Whatever you do, you may want to fuel up first

I don’t always run out of gas, but when I do it’s in a roundabout in bustling traffic.

When you think about it, a roundabout is the perfect place to run out of gas. Being careless enough to let the gauge sink like a George Hill three-pointer isn’t something to write home about and therefore running out of gas is an odious, rude and myopic experience that deserves to be as humiliating as it is, just to keep it from happening again.

The best spot to do it, to get the full aftershock, is in a roundabout during what there is in Coeur d’Alene of a rush hour. Which increasingly, is something closer to rush hours elsewhere in bigger burgs.

The other day, as I told myself for the umpteenth time that “E” means “You can make it home on that. Easy,” my car sputtered as I entered the Fourth Street roundabout. Then the cabin lights came on. I cranked the ignition and the engine jumped. For a second, then it died.

If I had been in a plane I would have grabbed a parachute, but instead, I jumped out the driver’s door and experienced a flashing memory from days gone by, high school or college when gasoline cost more than you wanted to cough up.

I began running alongside the small, beat up Hyundai. It’s amazing how muscle memory returns, I thought. Like riding a bicycle. I leaned hard, my tie flip-flapped and the soles of my wing tips dug deep as I pushed the car north on Fourth. The Hyundai seemed much lighter sans fuel. I ushered it to safety in a nearby driveway.

Motorists behind me didn’t even honk.

It was dark so their faces were obscured.

I got on the cellphone, displaying an air of nonchalance as I leaned, panting, against a wheel well.

“Can you get me quick,” I whispered. “I am blocking someone’s driveway.”

My car looks like it was purchased from the dollar aisle of a used car lot.

It does not elicit confidence especially when it’s on your property at night surrounded by shadows.

Someone somewhere must be peeking from a drawn curtain and calling the cops, I thought.

I waited for sirens that didn’t come.

The moment was an opportunity to reflect. It reminded me of my pal, Steve, for whom running out of gas was a sport.

Once, during an early spring morning on the Olympic Peninsula as we headed to Sequim to see a guy about an otter, Steve’s pickup ran out of gas. He cursed, wheeled the truck to the road’s shoulder, then looked at me like a personal trainer: “You got your running shoes on?” Is all he asked.

We ran the three miles to the house of the man who had the otter. And we got a can of gas.

Steve made wildlife films and the man we visited was a guy named Lloyd Beebe. Steve had a job working for Lloyd as an animal trainer in a Kodiak chewing tobacco commercial, but the lead actor, a famous grizzly, looked down its nose at Steve, and they parted company quickly as my friend, accompanied by a racing heart and fast feet, climbed a very high fence.

The otter seemed less dangerous and more reliable. It was a calendar shoot and Steve got on well with otters.

Wherever Steve traveled, though, you could be sure it was on an eighth of a tank of gas.

He took to turning to passengers and in his drawling animal-trainer alto. “Remind me to get gas, will ya,” he’d say.

When they failed — partially because of Steve’s habit of white-knuckle driving with the pedal pushing hard against the floorboards — Steve turned to his passengers and droned, “You got your running shoes on, right?”

Steve taught me two things: Running out of gas is not as terrible as it looks to others as you’re pushing your car out of a roundabout in afternoon traffic. And to always keep a 2-gallon jug filled somewhere nearby.

The jug I used the other night was in my garage.

I was saving the 2 gallons of gas for a trip into the tulies this weekend, but I’ll have to fill the jug up before I go.

Please remind me, will ya?

Ralph Bartholdt is a writer for the Coeur d’Alene Press. He can be reached at [email protected]