Hondas do weird things after clocking 100k miles or how I learned to read a gas guage and buy a cell phone.
I was on my way home from Spokane after New Years in a little '87 CRX and the car was doing great. It had just passed 100k miles. As I approached the top of Snoqualmie Pass at around 6pm (it's dark out). I get to the top of the pass and start the decent when my car suddenly looses power and the engine dies. While coasting down I try to start it and get only the sound of an engine laughing at me. So I said fuck it and decided to coast till I get to an exit with at least a phone. I coast for a couple of miles when I get to a flat point and I exit not knowing how much longer I would be able to use the power of gravity. The exit is still miles from a phone. I pull off to the shoulder of the exit and try the engine again and it starts, to my amazement, and I take off again and enter the highway. Well as soon as I start a down hill decent the engine dies. Having no idea what's going on (the gauge showed I still had gas and all other gauges said the engine was fine) I exit again. This time the engine doesn't start and now I'm in the middle of nowhere.
It turns out this was probable the worst possible exit to take because the exit was for a fire training facility in the middle of nowhere. So it was time to start walking down the pitch black road. After about 1.5 miles (it was about 4 miles to get back on the highway, which I didn't find out till later) a truck passes and I flag him down mainly to make sure I'm going in the right direction since it's a two lane street in the middle of the forest and pitch black. I tell him that I think my car ran out of gas and I asked how close to the gas station I was. He says "you're about 45 minutes from the closest truck stop, hmmm. I have a gas can if you want to wait about 30 minutes I can drive you to your car and give you some gas." Well not wanting to walk the 45 minutes to the gas station then walk an hour back carrying 5 gallons of gasoline I decide to wait.
After about 35 minutes I start getting a little worried and ideas start popping into my head. "Maybe he went back to my car and broke in and is stealing everything knowing I'm waiting in the middle of nowhere?", "Maybe he's getting some buddies because he likes the film Deliverance". Well about 5 minutes after these thoughts he shows up, introduces himself and tells me to hop in his truck. He was out there because he checks these "hydros" along the river side. He says I was lucky because he was only out there that late because he was sleeping off a hang over from his New Years party. I was only crossing the pass that late for the same reason. We get to my car and hop out, fill up the tank and give the car a few cranks and pumps of the gas pedal and it starts right up. It was the sweetest sound I've ever heard. I gave him a million thank yous for the gas and I was on my way.
I would like to take this time to just say thank you Jim. Thank you for not raping me, thank you for not taking advantage of the situation and most of all thank you for helping me when you didn't really need to. So I guess I've learned two very important life lessons recently. One, take a crap before going running and two, get a cell phone moron if for nothing else to have for emergencies because I never want to have to squeal like a piggy.