Rescuing the Jeep 2 - Back into Texas

The road we were driving on was dark and there were a lot of deer in the area. Luis told me to keep the high beams on as much as possible and then snoozed off. We had grabbed some coffee on the way out of Del Rio, so I was ok, but still....

I saw a shadow move across the road a few hundred feet ahead. A deer! I slowed down and saw it slink off the road safely. A few dozen miles later I saw another shadow, smaller than the one before, and closer. I hit the brakes. Luis woke up. I looked at the shadow. It was a tire skid track on the road.

Maybe some more coffee would be a good idea. And keep Luis awake.

All in all I saw three deer - two alive, one dead in the middle of the road.

We hit Sanderson, Texas, about 60 miles away from Fort Stockton, and stopped to get gas. The gas station had a fast food joint inside with a handful of teenage boys running it. But we we're only interested in coffee. Sixty more miles and we were back at the Jeep. It was about 9pm and we had the same 200 miles to drive back through before we could rest. We got the Jeep running, and got right back on the road.

We had forgotten the walkie talkies for this leg of the trip so we both drove along in our separate cars. We passed the place the Jeep had broken down originally, we passed the spot where the semi had jack knifed and dropped it's load. We were 10 miles outside of Sanderson and I was looking forward to stopping again and getting more coffee. Then the Jeep ahead of me slowed suddenly and pulled off to the side of the road.

Shit. Not again.

I pulled off behind Luis and turned the blinkers on. A semi zoomed past. I got out of the car and Luis said, "It's dead again." Somehow that car didn't seem to want to go any further than Texas. The temperature had dropped again, it was below freezing I was sure. Luis pulled a back pack out of the Jeep, and pulled two coats out of the back pack. We sat in the Focus warming up, weighing our options. We waited for a while to see if the Jeep would cool down and start up again. No luck. A local police officer pulled up to check on us. I'm guessing one of the truckers had reported us, and the cop wanted to see what was going on. We were still close enough to the border so that we might have been suspect. He drove off after telling us where the local mechanic in Sanderson was. We waited for a while and tried to start the car again. Still no luck. We had one option left.

We emptied out the Jeep and fit our remaining belongings into the little Ford Focus. I tell you what, that thing has a big trunk! We grabbed the registration out of the Jeep, squeezed ourselves into the Focus and headed to Sanderson. At the gas station, we figured the boys running the fast food joint might be interested in a car. But it was too late in the evening - about 1am at this point - and the food area was closed, no teenaged boys to be found. The only person working there was a teenaged girl.

Luis left it up to me to talk to her. But how do you start that kind of conversation? "Hey lady, wanna free car?" I wasn't sure how well that would go over. So I wandered around, got a coffee and some BC Powders, then went up to the register. "Is that all for you?" the girl asked me. "Yup. Unless you want to buy a car from me." She chuckled, "No". "I'm serious. Do you want a 1992 Jeep?" She looked at me and Luis, who had walked up to the register at this point. "How much do you want for it?" "Nothing," replied Luis. He explained our situation. No time to wait around to figure out what was wrong with the car, no need to keep the thing either at this point. "Hold on," she said and picked up the phone. Whomever she called wasn't there, so she left a voice mail. "Ok, how about this. We leave the title, the registration, and the keys with you. You find someone who is willing to get the thing back to town and fix it up, and it's theirs, no strings attached." She thought about it for a minute and said she thought she could find someone who would take it. So I signed the title, and gave it to her with the registration and keys. She gave me her phone number so I could check up and see if she had found someone, and off we went, back to the border. I figured at the worst the car would be left on the side of the road and eventually I'd get something in the mail about it. At the best, someone in Sanderson, Texas would get a free car. Good karma points for us.

One hundred twenty miles later, no deer sightings this time, we were back at Del Rio. We drove across the Rio Grande, past Mexican immigration, and on to our hotel. Felipe was crashed out, and we followed suit.

continued...