The Heart of Darkness

When you are preparing for a trip into a car trip through a subzero environment you have to be prepared by winterizing your vehicle. A new battery and alternator are essential to hold an electrical charge to keep the engine running and for it to cold start. Modern cars that have numerous electronic luxuries like sat nav, and LCD displays are more susceptible to failure by the increased electrical load those luxuries place on the vehicle.

A few months prior, I was driving the car only to have it shut off in the middle of driving. This was something that was new for me as a motorist--cars of my past had only shut off at an idle, but the motor running the vehicle at speed would be sufficient to run the car at speed for it to stop at idle. Now the car shuts off abruptly even if you are going 70 mph down the road if the alternator or battery is faulty.

The next dilemma is that the vehicle can fail electronically, without any instance of mechanical warning. It is recommended to bring along a OBD scan tool to spot invisible faults, something that is not given as standard but instead is purchased if you are capable of servicing your own vehicle. Many can be purchased for little as 30 dollars and will quickly diagnose a check engine light.

The next step is to replace your engine coolant. New coolant is essential in the extreme cold. Old coolant will freeze and blow all your hoses, leaving you stranded in the middle of the ocean. Change your oil. If you have a newer car that relies on 5w30 full synthetic oil to manage a higher fuel efficiency, this is sufficient in a subzero climate. Don't be afraid of the cold crank if you have a fresh battery and alternator, it will power through the syrupy frozen oil.

Just be prepared to allow your car's computer to freak out the first morning. Coming from a warm climate, your car has probably not encountered such an environment previously, and does not have a preset to find the correct fuel mixture and oil viscosity in such a cold temperature. Computers tend to cycle through fuel and air mixture settings to achieve appropriate settings for the environment. The extreme cold plagues electronics. In a best case scenario, the extreme cold will cause false voltage readings in sensors, causing the check engine light to flash. As the vehicle warms, the vehicle will begin delivering voltage to the sensor components evenly, then the computer will clear the temporary faults. I cannot stress how handy it is to have your own onboard diagnostic scan tool. If you are alone on the road, knowing what is wrong will give you tremendous peace of mind.

Be sure to change the cylinder coils and plugs a few weeks before the trip. Also, drain your windshield wiper fluid reservoir. Even though you fill the washer bottle with the appropriate temperature-rated fluid, ethylene glycol in the fluid will have evaporated from the bottle as it sat in summer storage. It will freeze like a brick and ruin the pump as well as cracking the hoses, requiring repair. I would keep the washer bottle empty and clean my windshield during fueling at the gas station.

Understand that electric components do not like the cold, and all of the convenient automatic features of society love to break in the cold, such as keyless locks and trunk hatches. Most of which are approximately 150 bucks or so a piece to replace. We took every precaution and lost only a 25 dollar truck hatch lock. Your devices could fail too--my film camera froze, requiring me to take my it apart to clean the magnets inside to repair it. Additionally, film does not react readily in cold weather, so placing your film over the car heater is an excellent way to have it photographically react when you are waiting for images to appear.

Digital cameras' shutters freeze and the batteries lock up easily. Manual focus lenses that have oil-packed focus rings freeze solid and are incredibly stiff to operate. Contact lenses freeze on your eyes as you keep them open to focus. The cold seeps in and catches locals by surprise, especially those who have little money to spend on repairs. (We noticed cars broken down by the side of the road in Kansas through the sandhills of Nebraska, miles from the nearest gas station.) Death from exposure in a broken down car, especially of the elderly, is common enough for radio stories. We heard a tale of a woman who wrecked her car and was found in a remote sandhills' ditch, frozen solid.

Getting the VW ready was a challenge for this trip. I had never driven in the extreme cold before and didn't know what to expect. Firstly, all of your fluids should be new, namely the oil and radiator fluid. I did these on my own. The oil is thin in newer vehicles but will thicken up considerably in the cold. Something like olive oil in a warm climate will thicken to the consistency of heavy corn syrup or honey. The vehicle in the extreme cold will have to move the thick sludgy oil around cold to turn over the engine, requiring many minutes to warm up to operating temperature, so a brand new battery and alternator is essential.

If the car won't crank over cold, it won't start. Newer cars can't merely run on their own once cranked and don't start, like my chevy celebrity. They use so many electrical components, like the LCD readouts, cameras and etc... that they will actually stop on the road driving, as happened to me a few months before driving down the street at 35 mph next to my house, the vehicle just stopped running, coasting to a stop with the electrical warnings lit all over the console. I was able to pop the car into neutral and brake the car safely. I was then able to restart the vehicle and park it at the house. I was also able to drive the vehicle to the auto parts store to test the battery and alternator. Both were faulty. I purchased the parts, a Bosch spun alternator and a Duralast brand battery under warranty, and replace them on my own on warranty at no charge.

I remember as a child watching my dad change parts out on an old pickup truck. The engine had multiple belts and was a nightmare to work on-- and my brother usually ended up yelling at each other. The 454 engine was a twisting three track nightmare, with a maze of belts running the A/C compressor, alternator, water pump, power steering, crankshaft, and air pump. The Tiguan only has one small belt that can last 100,000 miles between changes, and which runs the alternator, crankshaft, and AC independently from one another.

A pulley was pulled loose being held open with a metal pin, with the belt sliding off easily. The main trouble was loosening the plastic mounting clips for the air conditioning hoses without cracking them as well as uncoupling and removing the delicate plastic computer sensors from the oil pump. The alternator was very tightly placed to remove without breaking important pieces of delicate plastic sensor components that would have been hard to replace without getting gouged at the dealership or waiting a week for a mail order delivery. But it got done with equal parts brute force and finessed feathering, despite finishing by lantern light.

Next was the coolant. In extreme cold, like heat, the coolant begins to break down and not be able to resist freeing or evaporation. It's absolutely necessary to do a complete radiator fluid flush for a winter trip in sub-zero temperature. Most vehicles have a petcock valve at the bottom of the radiator for easy draining. The Tiguan does not. It has a tension clamp over a hose that has to be pressed off with a set of channel lock pliers, then pulled off gently by hand through caked road grime, as to not crack the hose. The fluid awkwardly drains as it's not at an optimum point to drain its fluids quickly. It takes the pink G-13 coolant and not the Neon yellow-green stuff. Get this coolant directly from the dealership. A white gallon container with plain yet informative sans serif text, outlining the legal specifications that the pink coolant is the only coolant that goes into this vehicle. Any other coolant will quickly corrode the interior workings of the radiator system.

It has the recommended mixtures to make with distilled water for specified temperature ranges, and a large skull and crossbones icon and further text outlining the necessity of recycling your radiator fluid. It has a sweet smell; cats and dogs like to lick spills off the sidewalk where you are working. The chemicals ethylene glycol, methanol, and propylene glycol make it a potent poison, so it should be disposed of ethically, though the only place that recycles used antifreeze in Houston, TX, is at the recycling center at 5800 Westpark. When I delivered my neatly packaged bottles to them, they refused it. I was forced to dump them in the dumpster. I remember as a child watching my dad flush a radiator with a garden hose, with rust shooting out of the water. This isn't the recommended operation for a modern vehicle. Instead, distilled water--free from any minerals that could react with the inside linings of the radiator components--is necessary. Using tap water will corrode the linings of the radiator, causing leaks or making the water pump work harder than it has to, corroding the plastic seals, having it leak and fail to operate.

It takes some time, draining and refilling, driving and circulating the fluid, re-draining the water, then filling it back up with the new fluid. This is an essential item of maintenance to do before driving in the extreme cold. When coolant degrades over time, or it boils off in high-temperature summer driving, the mixture ratio of coolant to water is mixed below a 1:1 ratio, making it much more likely for coolant to freeze in a low-temperature environment.

What can happen? In many cases, the coolant will turn to slush first, keeping the fluid from circulating in the engine. The fluid in the engine block heats up in proximity to the hot engine, while the radiator will still be cold and slushy, creating a lack of circulation that will overheat the vehicle. In temperate or hot climates, an overheated engine will blow steam out of the radiator a visual indicator that the car is overheating and should be parked. In an extreme winter driving situation, steam will not form, with the driver relying only on the thermostat to show the car's operating temperature. Without diligently watching the vehicle temperature gauge, the vehicle will overheat and seize up in the middle of a remote sub-zero environment.

A worse situation for the vehicle is when the radiator fluid freezes completely. Frozen water will freeze solid in the engine block. Freezing water expands by as much as 9 percent of its volume in a liquid state, exacting as much 25,000 to 100,000 psi of expansion force on the interior hoses and metal engine block. This can damage the radiator and hoses as well as cracking the metal engine block and cylinder heads. This would ruin the entire car's engine, stranding you in a dangerous frigid environment. This is why it's essential to change your radiator fluid as well as investing in a block heater for a trip through frigid weather. I completed these preparations on my own and thought about every slip of my hands during every operation driving along.

Our drinking water was frozen solid in the back, near the car's hatch. I normally keep a few quarts of engine oil in the car, including a quart on my side door console near the floor heater to keep it thinner--it was thick as heavy molasses, . We set off early on December 24 and drove to Wichita Mountains National Wildlife Refuge the first day. The temperatures were reasonable, with our drinking water only lightly slushing over through the evening. Though it was cold, 27 degrees fahrenheit, we set camp downwind from a lake that made the area quite humid and bone-deep cold.

We were tent camping, and a cold weather system developed as we went. First, we set up the tent on a vapor barrier, like a tarp or piece of plastic. The first layer inside the tent was a radiant barrier, such as a space blanket or a tarp with a reflective coating. Next we placed inflatable pads, followed by heavy blankets, then our zero degree sleeping bags, and more blankets.

We attached the rain fly with the vents open. Before dinner, we started a fire. A bad omen for the first night was that at a reasonable temperature, our camping propane for the cooker froze, liquifying the gas and making the stove unusable. I would boil water, with the cook stove inside the car, started and with the heater running, to keep the propane at proper operating temperature. The food was streamlined, it was dehydrated, delicious and simple. The ease of preparing our food was welcome, because my hands hurt and were inoperable from the cold.

Before cooking dinner, I walked around and found some smooth river rocks to put on the fire to heat. We ate dinner quickly, just after sunset, in the unbearably damp, cold wind. We took the stones off the campfire and put them at the foot of our sleeping bags, struggled to get in with an abundance of padding, wrapped up with a 3-year-old, and went to sleep. It was toasty, slowly cooling to tepid in the middle of the night, cooling to slightly chilly by before dusk. We never lost cell phone reception and could track the temperature outside. 19 degrees was the coldest that night and ice from the lake formed in between layers on the tent and vents. It was cold but bearable. We slept in multiple days while camping. Waiting for the sun to rise adequately before setting off, easily 15 hours inside, a welcome rest providing ample time to reset. We packed up our equipment in the middle of a deer herd hiking single file through the wooded ridge. I let the car warm a little and we were off to points farther north on Christmas Day.

We drove through Lawton Oklahoma to Oklahoma City, stopped off on our way to enjoy our traditional IHOP Christmas meal, a pancake plate with eggs and hashbrowns. A dusty stop-off, a slight but notable change, a flat openness on a plane of concrete. We still did not have the right type of gloves or socks yet for the trip, something we were hoping to find at a store in that climate. Eating, looking out the window, we saw a man standing on that flat plane in a worn canvas cape, greyed, dirty, and stiff from road ice. His matted hair stood in place, gritty and windswept, yet not billowing, solid. A high plains drifter. Marco drank his milk, ate his eggs and pancakes. I drank my coffee with burning chapped lips. Paid the check, and got back driving. It was 4:00 PM and approaching dusk. We decided to push further north through the early dark evening, reaching Wichita, Kansas, in a few hours before stopping off at a roadside motel. We made reservations via a hotel booking app. We split time between camping and staying in motels, most of which were booked for $30 and provided a convenient solution to our itinerant few weeks. The temperature read 25° when we stopped. I decided to bring everything into the room, so it didn't freeze in the car. We cranked up the heat inside and fell asleep watching cable television in a slightly shabby, beige room, toasty and warm.

The next morning, after getting a continental breakfast that consisted of Corn Flakes for Marco, coffee for Daddy and Mommy that was more hot water and less coffee, and a waffle fresh from instant batter and caked with burnt runoff from a waffle maker, I started the long trek to load the car. I opened the door to go outside and was welcomed by the coldest air I have ever felt. It was cold. It sunk into my bones immediately. I had just switched back to contact lenses after more than a decade of wearing glasses, because they were problematic in my return to photography and digital retouching.

In the cold, my eyes teared and the tears froze on my cheeks. I had to close my eyes. My feet were cold almost immediately and burned. I got moving. The air of Wichita smelled of raw concrete. Metallic. I opened the car door to a rough, dry crackling in the dry blue sunshine. The seats were stiff, the water bottle I had left in the center console was solid. I sat in the car with my breath a fog. Inserted the key. The electrics seemed to function without incident. I held my breath and turned over the car.

A slooooow moan--a hard struggle for the starter to move the cold, thick oil of this modern tuned engine sucking in enough fuel to combust. It finally turned over, spitting and sputtering. The smell of rotten eggs permeated the car, an olfactory indicator of engine misfire. I held my breath for a solid minute, a frozen block of panic watching the check engine light flash, as the car's computer was warming, it was cycling through adequate fuel and air mixtures, struggling to come up with the right combination to smoothly operate. I could feel the awkward cycling, sensing the changes in vibration, until the car found the right combination and smoothed out. I sat in the frozen car, watching its temperature rise to the middle of the thermostat gauge.

I set off around the parking lot, hearing every bump amplified by a cold cracking sound of the car's shocks and bushings, oil and rubber stiff with the cold. I pulled the car around to the front, leaving it running to get Jenny Lynn and Marco. We set off to fill up the car's gas tank, a shakedown run before setting off further north. The fuel wasn't listed as winterized. Maybe this isn't cold enough for winterized fuel, I told myself. The air temp read nine degrees fahrenheit.

We took a path north through the Flint Hills, and a beginnning to some slightly rolling hills and the largest tract left of existing tall grasses. We entered the Ogallala Aquifer region.