Mid-Life Crisis Road Trip
By Tom Neal
Bigfoot Trails Basecamp | Independent Adventure Media
Just purchased our Mid-Life Crisis Mustang
In 2017, my wife and I had our “mid-life crisis.”
Now, this wasn’t the “normal” crisis. We weren’t cheating on each other. We didn’t go out and buy a fancy new red sports car...
Well, we did go buy a fancy sports car, but it wasn’t red.
Well... more on that later.
Anywho, our crisis started when we sold our house and became homeless.
See, we had recently become empty nesters, had a 4,000-square-foot home, and hated our jobs. You know, the typical “American dream.”
We decided we wanted to downsize, sell off almost everything we had, buy a motorhome, and travel across the country.
Well, we sold the house, downsized, almost bought the motorhome, but instead bought a Mustang GT California Special.
WHOOPS!
How did that happen?
But hey! At least we still got to travel across the country in it...
Well, almost.
Our plan was to cruise Highway 101, start to finish, since we lived only 20 miles from the end of it.
So on January 1, 2018, we loaded up the car, ran down to Olympia, turned around, and started our venture north on Highway 101.
We got a late start that day, and by late I mean like 4 in the afternoon.
So we didn’t make it too far. Just up to Port Townsend the first day.
The next morning we jumped on the ferry to Coupeville — nope, not on Highway 101 — and made our way over to Bellingham to see our daughter in college. Then we ventured up to Canada before making our way back over to Highway 101.
We followed 101 all around the Olympic Peninsula, down into Oregon, where we visited more family, and finally into California.
We ended up staying in Pismo Beach a couple nights because we enjoyed it so much.
Then, the day we planned to leave, there was a huge mudslide on 101 south of us, with no plans to reopen anytime soon.
We held out a week in Pismo.
Yep.
It sucked.
Well... not really.
By our original plans, we could have been stuck in that slide, so we were actually very thankful we had stayed the extra time in Pismo.
Because of the slide, we had to skip our 101 start-to-finish run.
Sadly.
Instead, we figured we would head to Vegas for my wife’s birthday.
We made our way through Death Valley and on to Vegas for a good time. After Vegas, we cruised down to Lake Havasu, Arizona, to visit a friend of my wife’s from high school.
Well, our communication with him was a bit lacking.
Turns out he was home in Washington visiting.
Oops.
Next time through, maybe.
We had a great time in Lake Havasu for a few days and then spent another few days in Phoenix visiting more friends.
We were ready for the road again, so we packed up the ’Stang.
As we were heading for the highway, the car started making a funny sound.
The funny sound got worse...
And then I recognized that noise.
It was not good.
We were only a block from a Ford dealership at this point, so I coasted into the service bay.
A few people came out to “greet” us — probably because they heard me a block away — and see what they could do for us.
Long story short, we needed an engine.
The car had a whopping 30,000 miles on it.
Only 3,000 of those we put on, if that!
Chunks of metal should not be here.
Sorry, little Coyote.
With that, we picked up a rental car.
Another Mustang.
This one was classic red.
We transferred all of our shit over to that, left the CS in good hands — we hoped — and continued on our trip.
The rental Mustang took us up through New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah, then down into Texas, where we crashed — maybe not the best phrase — for a week at a friend’s place.
We still had not heard if the damage was covered under warranty or not at this point.
I was debating about buying a truck and trailer in Texas since they were so cheap there, going back to Arizona to get our car, and heading for home.
Oh, wait.
No home to work on the car.
Well shit.
In that case, we kept heading east.
The little red rental took us all the way to Key West before we heard back from the dealership.
Yep.
The engine is covered!
“Sweet. When do you think we can pick it up?”
He told us a week.
PERFECT!
We were about a week away.
We visited more family in Florida, lost my debit card — and thankfully retrieved it — and made our way back to Arizona to get our car.
When we dropped off the rental car, which was covered by the warranty company, the clerk about had a heart attack.
“You put over 7,500 miles on the car! Where did you go, New York?”
“Nope. Just around the desert here and out to Key West.”
“Key West? Like Key West, Florida?” he exclaimed.
“Yep.”
After getting our ’Stang back, we headed back to California.
We played in San Diego at SeaWorld and then in L.A. at Knott’s Berry Farm.
We also decided to drive down Crenshaw in Compton at dusk.
Not a great move.
If you know the area, you know a couple of white folk probably shouldn’t have been there.
We stopped for gas and dinner at this little shit store on Crenshaw. There weren’t any other white people around, and there was a Subway sandwich shop inside.
We were hungry.
My wife asked if we should go or not.
I told her to follow my lead, walk in like we belonged, show respect, and we’d be okay.
The girl behind the counter looked at me before we even placed our order, behind the bulletproof glass, and said:
“You shouldn’t be here. You best get your food and get out.”
There were lots of strange looks from other people.
I assured my wife we were good.
Just act natural.
Don’t show fear.
And, oh yeah, I was NOT armed.
It’s all good.
We survived with no incident.
It just goes to show that a little bit of RESPECT goes a long way.
Eventually, we ended up back on Highway 101.
We ran that all the way north and back into Pismo Beach.
So we “technically” made the 101 run, start to finish.
It just came with a little 8,000-mile detour.
Looking back, some of the best memories come from adventures that don’t go as planned.
The mudslide screwed up our route.
The Mustang blew an engine.
We had no house to go home to.
We drove a rental Mustang across half the damn country.
We ended up in Key West.
We lost a debit card.
We drove through places we probably shouldn’t have been.
And eventually, we got back to the road we started on and finished what we set out to do.
It may suck at the time, but looking back...
It was a hell of a run.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tom Neal is the founder of Bigfoot Trails Basecamp, an independent adventure media project built around real experiences. He’s spent most of his life around vehicles, motorcycles, racing, travel, and projects that tend to take longer and cost more than originally planned.
After decades of doing all that stuff, he’s learned that the best stories usually aren’t the ones you planned. They’re the people you meet, the places you stumble across, the things that go wrong, and the moments you never expected.
That’s what he wants to capture with BTB.
He doesn’t want to write about adventure from the outside. He wants to go experience it, then tell you what happened.
Bigfoot Trails Basecamp | Independent Adventure Media
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