The 3:10 to Yuma
We’d been on the road for 30-some hours and we were just 30 miles from the finish line in Yuma, Arizona when it happened.
Two engine lights popped on and our Jeep Patriot rental hurtling east down the 8 Freeway bucked and started to decelerate. Greer was lying down in the backseat and Mona was riding shotgun. What should I do? Pull over and call the rental car agency for roadside service? Or keep going? What if I pull over and we can’t get phone service — a distinct possibility near the border of California and Arizona, a real dead zone for miles?
No, better to go Clark Griswold and keep chugging to Walley World. Until that Jeep stops rolling down that highway I’ll keep my foot on the accelerator, I thought. I told Mona and Greer that and they agreed. Keep going. Never give up. We were determined to make it to the finish line of the Rental Car Rally. Worried? Sure. But giddy too. It was that kind of high you get when you laugh in the face of disaster. I couldn’t believe the car started its hiccup-bucking, a heaving that grew more frequent the closer we got, about 3:10 p.m. Saturday. It was, quite literally, the 3:10 to Yuma. Would the car face execution at the finish line like some cowboy’s horse that evaded the posse, but suffered a broken leg in the process?
So after Mona grabbed the car’s manual in the glove compartment to translate the engine light’s warning, I asked, “Why are we not vlogging on this?” Mona immediately reached to the backseat to get her computer. Vlogging’s a fun little game we’ve been playing on Facebook lately. I couldn’t think of a more dramatic moment to capture. Greer, always cool and collected, nestled into the pillow and comforter in the backseat, laughing at my rapid-fire exchange with Mona. It’s like a couple of auctioneers competing in an improv contest. Then we pull out the Flip phone we received for the race to document our progress and do some more shenanigans. This is important. We could score more points for feats of derring-do and style.
The object of the Rental Car Rally is to make it from San Francisco to Yuma with the lowest odometer reading. Along the way, there are half-a-dozen checkpoints (obscure landmarks) to hit and you’re judged on your costumes, the car you drive and your overall style. I dubbed us “The Wheel OC,” a take-off on the proliferation of bad reality shows inspired by Orange County. I was Whitney Slunt III, heir to the Slunt fortune, accompanied by my debutante divas, Greer, Mona and Janet.
We did OK overall. We ended up with 19.2 points, but we racked up high mileage, 784, which deducted our score quite a bit. The winners, Business/Party racked up 86 points — grabbing 50 points for lowest odometer. Thirty points were available for style (the car and costumes) and 20 for “hijinks” like the derring-do feats and pranks. Our other big derring-do feat came after Mona made me promise I would take a picture of her as the sun came up over the mountains. We ended up sprinting across three lanes of the 101 near Santa Barbara so I could get a picture of her on the median as the sun peaked over the mountains.
Yeah, it was that kind of an excursion. It inspired all kinds of bonding, tomfoolery, camaraderie, and risk. About halfway through the trip I thought, “What am I doing? This is nuts.” The reply was, “because it’s fun, it’s generating memories and life is worth living.” Sure, I could have gone to the movies or just watched DVDs with Mona this weekend, or I could share an experience that will vividly come to mind long after I get checked into some sort of retirement home.
So we made it to the finish line about 3:25 p.m., not too long past the 3 p.m. check-in time, our last one. That alone was our greatest triumph. Earlier our trip was put into its proper perspective when we lost our teammate Janet as she had to bail to go see her sick daughter who had been rushed to urgent care Saturday morning. Dropping her off took us a bit out of the way, costing us some mileage points, but it didn’t matter to us. Sleep-deprived and crashing after a night buzzed on a caffeine-laden energy drink, I could still see how much more important Janet’s dilemma was. Family comes before fun — every time.
I’m crashing again so I’m going to climb under the clean sheets at our hotel, but I’ll write more later. There are so many more tales to tell.
