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Last week I left for New Mexico. We took the Mercedes and left at 8:45 PM.
We stopped about 1 hour from San Antonio to rest for the night.
My plan was to go to Albuquerque on business and train in dojo's in El Paso, and Albuquerque.
After about 2 hours from San Antonio in the middle of no where, a town called Balmorehea; population 600, The Mercedes, a 1999 500 SEL, started to over heat. Maybe because we were driving at very high speeds for a very long time, or maybe because that car just about had it.
We didn't notice until we pulled in the gas station to put some gas in the car.
The radiator started spitting out all of the coolant. It was the over flow valve that just allowed everything to dump out.
Nothing was broken, no hoses loose, everything looked OK, but the engine was at over 120 degrees C.
Luckily there was a guy there at the station that claimed to be a mechanic. He said it was the thermostat, that it was old and it was sticking. He said for $50.00 he'll take it out for us and everything will be OK.
Amazing how people begin to loosen up and talk as they work.
After dropping one of the bolts into the engine, not knowing where the thermostat is located and four hours later, I learned that him and his friend that was helping out, where both on 10 years parol, and that they had both just gotten out of jail. He even told us why they both went to jail (rather not post the reason here).
Finally after calling the Mercedes dealer we discovered how to take the thermostat out - 5 hours later, everything was back together and ready to go.
We pulled out of the station, everything looked good, then all of the sudden after 1 mile, the engine started to over heat again.
We pulled off the highway and ended up at another convenience store. Turned out that the owner of this store was a prison guard that was fired for testing postive for drugs.
The mechanic came to help us out, again. This time, he took us to a hotel. It just happened to be a five star hotel in the middle of no where in a town of 600 people. Incredible detail and beauty went into this hotel. The Mechanic, really in the mood for talking explained that the whole town was at one time on Escobar's payroll. The owner of the hotel used to be a sherif in the town, then judge, then after making so much money in the "trade", retired and built himself an incredible hotel.
We towed the car to El Paso, and that's a whole other adventure...............
07-03-2007 10:08 AM 