appears to be two miles turned out to be ten and a lot of it was on very poorly maintained dirt roads. Undaunted I pressed on only to find I couldn't really get all that close. I did manage to get a couple of snaps, but not what I had hoped. This foray killed about another hour, so I was now well behind my not so well planned ETA to Pima.

As is always the case when you ignore the Girl from Waze, I hit a lot of construction on I-8, the worst being just outside of Yuma where it went from two lanes to one. It took about an hour to go 9 miles. Now a “fur piece” behind my non-existent time-table I started to formulate an alternate plan in order to stop before it got too dark. I almost forgot how beautiful the desert can be, especially when the sun is going down. The various shades of purple, red, blue and green are truly spectacular and sunset in the desert is sublime, even if I was viewing it through my rear view mirror. Driving through the desert at night can be serene, but the desert is also where the deer and the antelope play and usually in the middle of the road at night. Discretion being the better part of valor I decided to pull off at Gila Bend and call it a day.

Johnny performed admirably today with the exception of an annoying vibration at speeds over 70 mph. It seemed to vary with the surface condition so I’m thinking it could be the front dampers have seen better times. The only other maladies raising their heads were an SRS light, which came on about an hour before quitting time and the trunk lock that needed to be unlocked twice on occasion to get opened. I ended up settling into the Space Age Lodge in Gila Bend. Obviously a Fifties era motel, it is now themed in an interesting mix of alien spacecraft, Star Trek and the early U.S. Space Program. They are vary proud of their hotel as I paid more for a room here than I would pay at the Newark Airport Marriott. Tomorrow I'm off to the Pima Aviation Museum outside of Tucson and then see how close I can get to San Antonio were I plan to visit an old Air Force buddy.