Story 1 - Back Country Roadside Assistance

 

Maggie's knuckles were white from her intense grip on the steering wheel, as she maneuvered her car up and down and around all the hairpin turns on the roads that snaked through the Colorado Mountains. Oh, the scenery was majestic, for sure, but she wasn't really able to enjoy it like she would have liked to. Instead, her eyes were constantly focusing on the dangerously close mountain sides, loose fallen boulders and short guardrails, or more often than she cared for, lack thereof. She also couldn't understand why people were just speeding past her, unless they were locals and they had more faith in their trucks than she did in her Camry. Her car obviously wasn't made for mountain driving, and she was starting to worry if she'd even be able to make it out of the mountain passes.

 

When the mountains seemed to subside and she thought the worst was over, there were the foothills and the Eastern Colorado plains. Maggie was able to relax a bit now and allow her eyes to take in the scenery, only what she saw now didn't look very healthy. The drought was certainly taking a toll on the real cowboys of Colorado, the ones who still maintained active ranches and grew things in order to make money to feed their families. And, though there were few and far between, Maggie also noticed that there were some pretty expansive and elaborate looking ranches out in this area. She couldn't decide if being semi-isolated was a good thing, or a bad thing. All it would take is one blizzard and the roads around them would be closed. But, folks who lived in the country, especially cowboy country, certainly were well versed in self-sufficient living.

 

Maggie wasn't so sure she'd be as self-sufficient. Just last night, Maggie had encountered a nasty fog that slowed driving to 10 miles an hour, and that was enough to almost give her a full-blown panic attack. It also didn't help, that her car was old and becoming unreliable. At least Maggie had some form of entertainment while she was driving. There was no cassette or disc player in her car, but the radio in her old Camry still worked even if other things had been slowly breaking down on her. What did she expect? The car, a gift from her father twelve years ago, was practically an antique now. She often joked with her friends that she needed to get a specialized license plate for it listing it as an 'antique' when she renewed her tags every year.

 

A blink of light caught her eye, and a quick glance at her dashboard revealed that the car's warning lights were illuminated. She rolled her eyes. They always were lit up. She could refill her windshield wiper fluid and the low fluid light would turn off for five minutes, and then come back on. Every time she stopped to get gas, the check engine light would come on right after restarting the car. Her mechanic told her it was just dirty fuel injectors, and he told her to buy a cheap bottle of fuel injector cleaner and add it to her gas tank before she filled up with gas the next time. She did, and sure enough that particular warning light flickered off. There was always some selection of warning lights lit on her dashboard, and some of them remained on even if the problem was fixed. Hell, even the emergency brake light flashed at her to warn her that she was driving with her emergency brake on, the same emergency brake that was currently in its proper resting position. Maggie was chalking it up to faulty lighting, and that nothing was seriously wrong with her car. It was just old, getting senile, and losing its mind. Maybe it was a hypochondriac. It always thought something was wrong with it. Still, it got great mileage and for its age, it had taken Maggie to a lot of different places. She wasn't quite sure how she was going to give it up, even when she could afford to upgrade to a newer more impressive vehicle.

 

"Piece of shit lights," Maggie mumbled at the illuminated dashboard, looking like it was all lit up for a fourth of July party. So used to seeing all the glowing red warning lights being on, Maggie's eyes failed to spot something that was genuinely amiss, and that was the elevated temperature gauge on the far right side of the dashboard. That was something her father and every mechanic she had ever talked to, told her to absolutely not ignore. It meant that the car's radiator was empty or leaking, and either situation was bad. The sudden smell of something burning caught Maggie's attention. Rolling down her window, the smell became even more obvious, and smoke started to escape from the edges of the car hood. Maggie then noticed the elevated temperature gauge and hoped that maybe the temperature gauge was just going up because it was hot outside. Without even thinking about it, she cranked up her air conditioning and rolled down all her windows. Maybe that would help cool the car down.

 

Maggie fought the urge to panic. Out in the middle of nowhere, the only assistance she could think of calling, was her insurance company. She reached a hand into her purse that was laying on the passenger's seat, to search for her cell phone. When her fingers finally grasped onto her phone she hit the main menu button only to be met with another warning message, that there was no cell phone service signal. "Dammit!" Maggie exclaimed, as she tossed the cell phone in frustration onto the passenger seat next to her. She anxiously watched as the gauge reported the temperature as getting higher and higher, and the needle was now flickering into the highest red zone it would monitor. Less than a minute later, her vision was obscured when the entire car hood erupted in smoke. Maggie had no choice but to pull over to the side of the road, muttering a long string of unladylike curse words.

 

Maggie maneuvered her car to a stop in the grass and gravel that lined the sides of the roadway. Thank goodness she was at least on flat terrain, and not on one of the dangerous switchbacks of the mountains. Jumping quickly out of her car, she ran around to the back of it and popped open the trunk. She did keep a small selection of emergency car supplies in a crate, and she knew she had a jug of antifreeze-coolant in there. Pulling the crate to the trunk's edge she reached in to get the jug of coolant, but she could already tell by its smashed appearance that that the coolant jug, like her radiator, was also empty. Growling in frustration, Maggie slammed her trunk shut and went back to the front of the car. She grabbed her keys, her purse, her currently useless cell phone, and a couple bottles of water she had in the back seat. Her only option now, was to seek out some help from the closest living local, so she started walking back in the direction of one of the expansive ranches she had driven past a short while ago.