Whoosh. A little pooped, but tonight I can catch my breath and slow down. No sooner had I dropped Joelle at the Southwest terminal, than my phone rang. My favorite stoic and smiling Pep Boy, Garrett, called to tell me the Jeep was all better. New axle, brake, rotor, fluids, and on, and on.
Much like GPS, I've been re-routing.
I have made my way from San Diego to Hesperia, California; to Flagstaff, Arizona; to Gallup, New Mexico; to Durango, Colorado.
Hesperia is located in the high desert and was alarmingly windy. It reminded me of one of my favorite children's books, When the Wind Blew by Margaret Wise Brown. It is the story of an old woman and her 17 cats on a windy day.
On the way out of town, I stopped at a Von's grocery store to stock up on healthy food choices. A Baguette, goat cheese, fruit, grapes, salad, and a container of olives from the olive bar. You ever notice how difficult it is to get the lids to fit the plastic containers? A word of advice, don't hold the container too tightly. The squeezing causes a propelling force to pop the lid and shoot 27 black and green olives across the deli department in a slow motion arc, culminating in a multi-olive skid across the floor on an amazingly viscous oil base.
While my hometown was flooding, I was driving across the Mojave.
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| Desolate beauty of the Mojave |
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| Needles, California |
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| Noticed this when I pulled over for a Scooter pee break. |
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| Fueling my gas price obsession in Needles, Ca |
I grilled poor Garrett on every possible safety and preemptive topic of Jeep maintenance I could think of. "Did you check the air pressure in the tires?" He assured me the the check engine light will remain on at all times now, but don't be alarmed.
I wanted to get the heck out of Dodge, so I headed to Durango. When I reached Thoreau, I noticed a sign for a post office. I finally got around to buying stamps for the postcards I promised my sis in law. It was there that I met the happiest postal worker ever. She was tall and beautiful with long raven hair and a deep laugh. She must love her job.
Many people have offered advice about traveling cross country and they all reminded me to never let the tank get below half. The Jeep gets awful gas mileage, and according to Garrett, it gets even worse in high altitudes. Being in 6 and 7 thousand feet altitudes, the gas mileage positively sucks. The gas gauge literally plummets before my eyes, feeding my gas paranoia.
Pulling out of the Thoreau post office the gauge started wavering between 3/4 and 1/2, so I stopped at the first station I saw. Why does a gas station in the middle of nowhere need an electric gate, chain link fence, and razor wire? As I pulled into the station, there was a sleeping dog in front of the pumps. I slid my card into the slot and an alarm sounded. A message showed up on the pump stating I had to go inside. The brown, greasy dog was circling. The clerk was pleasant and apologized because running the card would take a while since they were on dial up. He also informed me that if I wanted to use the rest room, there was a spot-a-pot out back. I made a wide circle around an elderly hitchhiker as I pulled out of the station.
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| Crown Point, New Mexico |
Somewhere around Farmington, NM, I heard a noise coming from beneath the dash. It was kind of a scurrying sound, or maybe a crispy sort of fluttering. It seemed to move from one side to the other of the steering column. Hmmm. Could it be a mouse? A wide-winged beetle? I pulled over to the side of the road to inspect. I shone my flashlight around and tapped the dashboard to encourage whatever it was to depart. No luck. I kept driving for another 35 miles, with my legs to the far right, in case whatever it was fell out while I was driving. I didn't want to get startled and drive off a cliff.
It was then that I looked into the door pocket and noticed a bottle of lotion rhythmically rolling into a bag of granola. Mystery solved.
You must have felt relieved but also a bit chagrined when you discovered what the sound was.
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