Adam's Adventure

We were cruising along on our first leg of our trip to Telluride. Adam was doing a fine job. We were constantly watching the little MPG graph to see what kind of gas mileage we were getting. We hadn't had Adam very long so we were still in the "get acquainted" stage.

We were in a nasty construction area when a little alarm went "ding"! It was telling us that it was time to start thinking about getting some gas. The manual said that when the alarm goes "ding" you have about 3 gallons of gas left. In a car that was getting 45 mpg, we figured we would stop at the next big town.

About 20 minutes later Adam started slowing down. He wasn't accelerating properly at all. We were losing all of our power! Construction area....one lane each way....no shoulder.....a long line of cars behind me...UH OH! We saw an exit and signaled to get off. My speed kept decreasing no matter how hard I stepped on the gas. 50-40-30-crap the exit is a ramp...an up hill ramp!

Putt, putt....20-10....we're OFF!! We glided over to the shoulder. Now alarms were going off all over the place and lights were flashing! What the hell was going on with my brand new car?

The sweat was pouring off of me. All I could see is us sitting out in the middle of nowhere waiting for our cute little hybrid to be repaired. So much for our vacation!

Irv pulled out the manual only to read all of the horrible things that might be wrong with Adam. He checked the part again about the gas gauge alarm and yep...it says you have three gallons of gas left so there was no way it could be that. We hadn't even gone 40 miles!

I tried staring Adam again and the sweet boy started right up. We could see a gas station and decided to make a "run" for it. It would be safer than where we were pulled over and then we could call the Toyota dealer and ask him WTF might be wrong.

I started up the hill to the intersection and of course the light turned red. Oh, hurry up...I do NOT want to get stuck here!

Okay...green light....we went through the intersection and pulled into the gas station. Irv had me pull up to the pump since we were going to need gas anyway. He filled Adam up and I pulled him over to a parking place alarms still sounding....then one by one....they all stopped!

Are you kidding me? Could we have really run out of GAS????

We let Adam run for a while as we gathered our composure. My stomach was in a big knot. Adam seemed to be a happy little hybrid again, so we decided to get on the road and see what happened. Irv drove because I was too upset. I was mad at the gas tank, mad at the alarms, mad at the manual, mad at Adam, mad at the the dealer, mad at Toyota and I was mad that I was mad.

Not another problem the entire trip!

Yep, we had run out of gas...even though the gauge said we had plenty of gas left. We now fill Adam up LONG before the little three gallon alarm goes off because we now know that the alarm really means...fooled you!!

Chee hoo!!

:)