And that's why I was late for work today

When I got to Colorado Springs yesterday, I noticed that what had kinda-sorta-maybe been a bit of a whistling noise in my car was very definitely a whistling noise.

"Eh," my inner idiot debated. "I can get it looked at when I get back to Laramie."

And so I drove back to(ward) Laramie this morning.

I was singing along with Beyoncé and trying to get up the umpteenth hill between Laramie and Fort Collins when I noticed that instead of hovering in the lower-middle range of my temperature gauge, the needle was in the upper-middle range. And climbing.

Heck.

Pulled over. The needle jumped with Olympic speed to the top, and if it could have screamed at me and set off some bells and whistles, it would have done that, too.

Instead, it hissed and belched (horrid-smelling) steam at me.

Hell.

And for a good ten minutes, plenty of cars whooshed right on by in both directions. Stupid whooshers. I've probably been a stupid whoosher. I'll work on that.

I need to say here: God bless the age of modern technology, car-adapted cell phone chargers and the fact that my car had the common sense to die in a place where I had cell phone reception and where there were relatively few snakes and stinging insects. And no cacti. I mean, if you're already having a bad day, a snake, a sting or a prickly pear in your flip-flops isn't going to make it any better.

A chat with my half-asleep dad ("I can't find the cap thingy to fill my radiator reservoir!"), an e-mailed cell phone picture of my engine, a kindly Laramie firefighter who had good intentions but wasn't able to offer much more than sympathy, and a kindly fellow from Hannah and his wife who offered this advice: "Your Ford's a piece of shit! Get rid of it and get a Nissan or a Toyota!" (He, incidentally, drives a Nissan)

He also offered practical help and was brave enough to attempt loosening my radiator cap a good half-hour before I wanted to ... and then he filled my (EMPTY!) reservoir. Poor, empty radiator. Whatever it had left in it was oozing into the gravel on the side of the road. My apologies to the water table. He told me to run my heater a full-blast the rest of the way into Laramie, and then they followed me to make sure I was alright.

Sad, side note: I've known for a bit over a year that my heater doesn't work so well ... today, I found out that my heater puts out colder air than my air conditioner does, even in mid-summer with an overheated car. Cha-ching! (that's the mechanic — not me — cha-chinging)

So that's why I was late for work today.