The Break...Down

Jerry broke down! I think most of you have already heard the story about our little adventure on the drive to California, but here are the details for those who are confused!

Friday, June 11th, we began our drive from Breckenridge, CO (our first honeymoon hehe) to La Quinta, CA (Tom's house). We began down I-25 with expectations to stay in middle-of-nowhere Gallup, NM for the night. We wanted to see the Grand Canyon the following day, so we planned on a long drive that day. Our excellently laid plans, however, were to be thwarted. Right after we crossed the NM border, the car suddenly began to slow down! Tom had the cruise control set to 70 and we heard the engine rev to 6000 RPMs as the car tried to maintain the pre-set speed. We were floored as to what happened.

Tom hit the breaks and we cruised to a stop about 5PM local time. We pulled over to the side of the highway and turned off the car. We looked at each other as Tom tried to restart his brand new 2010 Jeep Patriot with less than 500 miles on it. We could hear the engine cranking, as if there were some battery issue, but it just wouldn't catch. We waited about 10 minutes in the car to see if time would solve our dilemma, but alas the car simply wouldn't start.

Tom walked up the hill in front of us to find the nearest mile marker, and I hopped on the phone to talk to my Dad to see if he knew anything about the ghost problems. As I waited for Tom to return, I saw a car pull up to talk to him. I secretly began celebrating because I thought someone had come to save us! At the time, we still thought it might be some battery issue so this would be the perfect time for someone to jump us. Thankfully the highway wasn't too busy, so the big black truck backed up about 500 yds on the side of the road to greet Jerry's open hood.

We tried to jump the car a couple of times but to no avail. The old, cellphone-less, use-a-map, don't-know-what-a-GPS-is-couple asked our story since they had seen the "Just Married" painted on Jerry's rear end, and offered us a place to stay if we managed to ever start our car. They were so kind to stop and help us out! The funniest part of this whole encounter however was not even revealed to me until after we called the tow truck and the couple had driven off.

Apparently they hadn't stopped to talk to Tom because they saw we were broken down, but rather because they thought we were having a newly wed fight and Tom was walking off 20 miles to the next big town as I fumed by the car! hahaha.! They didn't stop to jump our car. They stopped to jump our marriage! :) Probably one of the best stories of our trip. I find it so refreshing that someone would be willing to stop and counsel a young couple on a long road-trip of their own. Turns out there were driving to their home in NM from the Colorado mountains as well! Coincidence? I don't think so.

Anyway, we called AAA because Tom has AAA Plus (which I recommend to everyone by the way). They give you up to 100 miles of free towing as well as trip reimbursement for "trip interruption." They will pay for food and hotels while you have to wait to get your car fixed! As we waited for the tow-truck, we were relatively relaxed about our new adventure. We were in no hurry to get to California because we were on no schedule. And the best part of all, we were together! The tow truck arrived about an hour after we called it, hooked up Jerry, and we were on our way.

Of course, that couldn't be the end of our little adventure. Five minutes up the road, the tow truck ran over an "alligator tire" that littered both lanes of the highway. For those of you that don't know what an "alligator tire" is, it's a popped tire that lies waiting in the middle of the high-way to jump up and destroy your tires as well! Beware! Anyway, we suddenly heard the blare of the air brake alarm going, "Beep, beep, beep!"

"Great!," we thought. "Our tow truck needs a tow truck!" In front of us we saw the truck that had lost its tire sitting on the side of the road. And behind us sat another truck, which had already broken its air brake lines because of the very same alligator tire. Tom jumped out of the car like the great man he is, to remove the tire from the middle of the highway to prevent others from having the same predicament as us, and we waited and prayed for our tow truck to be okay. After about 30 minutes the tow truck driver got back in the car, took a breath, and wallah! it worked again :) We began our journey to Las Vegas, NM (about 30 miles south of us). On the way, Tom's dad told us there were no Jeep dealers in Vegas, which wouldn't be very helpful for us the next morning so we asked to be towed to Santa Fe, another 90 miles south and the next big town down the road. For those of you who are good with math, you realize that we wanted to be towed 120 miles that night, about 20 miles more than AAA guaranteed. Most of you also know that towing per mile is very expensive. But, we had another blessing on our side.

Since the Jeep was brand new, we were also guaranteed towing to the nearest Jeep dealer. AAA towed us the first 30 miles and Jeep towed us the rest of the way :) We arrived at the Comfort Inn down the road from the Jeep dealer in Santa Fe about 10:30 PM. Needless to say, we crashed pretty quickly that night because we knew it would be an early morning to make it to the Jeep dealer and hopefully get on the road.

The next morning before we called Jeep for a tow to the dealership, we thought it would be a good idea to, at least, try Jerry one more time. You know, with the off chance that it would work. And of course, it immediately turned on!

We were flabbergasted!

To make a long story short, we drove Jerry to the Jeep dealer, jumped most of the list because of our predicament (played the honeymoon card a little), and waited about an hour simply to find out: "Oh, sorry. We don't know what's wrong with the Jeep. We scanned the computer but no lights came on. We don't know what to say. Good luck!" <--Alright, I might be paraphrasing a little bit, but you guys get the gist.

We decided to drive that day because we still wanted to see the Grand Canyon, drove 3/4 of our tank, and it happened again the second day. This time we were 20 miles from Holbrook, AZ. Jeep towed us there and then AAA again towed us to Flagstaff, AZ (which has a great downtown by the way...very cute right by the railroad tracks). No Jeep dealers are open on Sundays so we risked a drive to Phoenix to shorten our required drive on Monday and thankfully made it to that hot, hot city safely. Monday morning was the same routine at the dealership. Ran the computer. No codes. Sorry, can't help.

We somehow made it to La Quinta without any issues by dinner (In-n-Out yummmm) on Monday. At this point we were actually praying for a break down so that we could at least get a new Jeep through the Lemon Law, but we somehow made it to the house without any issues. Disappointing I know!

To this day, the issue is still a mystery! They think there is some temperature gage in the gas tank that overheated in the desert with a quarter of a tank and shut off the fuel to the engine, but we'll probably never know for sure. All we can do is hope and pray that the ghost problem will haunt us no more!

Anyway, that was one of the best adventures of the honeymoon. Maybe one day I'll write about Tom trying to illegally bring something through customs, but that's another story :)

Love everyone!

Jess&Tom