Oops–Is That Our Car Rolling Away?

On Sunday, we were driving through the national park and we were making lots of stops at the many turnouts along the road, looking at scenery and flowers.  At many of the stops Gary was immediately checking scores from the NCAA basketball tournament.  He wasn’t following his normal routine of stopping, turning the car off, putting the transmission in first gear (it is a manual) and setting the parking brake.  Well, at one stop I got out and he just kept the car running as he checked scores.  I spent more time at that stop than he expected and after he got the scores, he just turned off the engine and popped out of the car to catch up to me.  As I saw him heading toward me I also saw the car behind him starting to roll forward.  I screamed, “the car is rolling away”.  I watched as Gary broke into a sprint, or at least as much as that is still possible for him.  Thank God he had left his car door open.  Even though the car was starting to pick up speed, he caught up to it, made a reasonably graceful entry through the open door, into the seat, and applied to brake to bring it to a stop.  It had just about reached the speed at which he wasn’t going to catch up to it.  There were drop offs on both sides of the road right after that turnout.  It definitely could not have been driven back up onto the road.  Roadside assistance -- at best probably a hundred miles away.  And of course he strained a hamstring trying to commence a sprint and now we have to take it bit easier on our hikes as I am certainly not going to even try to carry him out.