Not For Attribution

I just got back from a refreshing trip back to Spokane. This is the longest I’ve gone without going home, so it was nice to be back. It was great to be in Spokane, sleep at home and see my family and my dog, who is now very large.

But I went through hell to get there. Read on for the pain.

I had to leave after work on Wednesday night to pick up my sister and her boyfriend for the midnight drive across the state. My editor let me head out a bit early, which was great. But on the way I saw a rollover accident on I-5 in Fife, but luckily it wasn’t that big of a deal so I could keep going.

I made it to my sister’s apartment by about 10 p.m. and wait for her to finally get ready. After sitting with my car awkwardly parked in the street for like 20 minutes, we finally get all packed up and leave.

A bit of background here: My car recently surpassed 100,000 miles, and since then, everything on it has seemingly fallen apart. It has no power, which is bad considering the engine already puts out an anemic 80 bhp. So it’s slow as hell. Also, the heat randomly stopped working. Not good considering we are about to embark on a cross-state drive in the middle of a cold November night.

But, we headed out. Consequences be damned.

All is well until we get to the pass. This is where the loss of power began to hurt. We had three people and a bunch of luggage piled into my hatchback, which can barely accelerate going downhill, so going up the pass was rough. I had to go up in third gear, going about 40 the whole way. I got passed by a Ford Festiva and one of those demon milk semis with the winking cow on it. It hugged the far-right lane so all the traffic and trucks could pass me. It sucked, but I finally made it to the summit. There I was able to coast down the other side, and with gravity able to help me out, I was able to pass the Festiva and demon dairy mobile.

So that sucked, but we were still on our way. Albeit a bit cold now, the lack of heat sucked.

We finally made it to the Columbia after stopping to get gas in Vantage. The high-revving up the pass sucked up a lot of gas, so I topped it off before heading home.

After we crossed the bridge and made it to Grant County, fog began to set in. No big deal, we thought, once we get away from the river, it will go away.

Ten miles later? Nope. Twenty miles? getting worse.

Eventually the fog got so bad that I could barely see 20 feet in front of me. So we had to slowly creep along through Quincy and whatever-the-hell-other-towns-are-there. And by this time, the temperature dropped below freezing and my car began to be encased in ice. Remember how my heat didn’t work? Yeah, turns out ice on your windshield isn’t very fun when you don’t have a working defroster. So I kept using my wiper fluid to get rid of the ice. This worked for a bit, but it was so cold that the wiper fluid would freeze after a few seconds. So it would be squirt wiper fluid, use the wipers for a few seconds, repeat.

But cars can only carry a finite amount of this fluid. So eventually, I ran out. (Obnoxious high voice) Oh Boy!

I pulled over and screamed large amounts of profanity, as if it would help. Thankfully my phone has GPS and I saw that I was about 10 miles outside of Moses Lake. We decided we had to make it at least that far.

We piled back in, I rolled down the window and drove 10 miles through the fog Ace Ventura-style, feeling like I was getting frostbite on the way. Finally we pulled in to the Best Western on the West End of Moses Lake and got a room. (Surprisingly expensive). We piled back in the car to find a store. I was incredibly sick of driving, and it was dangerous because I couldn’t see anything, but we were desperate for a beverage, man.

But no, Moses Lake doesn’t believe in selling alcohol at night. We had no choice to turn in. I sat in the crappy hotel room and watched bad TV until I eventually fell asleep. We woke up and made it to Spokane in time for breakfast.

Oh yeah, my dad and I worked on my car for a bit and found out why some things were wrong. Remember the Vader trip and my car breaking down? Yeah, turns out the random mechanic I went to in Chehalis doesn’t know what a car is. We weren’t able to fix it in time, so my sister took my mom’s car back and I drove a U-Haul back, we met up and now I’m driving my mom’s car.

Woooo.