Two weekends ago, we celebrated Labor Day weekend with a drive to Colorado. We left a day early (this is also the first week that Lola will have been to school all 5 days in row) to meet Matt in Denver (he had been in Alabama the first part of the week). I worked a long shift at the bakery and then lightening speed fast and record time for me, got the kids packed, in the car with snacks and library movies and the house cleaned up enough that no one breaking in would think we'd already been ransacked. We drove along happily until we reached the middle of no-where New Mexico (somewhere between Clayton and Raton) and the battery light came on. I happened to be talking to Matt on the phone as he was boarding a 3 hour flight and told him if no one heard from me...send help. I called my Dad and told him the alternator had just gone out and I needed to know if the car would just stop. At this point, I should have looked at my phone battery because as luck would have it, I was down to 20%. Dad called back to tell me, after talking to a mechanic, that I would be fine as long as I didn't shut the car off and watched the heat gauge (apparently there is a tendency for the wires to overheat when the alternator is off and the car can blow up). I pictured pulling into the gas station and making the kids scatter while I pumped gas into a running vehicle.
He called back 50 minutes later as I dropped the kids off at a McDonalds to use the restroom while I maintained my composure in the van that I could not drop off, to tell me that he had talked to the Honda mechanic and the info from before was wrong. The van could shut off at any minute so it would be great if I could make it to Pueblo. Why Pueblo? Because Pueblo was close enough someone could come get us and big enough to get the van repaired quickly. But I did not make it to Pueblo. After the kids jumped into the moving van, I told them to start praying and that we could not use any electricity, including the air conditioner. Again, I should have looked at my battery life on the phone as it may have caused me to rethink my plan of rushing to Pueblo. We managed to make it over the pass in Raton and just as we crested the last hill, everything shut off. We coasted down the hill as I tried to pull over and find a straightaway with a wide enough shoulder. I was nervous as it was almost dark and I didn't want to pull over just after a curve on the hill and shoulders were non-existent. Just after mile marker 8, I found a flat part (cliffs or deep careens had been my options until just that moment). I pulled over and couldn't even use the hazard lights as EVERYTHING shuts off, including electric doors. I grabbed the phone to make a call and I was at 15% (my phone shuts off at 20% usually so I started to panic). I called my brother and told him I had just passed mile 8, my phone was dying, and please help. And then I hung up and read the kids a story via dusk. I figured a tow truck would arrive in an hour or Brady would arrive in 3 hours so I just had to entertain the kids in the dark with no flashlight (my phone acts as a flashlight normally) on the side of the highway for 1-3 hours...no problem. Thankfully there was a 24 hour towing service that didn't leave us stranded on the side for long. The kids say I was a little crazy, going from a laugh to crying back to laughing. Mainly because the kids were freaking out and I literally had minimal ways to entertain them on the side of the road in the dark and Lola had to go potty but refused to use the grass embankment. Not one sweet Texan on their way to CO pulled over to help us (probably because they saw a van full of crazies).
The tow truck driver was almost mute. I asked him several questions to be friendly and hopefully calm the kids down and he was NO HELP.
Me: Are you from Raton?
TTD: No
Me: Oh, where are you from?
TTD: Georgia
Me: So, what brought you to CO?
TTD: My wife's family lives here (yes...a WHOLE sentence!!)
Me: Well that's nice. Do you like Trinidad?
TTD: No
ME: I'm sorry about that...cue the 'Deliverance' music
I have to admit that images of that Kurt Russell movie 'Breakdown' flashed through my head too. TTD's less than stellar conversation skills contributed to the doom and gloom thoughts.
Thankfully it was a short jaunt to Trinidad and we all fit in the TTD truck. The kids learned how cars are towed and how not to talk to people if they ever become tow truck drivers. We pulled up at a Super 8 that was built in 1972. Lola still needed to use the bathroom, so I told her to run in with Grayson to the lobby bathroom while I sorted things out with TTD, including getting out our luggage of the van thru the driver's door (since all the electronic locks/doors didn't work to pull the luggage out the easy way). They came back outside to tell me that there wasn't a restroom so my first order of business with the nice lady missing all her teeth behind the counter was to see if she couldn't just give us the room key before we checked in so that Lola wouldn't have an accident on her lobby floor. She had kindly upgraded us to the most expensive suite room which as really just a large room with the same furniture as a normal room...not sure what was so suite about it. The AC compressor provided a constant hum to drown out the highway noise and we were directly above the lobby so I didn't have to worry about the kids stomping about on the second floor and waking anyone in a first floor room. Other positives included the free frosted flakes we received for breakfast and late check-out at 11.
I called the mechanics first thing Friday and 2 hours later they called back to tell me it was indeed our alternator and that Pueblo was the closest city with a part so they would go and get the part and bring it back and I could be out of Trinidad by 5pm for $600. Yay, vacation! So what to do with 4 kids in a city without uber and NOTHING nearby for us to walk to? Matt wanted me to rent a car and just go on to Denver. Sadly, all the cars at enterprise were rented for the weekend (Trinidad has a HUGE Labor Day weekend celebration in which the entire town shuts down to party with a parade and rodeo and such) though he did try...ironically he rented a car for the following weekend. I called Hertz and argued with the agent who told me she didn't have a car or a reservation for me. And after basically calling her an idiot (she had no desire to help me and then I had to apologize when I realized the reservation was another weekend...though she was SO unhelpful I really just wanted to hang up on her). And I don't know how we would have made it to Hertz without uber anyway. They did have a city bus that we were able to catch a ride to the park on after checking out of the hotel and leaving our luggage in the lobby. We played for a while, walked to the grocery store for lunch and then had a picnic before the rain started to drench us. We hung out in McDonalds playing spot it and eating ice cream cones.
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