Shame

8/2/2017

On every trip, there is a day that’s just destined to not be great. For Jane and I, that was today.

Oh, it started well enough, of course. I woke up, had a nice leisurely hashbrown breakfast, and enjoyed sitting beneath the trees in a complete absence of bugs or humidity or heat. Just perfect.

But eventually, Jane and I had to go somewhere to do something, because I am incapable of just sitting still for too long. So we went back out to Mount Rainier to hike the Reflection Lakes, a trail well-known for its beautiful lakes and wildflowers.

I love driving through these old growth forests - but the pictures are less than awe-inspiring in comparison, I must confess.

Unfortunately, today the wind was not in my favor. Whereas yesterday the skies were a crystal clear, perfect blue, today they were hazy and gray. You could barely even see Mount Rainier. I felt bad for all of the tourists that had arrived today, missing the perfect views.

Bleh.

The haze was accompanied by that now oh-so-familiar smell of burning firewood – yep, the smoke had been blown all the way down from the fires up in Canada. I decided to go on my hike anyways despite the obvious lack of reflections in the Reflection Lakes. People kept telling me it was going to be hot, but I told them I was from Texas and that pretty much took care of that.

Well, it really wasn’t that hot, so that wasn’t the problem with the trail. The problem was the insane amount of bugs. I have never in my life seen so many! At any given point in time there were a dozen flies, a couple horseflies, and a couple mosquitoes orbiting my body like tiny planets around a gigantic sun. I was wearing a bright yellow shirt, which certainly did nothing to help my predicament but did at least help reinforce the metaphor.

The buzzing was driving me completely insane, especially as the flies tended to bounce off my ears for whatever reason. I guess maybe my ears look like flowers. Or maybe flies just really feed off of irritation. Either way, I ended up tying my bandana around my ears solely to keep out the noise of all of the flies. With that irritation gone, the trail suddenly seemed much more pleasant!

I wandered around at a leisurely pace, not really seeing much in the ways of mountain vistas but at least seeing some lovely flowers. And I tell you, if I don’t have malaria after today, I must be immune! Holy cow, the mosquito bites.

But wait, there’s more! Yes, the reason for today’s “not great”-ness had yet to strike. I hopped back in Jane, shooing out a dozen or so mosquitoes and horseflies, and went to turn the key. Instead of the much-anticipated “WUB WUB VROOMMMM” sound of an old grumpy V8 firing to life, I was treated with an interesting “WHIRRRRRR”. Seems that the starter had decided that it was done turning over the engine, and that was going to be that.

I am fairly undaunted by things like this, which happen on occasion. The starter has never done anything to me really, though occasionally it makes some very odd noises, so usually I just employ the “try it again” strategy. If that doesn’t work, you’d be surprised how effective the “kick it until it works” strategy is. So I was kind of perplexed when neither worked.

Well, I carry a giant toolbag with me for a reason, so I got it out and crawled under Jane and had the starter out in a matter of 15 minutes. It’s only two bolts, after all, and the worst part about it is the accumulated grime covering the thing. Careful inspection of the starter and the exposed flywheel showed that neither were missing teeth or had any measurable wear. I spun the starter around a couple times, whacked it against the ground more than a couple of times (in lieu of using my hammer, which was at camp), and then shrugged and stuck it back in. Again, you’d be surprised how often the “advanced caveman” technique works on these cars.

Turning the key again unfortunately yielded no promising noises whatsoever, just the mocking whirr of the starter not engaging with the flywheel. Useless!

Then, I was left with some amount of confusion. I was in a random parking lot quite a ways away from any of the nearest visitor services, with no cell phone service. I considered hiking to the Paradise Visitor Center, which was only a mile and a half away up the mountain back along the trail, but the thought of all of those flies soured me on that idea. Then I considered hitchhiking, but that seemed not likely to work as all of the cars that passed were headed away from the visitor center. So instead I did nothing, which proved fortuitous as a few minutes later a nice group of people (who had seen me messing with the car a half hour earlier and had expressed their well wishes) approached me and offered me a ride up to the visitor center.

Really, you can’t beat human nature. People are just great.

So I took their offer (thanks Carolyn, Walter, and Melanie!) and got a ride up to the visitor center, where I then badgered the rangers into giving me their phone so I could call Don at the Mustang Ranch as well as AAA. I then proceeded to monopolize their phone for an hour, as it is pretty hard to get a hold of anyone without use of the internet these days. I got through to Don pretty quickly, explaining the issue and expressing my regrets that I’d have to be a pain in his ass for two days in a row. He said, “not to worry!” and got to work finding me a new starter. Then I called AAA, which was less successful as the operator had to call around a bunch of different tow companies, eventually reaching the conclusion that my nearest ride was seven hours away. SEVEN! Well, nah.

Fortunately, the rangers had a local tow company on retainer – Eatonville Towing. Conveniently, the Mustang Ranch is also in Eatonville. I gave them a call and they said they’d be right up in an hour, and they’d come get me at the visitor center before going to get Jane. Perfect! My last call was then to the campground owners, to let them know that I wouldn’t be around tonight and not to worry about me but that I’d have to stay in Eatonville near my car. They were very understanding and told me that no matter what, we’d work it out and if I needed a ride to let them know.

I laid around reading a book for an hour, appeasing myself with some ice cream from the Inn. It vaguely occurred to me that I should feel sorrier for myself than I did. But hey, shit happens sometimes. And if Jane was going to kick the starter to the curb, I was damn lucky that she did it right at the top of Mount Rainier with some vintage Mustang experts sitting there right at the bottom of the mountain. The general feeling was, therefore, “Meh”.

Sean (Shawn? Shaun? Who knows) eventually rolled up in his big flatbed, and we went down to Reflection Lakes to get Jane. Blocked traffic in both directions to roll her up onto the flatbed, and I cringed as I saw a woman in one of the stopped cars taking a picture. Avert your eyes, people! My Jane does not belong on flatbeds, strapped down like a caged beast. She does not belong to a nonfunctional state, another broken down ancient piece of the past. She does not belong to disappointment and shame, to failure. This is a car that is the antithesis of all of those things.

And yet, there we were, jostling our way down the mountain, the reflection of her perfect lines in the rearview mirror mocking me. I guess everyone trips up every once in a while.

Sean was kind enough to run me past the campground, where the lovely owners and host had taken the time to repack my cooler with new ice. I threw all of my stuff into my bag (clock’s ticking on the tow truck!), hastily thanked them and promised to be back the next day, and hopped back in the truck. Then it was off to the Mustang Ranch, where we unloaded Jane and abandoned her. It wasn’t truly abandoning her, of course, but it always feels that way. I really do not like to leave her. I think if I had children, I’d be a terrible helicopter mom.

I finally reached my motel for the night and grabbed some dinner, then plopped down on the bed to at least catch up on blog posts. But alas, the internet here is about a third of the speed of that at my lovely perfect campsite, so that idea pretty quickly got scrapped as well. YOU try uploading five pictures for an hour and see how mad YOU get!

So, it’s been a frustrating day. Or it should have been, at least. But I had a good time chatting with Sean about his tow business and dirt bike racing and family and things, and I was really touched to have people helping me out all day when they could have just sat by and let me struggle. And in the end, a starter replacement is nothing major – remember, it took me 15 minutes to remove mine in a parking lot – so I guess it could be a lot worse! And I got some ice cream, which was nice.

Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day. Until then… Kelly signing out.