And there I was ...
Driving down a lonely dark road in a pretty remote place in Pahrump, NV in the middle of the night yesterday. Doing about 55mph. Everything was OK. Then, all of a sudden, the truck just turns off, stops running, starts coasting, and the windshield wipers come on all by themselves. My hands were on the wheel for all of this. Well, I restarted the van while still rolling. As I recall, it happened one more time within a few minutes.
To my credit, my first impulse was a mechanical problem of some sort. Probably electrical. However, I _am_ very near
Alien Mecca, so flashbacks from Whitley Strieber's book "Communion" did cross my mind. I took the truck out of overdrive, and nursed it along, until it seemed normal. and I arrived home maybe 10 minutes later.
The good news:
- The radio did not come on or start scanning all frequencies backwards
- There were no unusual lights in the sky
- No missing time
The bad news
- When I was test driving the truck, on the way to sign the bill of sale, while driving slowly across a parking lot, the truck stalled out. When I tried to restart it, it started as if never a problem. That has happened a couple of more times since.
- The previous owner had the truck in the shop a week or so before I bought it for something cryptically referred to on the receipt as "high idle" problem.
So very likely there were no aliens. However, I do still have a UFO problem -- Unidentified Failing Object -- somewhere on this truck. I'd like to find it, fix it, and be done with this.
If you know or can guess, please do so.
Vagabound