Difficulties With The Car
Firstly, 40 days is a long time. To get through the entire trip with only one day of a genuine issue was, to be frank, unbelievable, The only day we had that “interrupted” the flow of the trip was the day when we were going to drive over the Beartooth Pass and on into Yellowstone. There were two problems — one is that I got sick and would not have been able to leave the house for very long — in fact just going to the store to get some food was an ordeal in and of itself. The second problem that day was that the smoke from the wildfires was so thick, I wouldn’t have been able to breathe and we would not have been able to see anything anyway. We could barely see the street from our apartment in Laurel, Montana.
So, the car. There were two occurrences of not-quite-bad luck, one of which could have stopped the trip in its tracks and the other of which could have caused an expensive interruption for one or two days.
The first one occurred with the gazelles I had previously mentioned. SPOILER ALERT: There were not actually any gazelles, I just “called” them gazelles, in another one of my feeble attempts at humor. So anyways, here we were somewhere on the road — I think it was when we first crossed into Colorado from Nebraska, but Susan says it was in Utah — so she is probably right. It was a long, straight (really, really straight) road with absolutely nothing to look at. We were not speeding, but we were moving right along at 65MPH. I was driving, and I heard Susan’s intake of breath, squeak, or something. I immediately looked up (still unsure where or what I was looking at), and there were four antelopes right in front of the car. One very large male and three females and/or youngsters. They were not standing there, they were running from something or somebody and decided to cross right in front of the only car on the road in either direction for as far as one could see ahead or behind us.
I immediately slammed on the brakes and got the car down to 30 MPH right away. I think maybe I swerved a little bit, and we missed the large male by maybe a foot or less. But the ladies were running right behind him, so I slammed on the brakes again and probably swerved a little more, got the car down to zero MPH, and missed the three antelopes in the back of the group by not very much more than I missed the male.
Meanwhile, everything in the back of the car was hurled behind the front seats. When we finally stopped a while later, the back of the car was clear down to the carpeting for about two feet, where all the bags and boxes and coolers and whatnot were slammed up against our seats. Nothing broke, and we weren’t hurt or decapitated. So, I guess God wanted us to continue our trip (and wanted the gazelles to continue theirs). We were lucky, and from that point on spent a little more time looking around to check for incoming animals or rocks or cars or… .. .
WHEW!
The second problem happened when we were in Nebraska. One night we got a storm for three solid hours and some idiot left the sunroof cracked in the car. Okay, it was this idiot. No excuses.
Noticed immediately the next morning that the water had gone into the opening, fed down through the dashboard of the car, and soaked the mats/rugs. I was not happy.
Started the car. The dash lit up like a Christmas Tree. All the lights that come on when the car is started, and then some. The problem was the lights didn’t go out… While we were trying to mitigate the problem by soaking up water wherever we could, I got an email AND a text message from my car informing me that I had four severe problems in the car and I needed to go to a Subaru dealer immediately. The nearest dealer was in Lincoln, Nebraska, about an hour away. I decided to see how things proceeded and then panic if it got worse.
We soaked up as much water as we could, took the mats/rugs out and hung them up to dry, and went for a ride with all the windows open to try and start drying out the car. All the parts of the car that are computerized were either not working, or they were working and the car just didn’t know it.
After a while, we ended up in a bookstore in Grand Island, Nebraska that I was planning to go to anyway. On the way into the store, my phone rang. I said to Susan that it was probably Subaru calling… Well, it was Subaru. My dealer in Orange, Virginia, wanted to let me know that they received messages about the car’s severe problems and that they could help. I explained we were 1000 miles away, told them what happened, and explained that I was planning to wait it out as I decided once the computer chips or wires or whatever dried out, the car would (I hoped) be fine. The lady on the phone wasn’t really interested once she found out I was so far away, but I made it through my explanation, thanked her, and hung up.
It took two days before the car was back to normal, except for the dampness fogging up all the windows. That took longer. Now I don’t even mess with the sunroof, I just use the air conditioning.
Thanks for reading,
Kevin