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I've been slowly combing through various subsystems on my RX and the most recent system to get some love was the PCV system. I found that every hose is still available, except the one that attaches directly to the PCV valve on the intake manifold. I ran down to my local auto parts store with the original hose in hand to pick through their selection of hoses. WELL! It turns out that the small heater hose from a 2002-2009 Ford Explorer (Dayco P/N 87730) is almost a perfect fit. Hose was about $7 and needed to have a small portion trimmed off. NOTE: EPDM is NOT oil safe, so until I find a better solution, I'll need to keep an eye on this hose to make sure it isn't perishing too quickly.

B came over last Thursday morning and we did some last minute packing up and hooked up the cars to tow down to Texas. Our friend JCR had left South Bend a little earlier towing his baja bug so he was a few hours behind us. I had driven about 250 miles but the gas gauge was still above half. I was going to stop soon and the car started cutting out and the fuel pump was making a lot of noise, you could hear it occasionally get some fuel and quiet down, just enough to get to the end of an off ramp. We dumped in the 2.5 gallons of fuel from B's gas can but it still wouldn't start. I pulled the pressure hose off at the engine and a lot of compressed air with some fuel sprayed out of the engine side. B cycled the key a few times and we seemed to have a reasonably solid fuel flow. I put the hose back on it and fired back up and ran fine. Took 20 gallons to fill including the 2.5 we'd put in. We got past Tulsa and camped at a city park at Stroud lake. Friday was fairly uneventful. There were giant grasshoppers on the road leading into the ranch. Their body was almost the size of two adult human fingers. They could barely jump. We made it to the ranch around 2PM, slammo and J were already there and we picked out a place to park in the shade of some trees that we ended up camping in all weekend. We put the door bars, harnesses, numbers, and lights on the Outback and went through tech and registration. While we waited around we saw some other critters: I cooked some dogs and then we watched the handful of unlimited class vehicles (trophy trucks and ultra 4s) qualify. JCR had rented a small cabin on a lake near the ranch so we stayed with him Friday and Saturday nights. There were about ten long piers out into the lake, most of which had some kind of covered square pier at the end so you could fish in the middle ice fishing style.