zarihs, ltd.

Preface—I purchased the car in February 2000 from Ace Underhill in Phoenix, AZ. He then drove it for me to DeLorean Motor Company, Houston, TX so I could have them spruce it up a bit and lower it. Due to their schedule, the Cleveland Show, and my slow decision-making on what to have done the car was there for 4 months getting babied before it was ready for pickup. This story, written by my wife, describes the trials and tribulations we had driving my new car back to Seattle.

June 30, 2000—We flew to Houston, TX to pick up the DeLorean from DMC Houston, where it had been since it was purchased in February 2000. We planned to drive it up to the Grand Canyon to spend the 4th of July there. The car, however, had other ideas.

On that hot, muggy Texas Friday, we drove from Houston to San Antonio only to discover that the driver side door wouldn't open properly, and since DMC wasn't open until Monday, we spent Saturday playing in San Antonio at the Alamo, the Circus Museum and the Riverwalk. Sunday we drove back to Houston and played at NASA. The guys at DMC worked all day Monday to get the door working, and we were back on the road.

A note about the heat--it was so hot there that the rearview mirror wouldn't even stay glued to the windshield. Just an FYI.

Since we couldn't make it all the way to the Grand Canyon for the 4th, we decided to make our holiday stop in Roswell, NM, where we didn't meet any aliens, but we definitely met some colorful locals ("Uh, are you two related?") Hmm.

On the way out of New Mexico, we stopped in Mesa, population one (plus dog). It's really on the map. We swear it. Just a really old guy with a gas station/antique store who has a cool internet phone and some funky theories about the aliens being connected to Israel...

Next stop was the painted desert just inside Arizona on historic Route 66. That was amazing! Don't forget to check out the other pics in the photo section [not yet available].

We then headed north for the Grand Canyon, where we spent a couple of days looking at the scenery, taking a tour and doing our laundry. We helped out some French tourists who couldn't figure out the coin-op washing machines, which was kinda cool.

Next stop...well, here's where the "vacation in the awesome car" part ends and the... Perhaps we're getting ahead of ourselves.

We were just leaving the Grand Canyon and heading up through the Navajo Reservation, located to the northeast of the canyon, when we started having a little trouble accelerating up a hill. Okay, a lot of trouble. Remember that thing about the rearview mirror? Well, it might have come in handy just then, since we realized all too late that smoke was spewing out of the back of the car where the engine is located.

We stopped the car, opened up the engine compartment and noticed this green gooey stuff (which turned out to be coolant) splattered all over the place. To make a long story short, we had to have the car towed to Flagstaff, AZ (90 miles south) to have it checked out. Please, if you plan to take a long trip, please please please invest in AAA Plus. Trust us, it's worth it.

We discovered that in Flagstaff, there was nothing else to do but eat Chinese food and drink the Flaming Volcano, our first and last alcoholic drink of the trip. One Volcano was enough, and suddenly our predicament didn't seem quite so dire. Go figure.

The next day the 24-hour auto shop told us that our situation really was the direst of the dire, so we rented a U-Haul and a trailer and proceeded on our journey with the DeLorean strapped to the back. Unfortunately we forgot to take a picture of the car on the trailer.

Imagine this: driving through one of the most amazing, beautiful national parks in the country, paying an extra $10, and having a man-made tunnel all to yourself for about 5 minutes while all other traffic had to stop in deference to you. This was our experience at Zion National Park, and it set the stage for the entire rest of our journey. We stopped in places we would never have stopped before, places with parking spaces big enough to accommodate our gargantuan selves. We got to take up eight parking spaces at our hotel in Salt Lake City. We learned to make the widest of turns in the smallest of corners. We learned to drive backwards in the most challenging of circumstances and prevailed.

The rest of the trip was measured not by attractions but by proximity to our home. Look, we just crossed into Oregon! Now Washington, the Evergreen State! (Incidentally, the one thing common to every state from here to Texas is sagebrush.) Now the pass! Now Issaquah! We were positively ecstatic when we saw rain clouds looming over us and knew we were close to home.

In retrospect, despite all of the car trouble and setbacks, I can honestly say that this vacation brought us closer together than any other one has, perhaps because of the setbacks. It has been said that nothing will either draw you closer or tear you apart like a vacation can; I am glad to say that after this trip, we are closer than ever.

—By Holly Cupala