Maine is the other very long trip we made in our little buddy. Nancy's nephew was getting married in Maine not long before the conclave in Texas. Our plan was to drive the Bugeye up to Maine and then head down to Texas for the Conclave. This however was the one trip we had major issues on. We left Cincinnati and went up to Cleveland where we spoke with Dave about his idea of me taking over The Winner's Circle. From there we went up to Niagara Falls for a couple of nights. The we continued across Canada and into Maine. This is where things took a turn for the worse. Our Bugeye became unhappy just before we got into Maine. It still drove great, but was blowing a lot of smoke and fumes into the cockpit. We were able to still drive it into Maine, just with a lot more tears in our eyes. We thought we had blown a head gasket, so we had one shipped to the hotel we were staying in. We pulled the head off and, yep, blown head gasket. We got it replaced and enjoyed our time Maine. We then drove the car down the coast to visit Nancy's cousin in Rhode Island. We found out we hadn't fixed the problem. The car still drove fine, but we were getting smoked out of the driver's seat. Nancy and I would take turns driving so we didn't get fumigated too bad. With the AAA we had, we could get towed 100 miles, so we googled 100 miles from her cousin's place and called for AAA there. They towed us to the house and we enjoyed our time there while getting some parts sent our way. We eventually found a place in Rhode Island where you can rent time on a lift. We drove the car there with the parts we had and started taking things apart to diagnose the issue. We found that a piston was broken. One of the lands was broken. We called around and eventually found that Dave Giorgi had a piston that should work and he overnighted it to us. We spent the day enjoying more of Rhode Island and the next day got back to work. We received the new piston, got it in the car, buttoned everything up, and started it. It was making a terrible sound of something hitting. The shop was closing for the weekend and were only staying there to help us out. We told them to go home and pushed the car out. The last hope was that the noise was coming from the bottom end, maybe I did something wrong with the rod bearing. In the parking lot, we pulled the pan off and looked things over. No issue there. We determined that the piston we got to replace ours was a little too tall and was hitting. We buttoned things up and made our next plan. This was the first and only time Nancy had an issue. She had a headache all day and was under the car helping me put the pan back on and couldn't get the bolts to line up. It was just too much and she starting crying, saying "the bolts won't line up". I told her to go ahead and get up and I'd finish it. This is where we made our next plan...

We called our friends Gary and Paulette Lownsdale. Gary said he had an engine he was building and that he could get it together in a couple of days before he heads to Conclave. We could get our car to his shop and swap motors to drive our car to Texas. We relaxed a bit, rented a car, and went down to meet some friends in Connecticut for a couple of days and went to see the sights in New York City. While there, we got a call from Gary. It turned out that the wrong size pistons were sent to him for the motor so he couldn't build it. They had a backup plan, let us borrow Paulette's BJ7, Miss Piggy, and we drove that to Conclave and left our Bugeye at his shop. We rented a Uhaul truck and trailer and pulled the bugeye down to them. They towed a Healey boat and Gary's Bugeye to conclave in Texas while we drove Miss Piggy. When we got there, we traded and we did the event in Gary's Bugeye while they used Miss Piggy.

Although this trip didn't go anywhere near as origionally planned, we both agreed that if we knew things would turn out as they did when we left, we'd have still gone. There were some setbacks, but it was a great trip!