Chapter 34: The Heat of the Moment

We passed through the beautiful fortified city of Briançon while going up and down again for another two days, leading us to our first planned day of rest, to do some shopping and collect the car. Dad's attempts to order a cab for this purpose the night before were fruitless or way out of budget (I guess French cabbies don't like to be disturbed while having dinner with their families), so I proposed he could hitchhike back to the car. As a result I 'volunteered' to go with Dad.

Early the next morning (around eight), we took up our post along the road, at the foot of the Col d'Izoard. The only cars that came by in the next half hour were either local traffic, full or going the wrong way. This led to some heated discussions on our location strategy and the plan to go hitchhiking in the first place. We dismissed the idea of starting to walk along the road, it was supposed to be a resting day after all. Then an elderly couple with a dog stopped, saying they would only go up a bit to exercise the dog. We took it anyway, because a parking lot along a single road would give us a clearer position for the follow-up. At first, the dog wasn't entirely happy with having to share its back seat with us, but we fixed this with a lot of patting and scratching behind the ears. Once we arrived the dog made it clear it wanted to come with us instead. Its owners eventually managed to get a leash on and drag the poor creature off onto a rocky forest trail.

We managed to get our next hitchhike all the way into Briançon, to find out that the bus that could have taken us all the way back to the car had just left and wouldn't run for another two hours. We decided to cross the town (uphill...) and try our luck on the exit road at the other end.

Potentially the worst thing you can encounter as a hitchhiker is another hitchhiker who is already occupying the spot you had in mind, especially when she's cuter than you lot are (thanks, Dad!). We tried anyway and things were resolved when the first car to stop for her could take all of us. As a bonus, it was going all the way to our car!

United with the car we used a spare bottle of water to clear all the collected dust from the windshields and went back the way we came. Two minutes into our ascent of the mountain pass, bright red dashboard lights and annoyingly loud warning buzzers notified us we had an issue with the cooling system. My first reaction: 'Who needs engine cooling? It's only some passes in the French Alps. It's not as if it is even hot outside.' was not appreciated by Dad. A look at the coolant temperature gauge told us we were really dealing with a serious cooling problem, so we stopped at the nearest strip of gravel verge that was wide enough not to drop us off the mountain. A quick look under the bonnet showed us we still had enough coolant, ruling out a leak, but the cooling fan did not rotate at all. We let the engine cool down a fair bit and then found that a piece of rogue tubing was blocking the radiator fan. Unfortunately, removing it did not revive the fan, so its electric motor was probably fried.

Some ancient wisdom from the depths of Dad's brain saved us for today. Opening all the windows and turning the interior heating to maximum, using only the low gears to keep the coolant flow high, we managed to reach the top of the pass with only two short cooling stops. Well, at least it wasn't a brake malfunction like two years ago at the top of the Col de l'Iseran. That had been a terrifying experience. Going down the pass didn't give us any more cooling problems. We found that speeds over 70kph generated enough air flow for cooling without the interior heat torture device active.

Once on the campsite, we tried to find out where the nearest brand-specific garage was, in the hope to get the car fixed before we would walk off again tomorrow morning. Even dropping the 'brand-specific' requirement didn't give any results that were within 50km and back up over the pass, so it was decided to stick with the interior heater workaround for now.

Meanwhile, Mom had sent the girls off to experiment with the concept of hand-washing clothes. They called me in to help wringing out the excess water. The ensuing events resulted in four drenched young adults and a steady little stream from the washing area across the gravel road and to the river. For some reason it was raining under the canopy over the washing area...

One of the defining characteristics of this campsite was the massive amount of medium sized boulders strewn around the foresty bit we were camping. Clearing spots to fit our tents yesterday already yielded a considerable pile next to the girls' tent. Since I didn't have anything else to do, I started collecting more and more to build a dry stone wall around the tent. Even Mom and Dad approved, as long as I promised not to dig a moat along the perimeter and leave an opening in the wall.

Caiman Raptor Elk

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