It began with the RV lot owner pointing out I didn’t have my trailer hitch down all the way. If I had left like that, well, I wouldn’t be here I’d be back in California! Thanking the very nice man for pointing out this lifesaving fact, the hitch got connected and I was off!
My original plan was to leave at 8:00am, but it was much closer to 9:00am. The reason this is important was my very tight timeframe to get to the town of Blythe by 11:00am in which I would still be south of 100 degrees! Well, not so!!!!
There is a 10 mile hill after Indio (the last place to stop before Blythe) and just at the top is a rest area. I made it up the hill with the temperature gauge still short of overheating, stopped at the rest area, tried to use the restroom (details I will spare you!), and came out to see the lovely florescent green liquid streaming from out of my engine and onto the ground!
I had just seen that same scenario a week earlier when my water pump had broken and I had to replace it. This wasn’t good! When I opened the hood the overflow tank was literally boiling up and out! Another very nice man stopped over to tell me he didn’t think anything was broken, but I had just overheated. That would be best, because now I can’t find my cell phone….not the auspicious start I was hoping for!
I took the cats out of the truck and as luck (?) would have it for me (not for her) a nice woman with her two daughters and mother were sitting in the shade because their radiator had broken too. Her two lovely daughters were very happy to see the cats, so I had two babysitters while on to fixing this problem!
I am very blessed because I’ve got two very good car/rescue me sources. I called both my mechanic (who thought he was free of me when I drove away – hah!) and my stepfather. Both talked me through what to do and how to do it. In the meantime, I kidnapped another man fixing his broken car to double check mine. He wasn’t sure about my car, but a little while later I saw he’d been rerouted to the other families vehicle where a full blown repair job was going on! I’m sure he never thought he’d be stuck in the desert fixing stranded women’s cars and not his own! (side bar: great money making opportunity at the top of steep and hot inclines!)
Anyways, eventually I go on my way thinking the worst was done – hah! Blythe was two hours away for those who could drive faster than 50mph tops, so for me, much longer. The heat kept going up, the cats crying kept getting louder, and my anxiety and fear kept increasing with each passing minute and degree of heat.
I’ll be honest, I was SO stressed I barely noticed the 107+ heat in the car, but the cats were panting and in a lot of distress. I bordered and beyond the hysterical mark not able to tell what was sweat and what was tears. The only requirement of this trip was not to hurt or kill the cats and I was very, very close to doing big damage to them at any moment. This could NOT be God’s plan for me!
I cried, prayed, and felt myself far, far away from the joyful, peaceful place where this plan had originated. But, clouds did cover the sun and finally the blight that is called Blythe rose out of the horizon with the most beautiful Motel 6 sign I’d ever seen.
I got the cats out and onto their new transport dolly (pictures soon) and headed straight for the air conditioned lobby. Relief, tears of joy, and looking like a maniac as I gushed all over the very young and very not interested boy manning the desk of my joy and relief that I had made it with everyone alive.
The level of relief was drastic at that moment, but was soon replaced with the terror of having to do all this again tomorrow. It’s not the fear of driving the trailer, it’s just the fear of everything that can go wrong and how vulnerable I felt. I never was able to eat that day with the knot of terror in my tummy holding court all day and then most of the next.
I’d like to say I slept, but that didn’t really happen either. The alarm clock went off and it was time to do it all over again…
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