Adventures in Babysitting

I was going to next write about my fabulous day of skiing yesterday, a day so cool I kept saying, "Wow, I feel like a good skier!"

But instead I'm going to tell the story of why my poor car is 128 miles away and I'm $100 poorer (so far).

Oh well, the skiing thing probably would have been boring anyhow.

Rachel has an awesome trip scheduled for this summer and in addition to paying a lot of money to make it happen, I also get the privilege of taking her to once a month meetings 2 hours away.

The first monthly meeting was scheduled for today. There have already been an orientation meeting which we missed (we weren't informed of it) and an interview which we attended, but the first monthly meeting was today.

Since we weren't invited to the orientation meeting, I've been feeling a bit in the dark so it was important to me to attend today's meeting even though we're in the midst of a winter travel advisory. We even got an email from one of the trip leaders giving us permission to beg off due to the weather.

But I was trying to be responsible and so off we went.

The roads had been bad for the first hour plus and we were a bit behind schedule. We had about 15 more minutes until the meeting was supposed to start and we were probably closer to 20 minutes out when there was a thump under the hood (on I-70 doing 75 mph).

The car immediately started decelerating. The oil light came on followed quickly by the check engine light and then the alternator light. Fortuitously, I was at an emergency pull off so I coasted in and noticed that the power steering was dead too.

Hmmmm.

Of course I had neglected to renew my AAA membership last July and it had expired. I had just sent in a check last week to renew it but knew that they wouldn't have it posted yet. I have a handy little phone book under my car seat but it's for Aspen, not Grand Junction.

I called AAA and was told by their automated operator that the hold time was 20 minutes. 20 minutes to find out that I wasn't a member? I hung up.

I called my husband because there was so much he could do from work up on a ski mountain.

I called the Grand Junction Police Department who patched me through (don't I sound official?) to a tow truck guy. No sooner did I leave a message for the tow truck guy than I decided that it was stupid (not to mention potentially more costly) not to try AAA again.

This time I called the membership line and got through after a fairly short hold (remember that if you're ever calling AAA roadside assistance). I found out that since I had had a renewal mailed to me I had some sort of a grace period during which I could receive assistance and they would bill me full fare if they didn't receive my membership fee.

A short while later after a brief confusion over my location during which Rachel and I amused ourselves with a Gilmore Girls dvd, Aaron from Pro Tow arrived.

Rachel who has never been in a tow truck was having flashbacks to the John Ford Noonan character in Adventures in Babysitting.

Aaron (who was nothing like Handsome John Pruitt) dropped the car at Integrity Auto Repair (with a name like that, how could I go wrong??) and then was kind enough to take us to the airport where we happened upon a High Mountain Taxi (Aspen's home town taxi service) driver picking up some riders who had gotten stranded at the GJ airport since the Aspen airport was closed (I told you there was a winter travel advisory). (wow, that's all one sentence!)

Did I mention that Gay Ski Week starts today?

We had a quick (as quick as a 2 hour ride can be) and conversational ride back to Aspen whereupon I discovered that the sleazy taxi driver was secretly charging the tourists less than he was charging the low-paid, hard working local. Or at least it was a secret to me.

So I called him out on it.

We missed the meeting, are sans vehicle, are in the dark about the extent of the damage and are unsure if Integrity Auto Repair is even open tomorrow (what with it being a federal holiday).

And the adventure continues.

I'm really not sure why I'm so calm about all of this. It's kind of out of character and scary . . .