In which the jeep died.

Yeah, so, I was coming down a fairly steep grade, see, surrounded by big rigs and the wind blowing like crazy, and suddenly the jeep started coughing. Really hard. THUMP! THUMP! It was like it was trying to jump into overdrive but not making it.

I slowed down from 75 to 55. The symptoms went away… for a mile or so, but then they came back. THUNK!

Oh hell.

I pulled over. The engine died before I could even turn it off.

Oh fucking hell.

I sat for awhile, maybe 20 minutes, as the jeep rocked with the force of every semi passing it. Then I started it back up and made it four miles before having to pull over again because of the same THUMP!ing symptoms.

The next time I tried, I made it a whole mile to the next exit and its lone gas station.

I peed first because I’d been in the car for 130 miles, then asked the clerk where the nearest auto shop was. She jabbed her thumb over her shoulder and said, “Twenty miles that way.”

Twenty miles!?! Fuck. I’m starting to like Wyoming as much as I like Nebraska.

Outside, Bindu ran around sniffing weeds and posts while I sighed theatrically and cursed under my breath and opened the hood and checked everything I know to check: fluids, wiring, hoses, belts. I re-seated all the fuses. I got back in the jeep and sat in it for ten minutes, thinking. An unnecessarily cold rain began and Bindu got back in, too. Finally I started the jeep up and took a couple of tours around the parking lot. It ran fine, so I got back on the Interstate.

Two miles later, I had to pull over again. The thing was dead before it was entirely over the line onto the shoulder.

I called the ‘rents, and between us we finally found a wrecker who was answering their damn phone on Saturday afternoon. Two hours later, a wrecker came took us the last ten miles into Rawlins, WY. (Jack’s Towing Inc. totally rocks, btw.)

Dave was awesome. He let Bindu ride in the cab. He took the jeep to a local shop and me and my luggage and my dog to a motel where he told the girl at the front desk that I was a customer of his, thereby earning me the motel’s special “broke down rate.”

Here I sit in rockin’ Rawlins until Monday, when I have to walk across the street to meet with a mechanic named Larry and see what there is to see regarding the jeep. I have an interview on Friday with an ISP in Walla Walla, and I need a job more than ever now that I’m putting all this towing and motel-ing and mechanic-ing on my mom’s credit card.

But there’s an upside, which is that the motel takes pets (so Bindu isn’t locked in the jeep), there’s free wireless, and the cable seems decent enough. It’s cold and rainy outside (there have even been a few flurries), but the blue dog and I are warm and dry.

In other news, I’m starving. And as I already ate the brie and baguette my mom packed for me this morning, I’m gonna order a pizza.

…or not. I just called the local Domino’s (with my cell phone, which is on ROAM fer chrissakes, because the room phone requires $10 to activate), and – I shit you not – their message says, “Due to a shortage of employees we were forced to close. Sorry for any inconvenience. We’ll be open at eleven tomorrow.”

Thank God for Pizza Hut. They’ll be here in 40 minutes.