Teleidoscope

Fri, Jun 22, 2007

Dead Truck

Posted at 11:58 pm MDT to Travel

Well, I arrived home,about an hour and half later than I should have.

As I was driving along the tollway home from the airport (speed limit 70, minimum speed 50) I may have lost a fanbelt or something. I heard a brief thwap and the engine started overheating, and when I got to the stoplight at the end of the toll way it just died. A lot of smoke or fumes came out of the engine compartment.

I put on the flashers and called AAA and 911 and Nanette (Cell phones are a wonderful invention) and spent about an hour directing traffic so people would go around the truck. I didn't want to stay in the truck in case it got rear-ended by some idiot, and breathing those fumes didn't seem likely to be very healthy. Waving cars into the other lane gave me something to do while I stood there next to the walk/don't-walk light.

Ater it got dark, I remembered that I now have a crank flashlight in the truck (I actually have a regular flashlight and a package of batteries in there too, but the new, cranked model was easily accessible. So I had that to wave at the cars.

There were a lot of very nice people who stopped to ask if I needed help.

There were a lot of very stupid people who came right up to the tailgate of the truck even with the flashers going and me waving them around. One car came so close it had to back up when the driver finally woke up and realized that my truck was not going anywhere soon.

Eventually a very nice young police officer arrived and pushed the truck out of the intersection. Another can stopped and the driver helped with the pushing.

And about the time the officer was walking back to his car, the tow truck finally arrived. It wasn't technically a tow truck: my truck has four-wheel-drive so it can't be towed with two wheels on the ground, it has to ride on a flatbed.

The driver took me to a mechanic that Nanette recommended, and she met us there and brought me home. Tomorrow I'll have to see about getting a rental car, and Monday I'll talk to the mechanic and find out how bad things are.

This trip to the airport and back is the longest and highest speed trip I've made since I had the truck worked on in April... I'm kind of wondering if they put everything back together properly in the front end.

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