A Mountain Highway Adventure

Yesterday, the Jeep, which still has no name other than Jeep or Buddy, broke down near the rest stop south of McCloud (and north of Bartle) on Hwy 89. I was driving along, headed back up to the kids and a class I'm trying to get to today regarding important papers, Suddenly, I see a puff of white smoke coming up out of the defrost vents at the base of my windshield. This was accompanied by a whiff of burnt peppermint (like if you toss a candy on the fire, not like if you toss the leaves on) and my "Oh crud..."

So I pulled off the road and let the engine cool. Meanwhile, I opened up the hood and was overwhelmed by that awful smell. To be sure, I was looking for more smoke with visions of engine fires dancing in my head. Luckily no, and I didn't have one of those extinguishers on hand. Maybe I should invest in one to keep in there. Of course, I managed to not see my fan belt had come apart and was wrapped up. That was discovered later.

I turned on the engine (remember, the fact the fan belt shredded was still undiscovered), and it made a horrible noise that I just can't describe, so I shut it off again. Called mom, and Bj... couldn't get either of them at first. I sent a status notification off, just in case the unthinkable happened and some nutjob stopped to offer help and hauled me off. Unlikely, but one never knows. I even called Adam.

Of course, it was hot, I was actually sweating hard, and I had no water in the vehicle. This is actually unusual, I always try to keep drinking water on hand just for such emergencies.

Eventually, I was rescued. Meanwhile, CHP had checked on me, and a group of bikers had stopped and sent one of the ladies to wait with me. As she put it "leaving a young lady alone on the side of the road is just unacceptable." I was rather grateful, as I'd already seen one buzzard circling me (to my morbid amusement)
and I found it strange that so many people were stopping.

Don't get me wrong, I think it's great that so many people stopped to make sure that I was ok and whether I had help coming, but with every person stopping I began to wonder how much longer it was going to be till I met someone I didn't want to. Bright purple, a pretty (I guess. :P) face with cell phone in hand, sitting outside of a car way too hot to stay in seems to draw a lot of attention.

Like I said though, I was eventually rescued. BJ and April, with some water, and and friend, came. While I drank water like my life depended on it (it did, I didn't fancy a trip to the hospital for an IV or anything) they inspected the engine. THIS is where the fanbelt problem was discovered.

Uncle Peter, that karma thing about vehicles came round full circle. I'm sorry I laughed at your ancient tire, though old tires should grow beard to show that they aren't safe. Later today we will discover what else is wrong. Hopefully it's just the serpentine fan belt that needs replacing.

~Teresa