The day after the Timex clock refresh, I was motivated to get the window screens down from their perch on the top bunk under the poptop and get them installed before another hot buggy night:
![Image](http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x133/73VW1800/IAC%2018%2005/05%20to%20NM%2022.jpg)
But wait! I cannot bear to fuzz up the view out the jalousie windows. Let's mask off the frames and paint the screen mesh with some charcoal flat black paint:
![Image](http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x133/73VW1800/IAC%2018%2005/05%20to%20NM%2023.jpg)
The camera just gave up on this shot. It was blinded by the light.
![Image](http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x133/73VW1800/IAC%2018%2005/05%20to%20NM%2024.jpg)
Here you can see that the screen mesh itself is not half so visible as it was before painting, but the view out is darker than the little slivers of the outside you can see at the right rear window and front doors. It is subtle, but it is a great improvement that I will be sure to brag up all summer:
![Image](http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x133/73VW1800/IAC%2018%2005/05%20to%20NM%2025.jpg)
Now you are looking through two screens:
![Image](http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x133/73VW1800/IAC%2018%2005/05%20to%20NM%2026.jpg)
My appropriated-from-the-Lexus sunshade is a huge help at keeping interior temperatures down, and it will help keep the dashboard vinyl intact:
![Image](http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x133/73VW1800/IAC%2018%2005/05%20to%20NM%2027.jpg)
The drive through metro-Dallas was hair-raising with heavy truck traffic and lots of construction. I did note that we have a bumper crop of exploded truck tire carcasses on the Dallas expressways, more than I have seen since 2007. Why are trucking firms letting tires go all the way down to pieces these days? The risk to other drivers is real. A thrown tire carcass can decapitate a following car's driver or passenger.
(see: Myth-Busters https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvcwCCWkhBI )
Here is the only shot I got of the Dallas city skyline. It is a handheld telephoto freewayoverpass onetime deal, and that is all you get. See the little bitty toy buildings peeking over the trees?
![Image](http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x133/73VW1800/IAC%2018%2005/05%20to%20NM%2029.jpg)
Other than truck tire carcasses littering the road, the roadways themselves are looking more and more like Michigan's crumbling roads. This, The United States of America:
![Image](http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x133/73VW1800/IAC%2018%2005/05%20to%20NM%2030.jpg)
Coming down a hill looking out towards Fort Worth, I can sense the West Is Coming, The Humidity Is Dropping:
![Image](http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x133/73VW1800/IAC%2018%2005/05%20to%20NM%2031.jpg)
![Image](http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x133/73VW1800/IAC%2018%2005/05%20to%20NM%2032.jpg)
![Image](http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x133/73VW1800/IAC%2018%2005/05%20to%20NM%2033.jpg)
Who managed to buy off the zoning board to allow only ten feet between bloated houses stuffed into subdivisions? Where do you get to plant trees??
![Image](http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x133/73VW1800/IAC%2018%2005/05%20to%20NM%2034.jpg)
Some guy, some guy had to compliment NaranjaWesty too effusively in Wichita Falls. Bashfully, NaranjaWesty refused to start after a fill-up. I decided to wash the windows for several minutes until Mr. Flatterer had taken leave of his car to go into the convenience store. A couple of solenoid chatters with my adjustable wrench on the terminals seems to have restored it for the time being. I waved nonchalantly to Mr. Flatterer as we drove back out into the night. "Don't do that again tonight, we have thunderstorms coming." And we did. US 287 northbound through Texas is always a pleasure, I love the casual relaxed vistas of drill rigs, trucks, cows, refineries, Lady Bird Johnson roadside rests, windmills, and sky. Tonight's sky was an electrical one, all over from any direction flashes of light zagging the sky with brief cloud silhouettes. A few blasting spatters of Texas-sized rain pellets, and the skies just opened up with a roar of wind that caught the wall of rain and made it look like we all were traveling sideways at a horrific rate. The road just disappeared, it was gone from view. I am so used to wind gusts slamming into VW buses that sawing on the steering wheel is just fully automatic. But I like to know where I have been blown to on the roadway, and this little microburst wasn't letting me know, until I felt the rumble strips on the shoulder. That was a FAIL for me, so I caught a little green road sign coming up in about two seconds, and I dove right onto a little farm road and stopped. The storm was then totally fun for three reasons:
1) I am safely away from other drivers
2) I don't have to drive
3) It was a good storm, plenty of howling wind, lightening, booming, and pelting rain.
The rain came down so hard that the windshield had two constant waterfalls from the luggage rack catch basin.
Best of all, not a drop, not a drop, not a single solitary drop made it into the interior. That was the best part of a new air-cooled Volkswagen back in the day.
I fell asleep during this storm, parked exactly in the middle of this little farm road. Woke up to a blaring horn. At least it was not an irate Texas cattleman in a Ford F-350 Dually,
"whut in plumb tarnation you doin parked int the middle of the dad gum road??"
![Image](http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x133/73VW1800/IAC%2018%2005/05%20to%20NM%2035.jpg)
No, it was a double-decker freight train looking a lot like a tired caterpiller in the dawn's light.
Only outside of Amarillo did I note that power was lagging a bit and fuel economy sank to 11 mpg (so did the CHTs, they were 370* max there for a while). Well, did I know that we were above 3,500 feet already? NOoooooo. Leaned out the mixture and only earned some power back, head temps back up into the low 400*s, which I like just fine.
It really was only self-serve here:
![Image](http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x133/73VW1800/IAC%2018%2005/05%20to%20NM%2036.jpg)
![Image](http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x133/73VW1800/IAC%2018%2005/05%20to%20NM%2037.jpg)
And here we are:
![Image](http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x133/73VW1800/IAC%2018%2005/05%20to%20NM%2038.jpg)
A fellow VW bus showed up here, poor thing, really tired and sore:
![Image](http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x133/73VW1800/IAC%2018%2005/05%20to%20NM%2039.jpg)
![Image](http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x133/73VW1800/IAC%2018%2005/05%20to%20NM%2040.jpg)
(edit: spoke with the owner, Terry, this morning over a cup of Motel6's finest finest coffee. That bus has 800,000 miles on it, and is mechanically well cared-for . . . . ! )
Tomorrow, a Thank You valve adjustment and oil change and tire rotation, then off to the ancient caldera overlooking Los Alamos . . .
Colin
( I still like these cars as much as I did in 1971)
![Image](http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x133/73VW1800/misc/ColinVW1971.jpg)