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DAY 9 – Monday, March 22
START: Pitkin, CO
END: Cortez, CO
MILEAGE: 226 miles

HIGHLIGHTS: Car trouble

As cold as our room became overnight, the Pitkin Hostel’s shower more than made up for it.  Piping hot water spraying from a grapefruit-sized heavy-flow showerhead was just what we needed to jumpstart our day.  Augmenting this morning’s oatmeal with fresh blueberries we’d bought the day before, we were supercharged and ready to go. 

We talked to Jay for a good half-hour as we cleaned up and restocked the cooler.  He told us how he lived for free at the hostel part of the year in exchange for handiwork.  When he’s not here, he lives all over.  He’s lived in Oklahoma, Michigan, Vancouver, and as a former truck driver he’s been through every state except for Maine and Hawaii.  Over a century ago, Pitkin was a booming gold-mining town with almost two thousand residents.  According to Jay, less than a hundred people live here year-round and the town now serves only as a residence. Other than the hostel, there are no jobs, companies, or ways to make money in Pitkin.  There used to be a restaurant, he said, but it closed down.

I came back in after loading the car and was surprised to see the rec room had gained a few extra people.  We figured out that these were the actual owners of the hostel.  We never even realized they were here the night before.  Lauren asked if they wanted us to strip the bed or anything, but the woman in charge just smiled and said not to worry about it.  In retrospect, it occurred to me that they were probably just going to make the bed and not change the sheets.  They probably hadn’t changed them from the last people who stayed in that room.  But hey, that was cool.  The bed was clean with no noticeable stains or sexually transmitted insects poking around. 

Lauren and I took a walk through downtown Pitkin, which took less than ten minutes.  Jay was right.  There was nothing to indicate that this town was anything but a place to live.  Even the post office looked as though it hadn’t been open for quite some time.  The town hall, which sits next door to the hostel hadn’t been used for years one of the hostel owners told us.  Outside the post office was a community bulletin board where the townspeople could post notices of potluck dinners, baby showers and Bible studies.  They gave no addresses for any of the events’ locations, but simply said, “Meet at Jane Smith’s house” or “Meet at the hostel.”  Awesome.

I don’t know when we’ll have the opportunity, but Pitkin is a place I’d love to come back to for a week and just chill.  I’d love to experience the hostel during busier times of year.  I’d love to go hiking and exploring by day, then come back to the hostel around three in the afternoon to rest up for the next day’s adventure.  I’d love to hang out and talk with the other guests for a few hours, rather than having just enough time to cook dinner before everybody else goes to bed.  I would love to come to Pitkin just to escape modern society for a few days and unwind. 

We drove for another ten minutes, finally going downhill.  This time, the instant I sensed the Mazda acting up, I floored the accelerator.  That’s when the car stalled.  Now we were coasting down the Rocky Mountains with no power brakes or steering.  I pulled the emergency brake and yanked hard on the steering wheel, coaxing the car into the next pullout and grinding it to a stop before we plunged over the side of the mountain. 

That one had been a little too hair-raising for both of us.  We decided to call AAA and have them send a tow truck.  We had bought a AAA membership specifically for this trip and I thought I had asked for the service where they’ll tow you up to a hundred miles.  But the man on the phone told me that they could only tow me three miles.  After that it would cost us three dollars for each additional mile.  As near as I could tell, we were at least fifty miles from the nearest town big enough to have a garage. 

I told the AAA guy that we would see how far we could get on our own.  I figured it might take us awhile, but as long as the car could keep going for ten minutes at a time before crapping out, we’d eventually get there.  So I turned the key and we were off.  We kept “leapfrogging” like this for a half hour or so until the car finally coughed and didn’t start up again.  We let it sit for an extra fifteen minutes but when I turned the key, the engine just kept cranking and cranking until the battery was about to die.  Damn.  It looked like we were going to have to pay a ridiculous amount of money to get towed after all. 

I grabbed my cell phone off the dash.  No service.  In the thirty minutes since calling AAA, we had descended too far into the canyons to get a signal.  What were we supposed to do now?  All kinds of scenarios ran through my head.  I pictured us hitching a ride from some mountain man who would drag us off to his butcher shop and serve us for dinner.  At the very least, I pictured somebody breaking into our car and stealing everything while we were fifty miles away hailing a tow truck. 

I prayed the most sincere prayer of my life, banged on the steering wheel and swore filthy, dirty words at the car, then turned the key.  The Mazda roared to life.  I thanked God and Jesus a dozen times and we were off again.  Somehow we made it to the town of Rico.  Actually, “town” is a bit too generous a word.  There was an open gas station and a couple of vacant houses.  The gas station didn’t have a garage, but while I filled up, Lauren talked to the guy running the register and told him the problem we were having.  He said it seemed to him like a clogged fuel pump or filter, confirming something I had started suspecting myself.  My own Geo Metro had once shown similar symptoms.  After numerous trips to the garage and Chevy dealer, and working that extended warranty to the tune of several hundred dollars, the problem ended up being corrected by replacing the thirty-dollar fuel filter.

The clerk told us that there was a garage in Delores, a town almost forty miles away, and if we could make it there, they’d be able to fix it.  We thanked him and started off again.  After gassing up, we were able to drive all the way to Delores without stopping, further confirming in my head that it was a fuel filter problem.  Close to empty, the fuel hadn’t had been able to get through all the gunk in the filter.  Now that the tank was full, there was enough pressure or saturation or whatever to function until we got to Dolores.  It worked as a theory I suppose.  Unfortunately, the garage in Delores didn’t have any replacement filters.  The mechanic told us he could fix it tomorrow.  Otherwise, we’d have to try the next town, Cortez, ten miles south.

Cortez was the first town printed in somewhat bold letters on the map since we’d turned south back in Montrose.  It looked promising and we were pretty sure we could make it.  The only question now was could we make it in time?  It was getting on towards five o’clock by this point and we weren’t sure how late the garages stayed open in this part of Colorado.

We made it into Cortez without incident and stopped at the first garage we saw.  They were closing in ten minutes but said if we headed farther up the road there was another place that was open until six.  So we drove up to Big O Tires, who had a fuel filter and could replace it right away.  An hour later, the car was running as smooth as ever and we paid the sixty-seven dollars for parts and labor without hesitation. 

By this point, it was too late to make it to the Four Corners before dark and there were no other towns between here and there, so we decided to just find a motel, do some laundry, and go to bed early.  That night, at a local diner, as we prayed over our burgers and Mountain Dew, we gave plenty of thanks to our Maker for getting us down the Rocky Mountains alive.

ONTO DAY 10