Next morning, we were planning to leave Jackson MS and drive the rest of the way home. Didn't work out that way. I'd started having an issue where the truck was idling at ~1600 RPM and I couldn't get it adjusted down. Idle speed screw was doing nothing. I stopped at another parts store to get some carb cleaner thinking maybe stuck linkage. Cleaning didn't help, but I noticed the distributor was a little loose. Of course, I screwed up the timing figuring that out. So back into the store for a cheap timing light. Of course you can't really get timing set with the idle at 1600 RPM so all I was doing was making things worse.
Had a brainstorm and gave Cliff a call at Cliff's High Performance Quadrajets. Cliff is a great guy, and even though he couldn't see what was going on, suggested that the fast idle was likely that it was getting way too much air. Duhh, vacuum leak. Turned out that tightening the 4 corners where the carb mounts to the intake took care of the vacuum leak. Idle came down to where it belonged and I was able to retime the engine. Yay, we're finally getting out of Jackson at 1:30PM.
Edit: Forgot to mention this part. While trying to sort out the timing prior to figuring out I had a vacuum leak, Hazel backfired twice... Loudly... in busy convenience store/gas stations... did I mention twice? Got a lot of dirty looks... did nothing for my stress level
Made it as far as Carthage TX. Max speed 63-65MPH due to vibrations getting worse. My nerves were seriously shot, and that was far enough for the day. I had a spare u-joint I bought in Cary, a grease gun I got in Jackson, and tools I'd brought from home in case the u-joint decided to crap out again, but really didn't want to have to deal with it on the side of the road. And I imagined that if it exploded again, it could have been worse than just a cruise to the shoulder.
Couple random shots on the road, and re-entering Texas (that felt really good!)