Okay, so I read about a picturesque little scenic drive in Arizona Highways magazine, with an adorable little remote bed-and-breakfast accommodation, and decided to take a road trip to check it out.
Whatever you do, never trust Arizona Highways magazine!
First of all, they gave the wrong name for the road, so I didn't know if I was in the right place.
Next, they totally exaggerated the "scenic beauty" of the place, which was just basically more northern Arizona high desert, something I've seen my share of by now, believe me.
To make things worse, my search for the nonexistent scenic beauty led me to, as my grandfather used to say, "out where Jesus left his sandals." I was on a dirt road, out in the middle of nowhere.
And that was when the car trouble started.
But a few minutes earlier, I'd seen this REAL grubby and scary guy walking down the road. He looked like the 12th runner-up in a Kenny Rogers look-alike contest, in filthy overalls. He tried to flag me down for a ride, and I might have stopped to help him if I'd seen his car broken down or something (there was a small 10-spot tent-camping campground nearby, and I think that's where he may have come from--either that, or the Yuma prison). Anyway, I hadn't seen a broken-down car, so I just shook my head sadly and drove past.
He gave me the finger as I went by.
The car trouble was that my car was, like, shaking on the dirt road, and acting like I had a flat tire or something.
I pulled over. ("Pulled over" isn't really the right term. This was a narrow dirt road with no place to pull over except a very muddy little foot-wide run-off ditch beside the road.) I grabbed my cell phone: it had a very weak signal, and its battery was dying fast.
Of course I'd conveniently left my cell charger at home. Worse, I had no weapon with me to ward off the angry Kenny Rogers look-alike, not even my tear gas.
I'm an idiot.
So anyway, I pulled over and without getting out of the car to look at the tires, I called Triple A. The call was breaking up badly, but I was managing to communicate with the dispatcher, who naturally asked my location.
Um, in the middle of nowhere?
I really had no idea how to describe where I was. The road wasn't labelled the way Arizona Highways magazine had said it would be, and I hadn't kept track of how far I was from the main road. I guessed about ten miles down the dirt road? At that point the call began to break up again, and when the call failed, I didn't bother to call back.
I was trying to think of who to call to help me. I made a call to my friend in Phoenix, and got no answer. I got on the Internet on my phone and sent out an e-mail to another friend. But my cell signal was dying, so I just turned off the phone. I was hoping maybe another car would come along, but I hadn't seen one since I'd left the main road.
Then the rain began.
It had obviously rained earlier, because parts of the road were very muddy.
The scary thing is that Arizona has these things called "washes." A wash is, like, a water path that may look totally dry one minute, and then a storm, even in another part of the area, may suddenly cause the wash to flood, and I mean FLOOD, as in "flash flood," with enough force to sweep your car along with it.
If you've seen Into the Wild, you know what I mean. The protagonist pulls off by the side of the road and his car is suddenly swept up and carried away by a raging river.
I could see lightning in the distance. This did not bode well.
I still hadn't gotten out of the car to check the tire, and now I didn't want to, for fear of getting soaked.
So there I was, wondering which was the worse danger--grubby and angry Kenny Rogers, who was about to appear any minute at the crest of the hill behind me, or the potential flash flood from the thunderstorm.
And of course, I had neglected to obey the rules of off-road driving (to give credit where it's due, this is from Arizona Highways magazine):
"WARNING: Back-road travel can be hazardous, so beware of weather and road conditions. Carry plenty of water. Don't travel alone, and let someone know where you are going and when you plan to return."
No one knew where I was.
But give me a break: I had a huge bottle of water.
One out of three isn't bad?
In my defense, the description in Arizona Highways magazine hadn't made this sound like an off-roading experience: "By dirt road standards, this is a freeway, easily navigated by passenger cars."
Anyway, fearful of the rain, and the potential "wash," I decide to fire up the engine and keep driving as far as I could go on the flat tire, or whatever it was. I turned around the first time I had a chance and headed back to the main road.
Fortunately, I never saw Kenny Rogers again; I guess he'd gone back to his tent at the little campground.
And as I drove, the problem with the car seemed to subside. Could a flat tire somehow reinflate itself?
Once I got onto the paved road, in spite of the storm, the car drove even better still.
On the way back I passed an old-fashioned service station, a gas station not just with cashiers, but with people who actually know about cars.
The man explained that probably muddy tires were to blame. I guess mud gets not just on the outside, but up inside the rim or something. He attacked my wheels with a high-powered hose and sent me on my way.
I never did see the scenic beauty or the charming bed-and-breakfast place, but at least I made it back alive.
and I don't think mine were that bad,
but you get the idea.
No comments:
Post a Comment