Going From Chicago To Portland And Back The Week After Christmas

We'll be visiting my wife's son up in Portland end of December.   Might be able to bring medium sized stuff along the way for cheap/near free depending  on where/when we have to pick the items up and drop them off and how heavy/how much space they take up.  Certainly much cheaper than yor regular shipping options, and you get to meet me as an added bonus! The Prius will fit larger items than you might think, but ask to be sure.   I have more flexibility for time on the way home than the way up for pickups and dropoffs, but if you are local to the Chicagoland area or planning on driving through on I-55, I-57, I-80 or I-294, I can at least use my place as a staging area at either the front end or backend.

Oh and I have a shed full of car parts that need to go away cheap...

I have many tempting parts for mr2s2000Elise.

In reply to clutchsmoke :

Unless he moved from Santa Barbara to Portland, my trip won't get any closer to him than if I was delivering parts to New York for someone who is at the GRM Challenge in Gainesville...

Starting to make plans now.  Since this is a far more important trip than one of my Fly/Bus/Train and Drives With a Sub$2K Hooptie, and I would for once feel bad about pushing the vehicle in a ditch and setting it on fire if it things go wrong, I am actually preparing this vehicle for the trip.  

While the Prius has "M+S" rated tires on it, I will be putting some Winter Traction Rated Tires on it, and getting some cable chains to put on those tires, if we get into a situation where conditions warrant it.   The chain up rules vary from state to state, but as an example, Oregon would require me to at the very least, carry either Traction Tires or chains, and conditions may escalate to where I would have to use the chains even if I am running Traction Tires.  But if things don't get to that point, I would still have to chain up the M+S rated tires that are currently on the car, which would put me in the slow, bumpy caravan of chained up vehicles going less than 30 MpH.  Sometimes much slower than 30 MpH.  And wearing out the chains on the areas of the chain up section that don't have snow.  

Also, for those along the route with an NC Miata, don't forget that I have a factory Tochigi Fuji Limited Slip available in the Marketplace.

PS- with all of these links, you would think I was going to Portland in a canoe...

Cooter said:

PS- with all of these links, you would think I was going to Portland in a canoe...

It has been done before... At least partially

I don't have any parts needing to go East, but I can recommend some good steak or barbecue spots you could hit while in Portland. 

In reply to mtn :

That was kinda my point.

In reply to dougie :

I would rather find a few good junkyards, TBH.

In reply to Cooter :

What are you looking for ....?

Junkyards.

Well, as the trip is imminent, I figured I probably should get the tires mounted.   I never looked incredible close at the wheels before, but when I casually looked at them for the tire size, I could have sworn that they had hubcaps.   But I also could see the calipers through the wheels.    When started to remove the wheels to mount the tires, I realized that Toyota mounts plastic hubcaps on aluminum wheels.   Okay, then...

The tire mounting was a little more involved than I would have liked, as I noticed that the rear tires were noticeably more worn then the front.    So I had to do a little tire mounting dance rotating the rear wheels with the front while mounting.   Not the end of the world, but it added time and a small amount of frustration to what was supposed to be a quick job.

I also decided against getting another pair of wheels, as I didn't want to mess with possible lug nut issues.   When I realized that even if I bought a pair of factory Prius wheels with the TPMS already installed, I would still have to reprogram the car to read them, I decided to just mount the tires on the wheels I have for now.   I will have a better solution in place hopefully by spring when I take the winter tires off.

Current weather shows a good chance of snow across the passes through the Cascades (Oregon)...  

Thank you. We have been watching the weather a bit, but not very close yet. I will likely head north from the Omahaish area and take the northern route if that forecast holds. 

Made it safely to Portland in near-record time.   Those following my IG account(s) already know this, though.

Also have another $1K burning a hole in my pocket after dropping this grille off in Council Buffs in the way here.   (Thank you FB Marketplace!!)

More later...

So, the trip west went well, and we got pretty lucky with weather.  I had originally planned on taking I-90 all the way from Illinois, but I received a message from someone interested in my  NOS '91-93 Dodge truck grille mentioned in the previous post.   I had resisted listing it on FB, as I knew what most of the reaction would be.  But $1k is actually slightly under value for an NOS grille like this.  The buyers had been watching my eBay listing, but couldn't come pick it up, as they where in NW Missouri, and I listed it as Local Pickup Only.   On the FB ad I mentioned that I could deliver it to anyone who could meet me on my route to Portland.   They offered to meet at the Bass Pro Shop in Council Bluffs.   We met at 5:45PM Christmas Day in the parking lot next to BPS, as all the lights were off in the the parking lot.   The whole family jumped in the family car (SUV) and drive 2 hours to meet me after they had their Christmas dinner.  They are restoring the kid's grandmother's truck that had hit a deer, and both the father and son were elated at the condition of the grille.  They placed 10 crisp $100 bills in my hand, and we were on our way.  (well, after a bunch of car talk)




I had decided that we would still take I-90, which meant adding a couple of hours to our travel times at this point, but because of the unpredictability of the southern route, plus the way the weather was shaping up, I was sure we would have less chance of being stranded on the highway for several hours.   As it turned out, this was the right choice, as we never really hit any snow, and the little that we did see wasn't until we were entering Idaho.


More later...

clutchsmoke said:

I have many tempting parts for mr2s2000Elise.

Such as??

I originally wanted to make it to Sioux Fall, but with fog rolling in, and feeling pretty p00ped, we decided discretion was the better part of valor, and chose Sioux City as an alternative for Christmas night.  The hotel was okay, and the bed was awesome, but the bast part was in at 5:45 the morning as we went to grab our continental breakfast on-the-go.   Pocket Bacon!!!  It seems that this hotel decided to cook their bacon in advance, and place it in the minifridge, individually bagged in groups of three.  Three bags made it into my pocket so that sitting down to eat wouldn't slow us down.   

And yes, there was also a banana in my pocket, but I was still happy to see you.  

Having met you, pocket bacon exciting you is not surprising 

Forgot to update this.  (A recurring theme with my threads, it seems)

The trip was great, and we didn't even die a little bit.    


If I can find some of my old photos from our journey, I'll try to share them here.