We took a three-week road trip around the Pacific Northwest in the summer of 2017, and I am recounting our trip in a series of blog posts. You can read the previous posts here: Ashland, Portland, Bellingham, Vancouver, Seattle, Kalaloch, Pacific City, Eureka, The Lost Coast
Days 21-23: Carmel Santa Rosa, California
We tore ourselves away from The Lost Coast to continue our journey southbound to Carmel. We had a cozy Airbnb waiting for us there, and I was looking forward to finally getting to show Alex the town. I have spent many memorable weekends in Carmel and despite our numerous attempts to plan a getaway there over the course of our relationship, our efforts always fell flat. We were finally making it happen.
Getting back to the main highway from The Lost Coast was slow and treacherous. We encountered more rock piles and sudden potholes that would scrape the bottom of our car, but there was seemingly no way to avoid them. I was just happy that we were driving a Sport Utility Vehicle, even if the “utility” it is most well-designed for is dropping off the kids at soccer practice.
Our Lexus RX is hands-down the nicest car either of us has ever owned. For my part, the headstones in the graveyard of my past cars would read:
“Mazda Protege: 2003-2007. Where’s the bumper? Who knows!”
“Mazda Tribute: 2008-2011. Ignore the intermittent beeping and roll down the window to open the door.”
“Toyota Yaris: 2011-2015. 80 MPH gives me anxiety.“
Until the very last days of our road trip, I regarded our Lexus with a benign indifference. It is comfortable and reliable, with none of the signature ramshackle personality of the cars of my past that I had come to wear like a badge of honor. However ridiculous it may sound, I used to take great pride in driving cars that had no hint of luxury, as though they were a mark of my “realness” as a person. By taking ownership of the Lexus a couple years ago, I accepted that my youthful proclivity for acquiring symbols of my unconventional nature was being replaced by an adult resignation that driving a nice car was…nice.
When we made it back to the highway, we were relieved. With the familiar asphalt beneath our tires and our plastic window being buffeted by the wind, we continued south.
Our planned route took us past some kitschy roadside attractions, and we made time to drive through a Redwood and visit Confusion Hill, the theme of which I am still struggling to understand despite Alex’s many attempts to explain it to me.
After about four hours of driving, we started to notice a faintly toxic smell in the air. Like a mixture of gasoline and paint thinner. After driving for the better part of two weeks, we had become accustomed to the emissions of other vehicles on the road around us intruding on our senses. As embarrassing as it is to admit now, Alex and I were certain that the fumes were emanating from the rickety pickup truck we had been following. As we had done many times before, Alex changed lanes to pass the truck in search of cleaner air.
But the smell followed us.
A positive consequence of owning exceptionally crappy cars my entire adult life is that it has made me reluctantly familiar with automotive systems. I’m no expert, but every time something was broken or worn down on the cars of my past, I learned a little bit more about my vehicle’s anatomy.
As we were scraping and scrabbling over rocks to and from The Lost Coast that morning, I had a faint sense that our car’s undercarriage had been compromised. That feeling returned when the smell followed us and I vocalized my worry to Alex.
“I think it’s us.”
“No way.”
Performing a quick inventory from inside the car, I checked the dash for any indicator lights and peered out my side mirror to see if I could glimpse any plumes coming from the back. Nothing. It wasn’t until I turned back from the passenger seat to look out the rear window that I noticed it was covered in a thick, dark, sticky substance.
“It’s us. Pull over.”
The next exit took us to a deserted stretch of road that ran parallel to the highway. We got safely to the side and stepped out to assess the situation. The smell was even more pungent around the exterior of our car. I immediately noticed a thick, brown substance dripping from the interior of the rear passenger wheel well. I was sure it had to be leaking brake fluid. Running a finger through the sticky substance on the back bumper and smelling it, we deduced that something was leaking and had been spraying from the back of our car as we drove.
We couldn’t believe our luck. Less than forty-eight hours after we had awoken to the burglary, our car was again compromised, and we were tasked with dealing with an unexpected roadblock to our plans for the day.
The sun was setting and we were hours from Carmel. Knowing that whatever was wrong with our car was likely to need a mechanic, I set about making arrangements for an overnight stay in a nearby hotel while Alex called AAA roadside assistance. Our dream of a Carmel vacation was beginning to fade.
For a lot of good reasons, not all hotels accept animals as guests. If Cosmo had not joined us on this road trip, we might have opted for a more improvised itinerary that would have enabled us to book last-minute accommodations almost anywhere along our route. Having a dog with us meant that our selection of hotels and Airbnbs was greatly limited and I wasn’t hopeful about finding a hotel nearby that not only had availability for that night but also allowed dogs. After much searching, I was able to book us a night in nearby Santa Rosa for a price that, to this day, still makes me cringe.
Meanwhile, we awaited our AAA-assigned tow truck. What transpired next was a two-hour mele of conversations with AAA dispatch, calls to our supposed tow truck driver, and multiple assurances that they were “just 15 minutes away’, which all culminated in a final call to AAA where we were told that we had canceled the request for a tow truck an hour before. Upon hearing that our rescue was never coming, Alex and I unleashed a rage-howl into the cold darkness that has not yet descended from the atmosphere and is still floating somewhere over Napa.
“This is great!”
And I had to pee. Bad.
Our judgment clouded by hunger and anuria, we decided to drive our crippled car to the nearest oasis. Turns out we had broken down just fifteen minutes from the famed Coppola Winery, a sprawling estate that features all of the luxurious amenities that draw tourists to California’s wine country. That night I dragged my ragged, exhausted body up the ornate staircase to the main building. In my hiking boots, leggings, and dog-hair covered coat I passed smartly-dressed couples and families who looked to be celebrating special occasions. I deduced that this opulent winery does not often play host to the bedraggled and abandoned.
We sidled up to the restaurant bar and enjoyed a sumptuous meal washed down with a couple glasses of Coppola Cabernet before turning our attention back to getting the car fixed. We identified a Lexus dealership in Santa Rosa, just 10 minutes from our hotel, and made a plan to be there when they opened the next day in the hope that they would take us in without an appointment.
Full and exhausted from the events of the day (a day that, may I remind you, began with our trip to The Lost Coast), we bid farewell to the Coppola Winery and headed to the hotel. Under the impression that the leakage was caused by a ruptured brake fluid line, all of our Google research that afternoon had assured us that our car was not in immediate, irreparable danger. We felt confident that the short drive to the hotel would be manageable, albeit stinky.
On the freeway, 10 minutes from our destination, all hell broke loose. The dash, which had up until then displayed no warning indicators, suddenly erupted into a multicolored spectrum of flashing lights and a cacophony of beeping. I noticed the illuminated oil indicator and realized that I had severely underestimated the scope of our car’s ailments. For the second time that day I directed Alex to immediately take the next available exit.
Google told us that the indicator lights we were seeing on the dash were bad. Very bad. Our car was dangerously low on oil, and I knew that if we continued to drive, the engine would be damaged beyond repair. We pulled into the nearest gas station and directed our cell phone flashlights underneath the car. A steady drip of liquid was coming from somewhere high up in the undercarriage.
Fuck.
I popped the hood and was preparing to pull the dipstick (that’s what she said) to assess our oil level when I heard a voice behind me.
“You guys OK?”
A man emerged from the area of the station fuel pumps with a look of concern on his face. It mustn’t have been hard to tell, with me rooting around in the hood and Alex shining his flashlight under the car, that we were experiencing some manner of vehicular impairment.
Alex addressed the stranger amiably and explained our predicament while I hung back near the hood of the car. The man introduced himself as Mike, a former mechanic with a brother that owns an auto shop nearby. Upon hearing that, my inner cynic flashed a note in my mind’s eye that read, “if it’s too good to be true, it probably is.”
Before I make it sound too much like this story ends with Cosmo being kidnapped by a Coppola family mob ring and sold into Pomeranian slavery, I will reveal to you now that Mike ended up saving us that night. I regret now the suspicious nature with which I initially regarded his helpfulness. I was keenly aware of the fact that our present situation had left us vulnerable to being taken advantage of by a seemingly well-intentioned stranger. As such, I responded to Mike’s genuine concern with cold emotionlessness, hoping to convey that my BS-meter was highly developed and sensitive.
Thankfully my frostiness was neutralized by Alex’s warmth towards Mike, which I had expected and welcomed. After so many years together, Alex can instinctively sense when my guard is up and responds by amplifying his good-natured approachability. It’s sort of a Good Cop/Bad Cop dynamic that, when carefully executed, has proven to be an effective negotiating tactic.
Gradually I came to accept that we had actually been rescued by The Last Decent Human on Earth. Mike stayed with us at that gas station for over an hour as he helped us diagnose and address our car’s problems. I never found out what Mike was on his way to do that night because once he had realized we were in need, nothing else seemed to matter to him.
A bad iPhone photo of Mike and Alex under the car that night
Mike suspected that our car was leaking oil from an unseen rupture somewhere along the fluid line. The only thing we could do to keep from damaging our engine was to supply it with a continuous diet of motor oil. Like tossing carcasses into the yawning maw of an insatiable beast, we poured quart after quart of oil into our car only marginally faster than it was being expelled onto the pavement below from the ruptured line. All told, we ended up spending over $150 on 10 quarts of oil to ensure a safe passage to our hotel that night and to the Lexus dealership the next day.
Mike and Alex got on like a house on fire that night. Mike was well and truly chuffed to find out that Alex was an actor, and responded to my husband’s humble protestations with a kind of warm, fatherly encouragement that, to witness it, served to thaw my icy demeanor. On the subject of pursuing one’s dream in life, Mike revealed to us that he had recently begun marketing his invention, The Canmaster:
Though Mike had offered to put us in touch with one of his mechanic connections in the area, we opted for the Lexus dealership so we could utilize a service discount. We never saw him again after that night.
It appears as though The Canmaster is not available for purchase yet, but I will keep this blog updated as that information becomes available.
Thanks, Mike, wherever you are. Sorry I was a total B*tch.
We made it safely to our hotel that night and the next morning we arrived at Freeman Lexus in Santa Rosa shortly after they opened. As expected, we were told that they weren’t taking any drop-in appointments, but we were welcome to take a loaner car and come back in a few days for a diagnosis. It took some explaining, but once we had conveyed that were we hundreds of miles from home in the final stretch of a three-week road trip, they found a way to fit us in. We were incredibly grateful.
We finally received a conclusive diagnosis. Like Mike had suspected, it was indeed a ruptured oil line. The unexpected twist was that the puncture was so deep in the undercarriage that there was no way it could have been caused by our offroad adventure to The Lost Coast the day before. It was just a random structural failure. Upon hearing this, my reaction vacillated between relief that the damage was not caused by our negligence, and nonplussed befuddlement that our car luck had really taken a nosedive in the last couple days.
We gave up the ghost on making it to Carmel at all. Even with Freeman Lexus doing everything they could to get us on the road as fast as possible, we would not be able to drive our car again until the next day which meant another night in Santa Rosa. They offered to fix our broken window too, but that would have been at least another day of waiting and at this point, we had no time to spare. I was due back at work on Monday morning, less than 72 hours away, and we still had one more destination to go.
Not surprisingly, Cosmo took this all in his stride and made fast friends with the staff at the dealership.
Cosmo patiently waits for his admirers at Freeman Lexus to pay him homage
Having to care for Cosmo while simultaneously addressing the unexpected dilemmas of the last few days actually served to ground us in a way that I could not have predicted. No matter what, Cosmo always got two meals and four walks a day, even if his dinner was taken off a paper plate on the side of the road and his bedtime walk was circling a gas station parking lot. It was comforting to know that he was blissfully unaware of our human-world complications, which I guess is what all dogs do for their owners.
Relieved to be back on the road and $500 lighter (ouch), we set a course for Morro Bay – our final overnight destination.
I would later relate the story of our road trip car troubles to friends and family by joking (is there any other way?) that we were due for some bad luck since 99% of the trip had gone so well up to that point. I don’t believe in divine purpose, but the coincidence was uncanny and difficult to ignore.
After that two-day stretch that began with a burglary in Eureka and ended with a ruptured oil line in Santa Rosa, I began to regard our car with a respectful reverence and gratitude that I had never felt before. Since our road trip, I have developed an appreciation for our Lexus, not as the “Mom Car” I originally thought it was, but a vehicle that had done a lot of living and the scars to prove it. Our car had endured a break-in, an oil leak, off-roaded to The Lost Coast, drove through a tree, and took our family safely over 2000 miles.
From the outside, our Lexus is painfully ordinary, but now I know that it can do much more than shuttle the kids to soccer practice.
