Alright, I'll start off with a disclaimer that I am a super novice college student, that doesn't have the money to take my baby to a shop, and still considers it sacreligious to do so if i can help it. So here's my problem, hopefully some of you guys out there can give me a hand, I know I've read a lot of threads out there and you all seem to be rather helpful, and very knowledgable people. I was tightening down some bolts on my intake manifold the other day, and while doing it, i turned my distributor, and disconnected, what I am pretty sure is a ported vacuum hose that runs between my carbeurator and distributor. After replacing tightening the bolts down, i put the hose back on, and turned the distributor back to approximately where it was to begin with (I dont have a timing light here at school with me.) I went to take her for a test drive to make sure the coolant leak at the back of the intake (the original problem i had) was fixed, she drove fine for a few miles, and i got to a stop light, stopped. On green i began to drive (i'm on a highway) i get up to about 40mph or so, and realize the car hasn't come out of 2nd gear, and i'm revving quite high up. Basically my problem is this, once the car goes to second gear, i can't get her to go up again, not sure if the timing alone is a culprit or if it's vacuum related, I'm pretty sure that the vac line is still connected to the transmission (though without a jack I can't get under and look, i can only feel around.) Any help you guys can give me would be awesome, thanks in advance.
Car is: 1970 Chevelle 350/TH350, Edelbrock Perfomer Intake, Holley 4150 series 650cfm carb. Mallory HEI dist.

IMHO, Sounds like your vaccuum line from your manifold to the modulator valve on the transmission has a leak or has come disconnected.
An easy check is to disconnect the vaccuum line from the manifold and suck on it, if you can suck air constantly without building vaccuum, you either have a leak, a faulty modulator or the hose has come off the modulator on the transmission. Hope this helps!

well I can't continuously suck on it, i do have vacuum from the tranny to the manifold, i dont know what else it could be, thanks for the help so far guys, any more feedback and/or ideas is much appreciated. I'd really like to get this thing running again on my own, without taking her in.

Could you have disturbed the kickdown cable for the transmission when working on the manifold?
How is the engine running after you turned the distributor back to its original location? Sluggish? Pinging under load?

no pinging, not really sluggish, not sure if i could have messed with the kickdown... I'll have to check it out.

So i found out, it had nothing to do with vacuum or kickdown (but i did discover there is no kickdown cable, thank the previous owner) metal flakes decided to lock up the governor in the tranny, hopefully it not something inside grinding that is going to mean i need a tranny rebuild... Thanks for your help guys.