Indy 500

The Indianapolis Off-Road 500I hit the road early and by the middle of the second day I was nearing Indianapolis. I figured it would be cool to run a few laps at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, but there were all these guys from NASCAR practicing for the Brickyard 400. As much as I thought the Avalanche could have kept up with them, the security guards knew better and kept the truck and me behind the fence. Maybe next time I'll get to show those speed racers what us off-roaders can do.

Badgers In Smalltown IowaThis is a badger. While driving across Iowa around midnight I noticed the shifter knobs for the transfer case starting to vibrate very loudly. I slowed down and the vibration went away, so I decided that I should probably stop at the next exit. After coming over a small hill, I sped up slightly and was rewarded with a loud explosion of parts under the truck. Something came loose and by the time I coasted to the side of the road, the transmission had a broken housing, the transfer case was destroyed, the rear driveshaft was missing and I was stranded in the middle of nowhere. I called Pw to tell him the situation and then called a tow truck. And while I waited I walked up the median looking for some of the parts. This is when I found a big fat badger. He didn't like the looks of me standing there with two flashlights, but unlike a raccoon or friendly bunny he decided to chase me down the grassy knoll and eat me. Imagine driving down Route 80 in the middle of nowhere at midnight and seeing some nut running backwards in shorts and sandals while being chased by a big furry critter, and you can see just how crazy this trip was becoming. Luckily for me the badger could sense my new radioactive strength and crossed the road before disappearing into the woods.

Empty Again?We mentioned a few months ago that our Avalanche had a bad habit of running out of fuel and leaving us stranded. We couldn't understand how it was happening time and time again until the third or fourth episode, when we noticed that the fuel gauge would still read a quarter tank even though the truck would stop running. The verdict? When we had removed the auxiliary tank for extra under-bed space, we also lost our vent. Thus, as the truck sucked up the fuel at a hungry 8 mpg it was also creating a vacuum within the plastic tank and actually sucking up the bottom of the tank. Then the fuel float would sit on the collapsed bottom and yet still read a quarter tank. When we opened the cap to add more fuel, the tank would expand and the gauge would drop. Our temporary solution? We now leave the fuel cap just slightly loose after every fill-up.

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