After spending our first few road trip days gawking at the enormity of the Grand Canyon and the majesty of Monument Valley in very hot and very dry Arizona, Dorothy and I set off for Pagosa Springs, Colorado.
On our way, Dorothy was able to pull herself away from ogling at trees (after a few days in Nevada and Arizona, it’s easy to forget what they look like) long enough to notice that the “check engine” light was on. We pulled over and lifted the hood, because that’s what you do in situations like these. We checked the oil (full) and spent a few moments staring blankly at the engine—checking it, I suppose, as our light had instructed us to do. As far as we could tell—which was really not very far at all—the engine did not appear to be in any immediate danger of exploding. So, we got back into the car and asked Big Bertha (our GPS system. Why “Big Bertha”? Because it sounds commanding) to lead us to the nearest auto shop. To our great relief we were able to make it to the shop without further incident. Our natural wariness of unknown auto mechanics was very nearly completely quelled when the snow-white haired proprietor of the shop offered us tootsie rolls as we walked up to the counter. Tootsie rolls? The man obviously ran a very fine establishment.
He hooked up his little computer to the car and diagnosed our problem as a “gas pedal positioning error, probably resulting from our heavy use of the cruise control.” He reset the car’s electronics, all for free, and set us on our way, no worse for wear and two tootsie rolls richer.
We had numerous other surprisingly pleasant experiences with the people of Colorado. The workers at the grocery store near where we were staying were either genuinely happy to be pointing us toward the ice cream and bagging our groceries, or were far better at hiding their disgust and gloom than average.
The next morning when we were checking out of the hotel at ten, the receptionist assured us that she would thoroughly investigate the peculiar incident of two people entering our room earlier that morning at eight o’clock without knocking and then scurrying off when we asked who was there. Dorothy and I could not help but drive off with a smile, certain that the next inhabitants of the room would be safe and secure with that nice receptionist handling everything. And besides, if those two mysterious room-raiders were from Colorado themselves, they must be pretty nice folks right?
