The following was written by Sgt. 1st Class Mark F. Ounan, an Active/ Guard infantry Soldier currently assigned to the 324th Military Police Btn., Chambersburg, Pa. Ounan is also the only current Soldier and Military Vehicle Preservation Association member taking place in the 2009 MVPA Convoy. Here's an exert from the journal he's keeping as he travels cross-country.

About 20 miles into today's drive, I started having trouble.

The road from Fallon, Nev., to Lake Tahoe, Calif., has three major hills. Going over the first, the car coughed and puttered as if it were running out of gas. The second hill proved to be too much for the little Dodge, and we got stuck on the side of the road. The recovery team tried to help us get it started again, but it was a no-go, so we had to put the car on the trailer.

About forty miles later, we stopped in Zephyr Cove on Lake Tahoe for lunch. We did some trouble shooting and got the car running again.

Home for tonight is Placerville, Calif. To get here from Lake Tahoe it was all highway driving, thankfully mostly downhill.

When we got to Placerville, one of the recovery mechanics, Kenny, said he had been thinking about the car during the drive and he had a few ideas he wanted to try. So while everyone else had dinner, Kenny and I tested the points and spark, and we also cleaned out the carburetor. While we were refilling the carburetor to test it, we found a leak in the vacuum tank. When we checked to see where that was coming from, we found a broken fitting that may have been the cause of all the problems. We repaired the line. Now we'll see how things go in the morning.