About 10 years ago, we were set to go on our annual summer camping trip. But this time would be different. Mike, and two of our daughters were going to leave on Labor Day as usual. (This always works to our advantage. The bad traffic is always in the opposite direction since people are heading home for the long weekend.) I would be coming up on Tuesday evening with our third daughter. There was a mandatory student/parent meeting at the junior high school on that Tuesday. We would head out as soon as it was over. Mike would haul all the camping stuff with the LTD. I would be in the Camaro. Driving the car a little over 200 miles, in one trip, wasn't something I had done in that car for awhile. When I first got it, I went on junkets to Vegas and even drove down the Baja peninsula. But, that was when the car was 10 years old and had 70,000+ miles on it. I was now looking at a 25 year old car with 175,000 on the odometer. I was a little worried. From the town of Mojave on, there's nothing but open desert. If one's car craps out, you're pretty much on your own. This was well before the advent of cheap cell phones. Mike and I had a plan. If I didn't show up at a reasonable time, he would start down the road to find me. Hopefully, if anything happened, I would be able to flag down a CHP car, or someone to call a tow truck. So, it was with some trepidation, that we started out on our journey. I was hyper-sensitive. I could feel every bump in the road, hear every minute sound. What was that!? What was that!? And, we were still in bumper to bumper LA traffic! But, once we hit the open desert, I wasn't really worried anymore. If anything was going to kill the car, it would be stop and go traffic. On the open road, I got the old beast up to 80 and we roared across the desert at night. Seemingly the only car on the highway. A desert storm moved in and hot, humid air blew through the open windows as lightning flashed across the sky. It was beautiful. I made it to the campground in record time. Shaving about an hour off the usual trip, due to my lead foot and the highway being virtually empty.
That journey came to mind today, as Amanda and I were going down the freeway. I was taking her to work. We were rounding a curve, on the freeway, when it felt like a strong gust of wind hit the car. The car veered to the left suddenly. "Did you feel that!?" I said. "It felt like we got hit by a gust of wind!" I looked out the window at the trees. They didn't seem to be moving. Amanda responded, "I thought I heard something rattle when that happened." And then, the old paranoia crept in. Rattle!? Rattle!? Had some part of the suspension shaken loose? Was there no mysterious gust of wind!? Was my car falling apart!? Maybe there was some ongoing problem with cars from my year. Maybe tomorrow I would read in the paper that there is a sudden recall of cars, same make as mine, due to the front end falling apart at high speeds. We rounded another curve and sure enough, I heard a rattle. Oh no! We hit the exit, make a right. Rattle.... Go up a couple of blocks, make a left. Rattle.... I swear I can feel it in the steering. A left turn into the driveway by her work and yet another rattle. I drop Amanda off and head back home. Okay, I am going to trace out this suspicious rattle. Hopefully before I have some catastrophic failure. I pull into the left turn lane. I get the green light. I turn off the A/C and the radio so I can have complete silence. And, there it is.... The Rattle!!!!! It's the knob from the emergency brake. It fell off months ago and I never got around to gluing it back on. I dropped it into the door pocket beside me and forgot about it. For some reason, it has started to roll around an rattle ominously as I drove today. I felt relieved and somewhat stupid for being so paranoid. It's okay to be a little cautious. But, I can get overly paranoid sometimes.
Posted by Valkyre at April 13, 2008 01:57 PM