Taxi Trek Day 3: Somehow Still Going And A Visit To Indy

I’ll admit, I’m a bit stunned here. This taxi, this miserable, brink-of-death taxi that lived a hard, hard life as a cab for years, some of the hardest working miles a car can endure, for over 375,000 of those miles, now finds itself lapping up the miles and miles of vast, unending highway across this strangely oversized nation. This is not the fate this taxi expected. Even after we bought this heap and saw the condition of it, I don’t think this is an outcome any of us expected.

And yet, here we are.

And, yes, there we were, at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and now we’re in Effingham, Illinois, where there’s a big air-cooled Volkswagen show we’ll see this morning before we head back out onto another unending ribbon of road.

I’m so delighted by how the NV200 has done! It just keeps going and going, my janky A/C fix keeps holding and blowing those precious metaphorical cubes into the cabin, and it holds 65-70 mph with ease. Sure, the wind pushes it around like its a shuttlecock in a badminton tournament on the deck of a cruise liner, but that just keeps things exciting.

Also exciting are the new sets of trouble codes the engine is throwing, this time finally admitting that there actually is a misfire, and it looks like it’s in cylinder two:

I should swap one of the other coilpacks to number two to see if, in fact, that coil pack has itself taken a number two, but to do so I need to take off the whole intake manifold, and so far we just haven’t had the time to do that. Maybe tonight. The misfire seems pretty intermittent, and three cylinder feels like plenty anyway, right?

Oh, and the taxi has decided to complain about something else, too, in its own funny staccato way:

I checked the fuel cap. It’s not loose. The O-ring inside it looks good, too. I don’t know why it’s complaining about this. At first I read that as “LOSE FUEL CAP,” and I was thinking, oh yeah, finally something I have plenty of experience with and know I can pull off like a pro. Sadly, there’s that other “o.”

Whatever. This thing is still running like a champ.

We made it to the legendary Indianapolis Motor Speedway (IMS), which is the “racing capital of the world” and hosts the Racing Senate and Racing House of Representatives, as well as the Racing Supreme Court. IMS has re-done their museum completely, and we got a nice tour of it, which we’ll have some little reels about coming soon.

It’s full of great stuff, like this dramatic machine, the 1948 Novi Grooved Piston Special Kurtis:

I need to research this car more because this really captured my attention:

What do they mean by “grooved piston” here? The grooves for the rings, or something else? Some lubrication grooves? I should look into that.

The museum also had at least one thing that I own, too! A Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 100 portable computer! The last machine with code that Bill Gates himself actually wrote! Look, here’s mine:

A museum piece! Who’d have thunk?

Look at those stunning steering wheel spokes! I’ve never seen ones in a directional wave-like configuration like that.

So many good details on all these cars, like that finned exhaust manifold there. Is this one a front-driver?

Here’s Otto pretending to be terrified of the faces that stud the Borg-Warner trophy. I think he’s pretending, at least.

Also, they sell IMS-branded chicken legs in the gift shop. What am I missing here? Are chicken legs a thing at Indy? Do Indycars have a special clamp for chicken-leg snacking mid-race?

Here’s Otto showing off some prime Indy rizz or whatever the hell the kids say today.

We also got a little taste of the air-cooled VW Show, the Funfest for Air-Cooled VWs, before the show at an area by a lake last night, and there were some wonderful Beetles there. Look at this ’56, sporting the first flashing turn signals on a Beetle (before this, they used those wonderful mechanical semaphore arms):

And this very citrusy Super Beetle convertible:

…and also a very un-Beetle-like hot rod, which does a lot to disguise its Beetle-bones:

…though once you go around back, the charade falls away pretty quickly:

Anyway, we’re about to see a lot more of this stuff. For a bit, anyway, because then we have to get back on the road to make the meetup in Lawrence, Kansas. I know the map said”breakfast,” but we’re actually going to be having dinner at Biemer’s BBQ in Lawrence at, hopefully, 7:00 PM tonight. Matt will keep everyone updated on social and on Discord. Has Matt told anyone at the BBQ we’re doing this? He has not. See you tonight!

Ok, I really need to hit the road. We’re up to some insane dollar amount for the fare at this point, I think over $7,000. I’ll have to do some math when I get back in the taxi!

I hope to see you out there! Wherever “there” ends up being!

Top photo: Griffin Riley