It really is about the journey

I should be home petting Spunky my cat right now but my car konked out not quite half way home and before I got back into Idaho. There was a lot of slush on the road and I constantly had to clean my windshield as trucks passed me. The wipers started going slower and slower and I knew what whas going on. Finally I couldn't go any farther and the car quit as a drove off of the shoulder into pretty deep snow. It was kind of in the middle of no where. Thankfully I had a cell phone and called home. My mom called a tow truck and in about 20 min here it came from a small town. The guy was cool but woudln't take me anywhere except to his shop in that town. That actually worked out pretty well.

I knew the alternator was shot. Curt and I had just been talking about the same thing happening to him. I didn't want to stay in this little town even though they had a decent motel, and didn't really want them working on my car as it would have taken a day as they would have to get the part sent in, so I bought a battery from him, the only one that he had that fit my car. And drove it back to my mom's place about 80 miles or so on battery alone without using anything electrical in the car. I did have to use the wipers a couple of times again, but by this time the water on the road had started to freeze and there wasn't as much traffic going in that direction. I wasn't really sure if it would make it that far but it did. I couldn't go in the direction of my home in Washington as there were two mountain passes to go over, worse snow and slush conditions and it would have gotten dark on me. So after I put the new battery in, I pointed back into Montana where I'd spent the weekend with my mom.

I made it back into town and pulled into mom's garage. I had about 20 min before 5:00 pm on a Sunday and found an auto parts store just down the street that had my alternator. $275. I got to the auto parts store with about 5 minutes until they closed. I'll get $100 for the old one when I return it in the morning. So I removed the old one and installed the new one. Thankfully I had my sockets with me. It took me an hour and a half.

I'll make another attempt at getting home again tomorrow. I'm trying to see an up-side to all of this but I can't really find one other than I did get to have dinner again with my mom, and I guess I could be stuck in that little town for a day or two while those guys worked on my car. They weren't bad guys however. I found out that the owner knew my friend George. It's a small world,... planet Montana. You just have to drive a long way through snow wind and rain to get out of orbit.