Tortuga has left the beach.

All first days are HECTIC! The endless questions of what you have forgotten or didn’t even think of.  To leave these anxieties behind, the Tortuga started a day earlier than planned.  The idea was simple, to shorten the milage on the first few days and to shake out those issue the Tortuga didn’t think of.  There was no better, close to home place to head for then Pedernales State Park.

If you can’t be on the beach then Pedernales Falls is not a bad place to be.

Thank goodness the Tortuga started early and added some flexibility in the schedule.  Less than 2 hours into the trip, a semi loaded with debris blew past the helpless Tortuga doings its 58ish top speed.  As the semi passed, the Tortuga felt the sting of pebbles across the windshield and panic ensued looking for those glass nicks that would lead to cracks.  With the initial observation, Tortuga thought she was lucky, but that relief  would soon turn to panic.  The Tortuga picked up a rock on the right passenger side, right below the rubber gasket.  The only way the Tortuga noticed it was the 6 inch long crack that raced across the screen.

 

The chip repair kit would not stop this monster crack.  The trip from border to border was doomed within the first two hours.  After an internet search and a couple of phone calls, the Tortuga back tracked 20 miles to Columbus, Texas with hopes to find someone that could stop the crack running across the entire windshield.  I carefully marked the ends of the crack and drove slow, not to accelerate this potential trip death knell.

With little hope, just an hour before closing, the Tortuga arrived at Windshield X press in Columbus, Tx.  I walked into the office and told them I was in need of a hero to save my BTB adventure. Minutes after my arrival, a man walked out to look at the damage. He gave me the prerequisite warning statement that this might not work and it would be hard to get a windshield today.  (My thought is he couldn’t get one in a week for this Veteran Dutch Army Truck). But, much to my surprise, he said he would try to fix the crack or at least try to stop it from going any further.

As soon as the Tortuga was in the Bay, this man I would later get to know as Tom, was on a bench, then on the bumper with a drill.  He drilled a hole in the path of the crack the pressed on the glass, forcing the crack to advance and hit the hole he just drilled.  Meanwhile, he explained to me that this could go bad, very very bad.

All the time he was working, we passed the time talking.  It did not take long to hear about many of the adventures that Tom had had 30 years earlier, some of which the Tortuga had done in the last year, at Guadalupe Mountains National Park… climbing Guadalupe Peak, staying at Dog Canyon on the north side of the park and hiking McKittrick Canyon. He told me all about the summer when he and his wife drove 7,000 miles along the continental divide at the age of 27.

As he finished his story, he finished the repair on the windshield. The crack of death was just a faint line, hard to see by those unaware of the Tortuga crisis.

So even though the crack was traumatic, the repair was specular and I got to meet Tom. He and his wife sound like they have been going one mile more for a long time.

The Tortuga was back on the road, and got to Pedernales Falls by sunset. Turned out to be a pretty great day even with all the anxiety of day one.

Go to Windshield X Press in Columbus, Texas to get your glass repair and ask Tom about climbing the tallest mountain in Texas in July.