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Alright. This is the last “negative” post you’ll get from me for a long time, because things are going to start getting better around here! 🙂
This is a “What I Did Over Spring Break” story/rant. I got off work last Friday. My husband and I spent Saturday and Sunday relaxing. Monday I spent nearly 7 hours running errands, the largest of which had to do with my car – a white Ford Taurus. Many months ago my step-dad hit a deer and dented my hood up really badly. After waiting for a long time for him to fix it, my husband and I took things into our own hands and drove to Phoenix to buy a new hood. Which sat in the garage for a while until Monday, when I finally got it to the body shop to be painted. He said it’d take a few days for them to get to it, which was no problem because we were taking the taurus to Albuquerque on Wednesday. So, fast-forward to Wednesday. Hubby and I wake up, and have a leasurley time getting out and on the road. My mom was going to watch our dog, two birds and our fish. (Don’t worry, none of them die!)
When we hit the interstate, the car starts to act funny. It’s running at a high RPM. I don’t think much of it, because it’s been a while since it’s been on the interstate, and maybe it always ran that high. I can’t remember. Well, a short time later the accelerator petal begins to shake, and make a brrrrr noise, like a card in the spokes of a bike tire. We’re close to Flagstaff, so we mutter and pout and say we’ll get to Flag and find a mechanic to look at it, possibly delaying our trip a bit. But no big deal, we have all week off.
Then, all of the sudden there is a huge bang/boom, I feel something go under the car, all my warning lights come on at once, and smoke begins pouring out from under the hood, and from the back. The guy behind me (who was following too close), manages to avoid us as I wrestle the car over to the side of the road and pull to a stop. We immediately get out. That’s when we notice the rapidly growing pool of gasoline that’s pouring out of the gas tank. We grab our things and get as far away as possible, lest the car explode. After composing ourselves (it was terrifying!) we call AAA. Our membership had expired, so we renew. Everyone’s very nice. They send a fabulous truck driver to tow us to a mechanic, but we have to wait until all the gas drains from the tank (and, of course, I had just filled up), because you can’t have a leaking car on a tow truck. He tows us to the shop.
The people at the shop were wonderful. They’re very nice, and get the car on the lift right away. Then I get the bad news. The engine has thrown a rod. Not only did it throw a rod, but as the rod was falling (shooting?) out, it blasted the starter into four pieces, punctured the oil pan and, of course, the gas tank. I need a new engine. $4,000. Now, the car was a gift from my great grandmother, and has been nothing but trouble since I got it. I’ve already put in several thousand dollars on this car. A new transmission a year ago, brand new tires less than a month ago, big oil change (with all the extras), new hoses, brakes, and I can’t even remember what else. All that investment, gone in a moment. So, the car is being stored in Flagstaff until I’m able to take the title up so they can junk it. 🙁 And, the hood that was being painted the very day the car broke is now worthless to us, so that was more money wasted.
So we optimistically decide to rent a car and continue our trip. We get a great, fun car and keep going. We get to our destination late, and crash. The next few days are spent running around, visiting relatives, shopping and eating. All good things. 🙂 This is when I buy the red eyed red fire hatchling. Very happy. But when we were in one of the stores, someone bumped our rental car. 🙁 There’s a big scrape on the back bumper, and some paint is flaking off. So tomorrow we’ll have to call the Insurance company, because the person who hit us didn’t leave a note, so it’s my responsibility. Blah.
So, jump to today. It’s a very long trip back to Flagstaff, where my mother picks us up to drive us back home. She gets lost, so is much later than expected.
Before we left, the hubby and I cleaned our home, so when we got back it would be nice and relaxing. I plan on taking a bath and eagerly opening the three packages I know are waiting for me. But when we pull up…our porch is full of stuff. Big trash cans, the shop vac, and other things. “Great,” I think, “they’re cleaning out the garage.” Not really what I wanted on my previously clean porch, but the house is owned by my step-dad and mom. Then we get inside. *sigh* The house needs some work. There are wires hanging from the ceiling, things broken, the floor isn’t finished…the house is half done, but livable. Well, while we were gone they decided to ‘finish’ the house and surprise us. Without asking our permission, they came into our home and began working. They pulled all our photos and pictures off the wall, as well as the shelf my dad installed a few months ago. Our jacket hooks are pulled down, and the house is in a shambles. Everything is scattered. Our bird cage (with birds in it!) is sitting on top of our wedding photos, which are on top of our jackets, which are piled on our bed. The first thing I notice, though, is that some of my Windstones are missing. “I put them in the laundry room so they wouldn’t get paint on them,” my mom says. Alright, no problem. But not all of them were moved. My black griffin had some white paint on her (which I was able to remove). They are all dusty, and in harm’s way. And my poor black gold fledgling has had one horn knocked clean off. I can’t find it, either, in all the mess. 🙁 She’s just broken. So…off to Kyrin she will go, as soon as things get settled. The packages I waited so eagerly to receive were scattered all over the house. I was only able to open them long enough to make sure everything arrived safely (it did, thank goodness!) before I packed them away. I have to work tomorrow, and I spent over an hour cleaning up the mess my step-father made. All my Windstones are either packed away or put into the laundry room, which now has a big Do Not Enter sign on it.
I can’t believe my Windstones got so dirty, and painted, and even broken! My husband and I are so upset…it’s great that they wanted to fix things that have been needing fixing for a long, long time, but…why didn’t they ask us, or tell us they were going to do it? We come back from this stressful vacation, eager to relax in our nice clean house, and instead we get a construction zone.
Anyway. We’re staying positive despite it all, and we’ll see what tomorrow brings. Anyone else have any good (or bad!) travel stories? I’d love to hear them. 🙂Oh. my. god.
I would have been so pissed!!! You don’t do stuff like that!
The car going kaput is bad – but that’s what cars do, right?
But the renovating your house? It’s a surprise, all right, just a very bad one!
Big hugs!
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http://www.sarahjestin.com/feedbacklists.htmAt least you have a good attitude about all that happened. I think I would have pulled my hair out. I have a good traveling story.
We were going to West Virginia with our friends Jason and Chrissy to look for some land that Chrissy was getting from her grandmother. We didn’t know where it was exactly and Jason’s brother had programed it into his navigation system. It was off the beaten path down a dirt road with a few trailers on it. We drove down the road twice and still couldn’t find where this property was. You couldn’t turn around on this road because it was very narrow so you had to go back to the main road in order to drive down it again. We where making out third trip down the road when we noticed a truck following us. We figured they lived down the road so we pulled over to let them buy since we were going to drive slow and we didn’t want to have them stuck behind us. Well the guy in the truck pulls in behind us and blocks us in so we are stuck and can’t move. He startes yelling at us asking if we are lost. Jason in his wisdom says “No, we know exactly where we are”. Well the guy flips out pulls out a hand gun and starts yelling “YOU DROVE BY MY HOUSE TWICE, YOU DRIVE BY AGAIN I’VE GOT SOMETHING FOR YAH!” We were all in the back seat and couldn’t see he had a hand gun pointed at us so Chrissy starts yelling at him that there was no need to get so upset. That just sets him off more and he starts yelling even louder. Chrissy turns around and sees the gun and starts saying “We’re sorry we’re sorry” over and over. I didn’t see the gun so I’m like WTF?! Finally the guy pulls away and goes back down the road. We high tail it out of town and didn’t stop until we hit the West Virginia/Maryland line. I was pissed off and wanted to go to the police but everyone else was saying they are probably all related and not going to help us so we went home. That was the last time I ever went to West Virginia.
Yikes, purpledoggy, that’s terrifying! What eventually happened to the land? I would have sold it from a distance!
Oh Stephanie. I so understand car woes when traveling. Last year around Christmas 2006/New Year’s 2007 my husband, son and I were visiting family since my husband would be deploying a few months later to Iraq for over a year (10 months down, 5 to go!). We had been visiting his Grandmother who lives 4 hours away from us and were planning on stopping at our house for the night before going up to visit his best friend in Virgina. We get up in the morning and find things a bit frosty as we get loaded in the car.
We crank it and attibute some of the funny sounds to the engine being cold. We drive for about an hour and see the Honda dealer in Tifton, GA, and joke about pulling in to have them check the car. 🙄 We should have.
About an hour later the car starts losing power. We keep going as long as we can, but evenually have to pull off the road because the car just won’t go any more. We get out (leaving Gavin in his car seat) and open the hood. Not a pretty sight. We notice one of the pullys for a belt has broken lose and the belt had fallen off. We try our cell phones, but since the are older Sprint phones and we are two miles from Willacoochie, GA, there isn’t a lot of reception. Knowing folks may not stop for my husband I go stand by the road to try and wave someone down.
Several cars going the same direction as we were pass by before a trucker headed the other way stops and crosses the road to see if he can help us. We ask if we could possibly use his cell phone to call USAA since we have free towing with them. Thankfully he does. USAA tells us it will be at least 90 minutes before one of their authorized tow trucks can get to us. We tell the trucker this and he says he’ll stick around until the truck shows up.
We keep looking at the broken pully and think of how lucky we are when it broke and the belt came off that it didn’t damage the new radiator we had put in the car a few months before. As we are standing there with our hood up on the car we see a state trooper come speeding past. Does he stop (or come back) even though we are clearly in distress? NO!
We do our best to keep warm and keep Gavin occupied and away from the road until the tow truck shows up. Giving him directions was interesting because we didn’t know the last road we had past (and neither did the tow truck driver) all we knew was we were just past the cemetey outside Willacoochie. He found us nevertheless and pulled the car up on the back of his truck. We thank the driver who had stayed with us the entire time rather than continuing on his way to Tifton (his delivery was to a place behind the Honda dealer!). We somehow manage to squeeze all four of us into the cab of the truck and proceed to Tifton as it was the closet Honda dealer.
We get there and tell them what had happened and they get to our car as soon as they can. It takes them most of the day and shortly before 4 they get the pully changed and belt back on, but discover another problem when doing a very short test drive out of the garage. At the same time the pully went, so did our transmisson. Needless to say we were in shock. They tell us they can fix it, but it will take a little bit to get the parts in stock and quote us a bill of just over $3,000 for all the work.
We’re a single income military family so we don’t have that kind of money just laying around and the credit card has too much on it to be able to cover the repairs so we take turns going outside to call our parents to see if they could loan us the money for the repairs. My parents finally agree to it and we tell the dealer to order the parts.
Meanwhile we are trying to figure out how we are going to get home with all the Christmas presents. One of the people at the dealership offer to take my husband to Enterprise across the road so we can rent a car. He gets there and signs the paperwork just before they close for the day and drives the Chrysler Town and Country back to the Honda dealer. We have just enough room once we fold down the back seat and one of the captain’s chairs since we didn’t need both for Gavin’s car seat. We debate staying in Tifton for the night since it’s dark by this point and we are pretty tired, but opt for heading home instead.
All of this happened on Monday. We call my husband’s best friend and apologize that we aren’t going to be able to visit him after all. He totally understands and says he wishes he could come down to visit, be can’t due to health issues. We hang around our house for the week driving my car and keeping the rental parked in the driveway (to keep it safe and extra mileage off it). Late in the day on Thursday we call the Honda dealer to see if they have finished our repairs. Not quite yet, but they expect to by the end of the day on Friday. They do, but after Enterprise has closed for the day so we drive to my husband’s grandmothers house to spend the night so we can return the rental van in the morning. Our return trip from his grandmother’s house on Sunday is uneventful.
Then a few months after my husband deployes I’m driving his car and notice it is acting funny. When I put it in drive and start to go, the tires act like they are on paint and spin before they grab the road and I can go. I call my dad about this and he says it sounds like something might be wrong with the transmisson. 😯 I call the Honda dealer in Savannah (Hinesville the town outside Ft. Stewart is too small for one) and make arrangements to have the car looked at. I talk to one of my friends and she agrees to follow me over so I can drop the car off at night and then the dealer can look at it first thing in the morning.
I get a call the next morning and find out the reason the car was acting funny was it was out of transmission fluid! This really shocks me since we haven’t even put 3,000 miles on the brand new transmission. Apparently when the Honda dealer in Tifton replace the transmission they didn’t replace all the hoses assocaited with it (I guess because they didn’t think they needed it) and one had ripped and it all leaked out. I tell them to fix it please and grumble to myself because this is one repair that isn’t covered under the new transmission’s warranty.
Of course the bit about the transmission fluid leaking out gets me thinking to something that our mechanic had mentioned to me while doing oil changes. They mentioned that we had an oil leak. Well I decided to test something after I got the car back with the new hose. When I pulled the car in the driveway I put a piece of cardboard under it so I could see if anything leaked out during the next day/night. Nothing at all so I realize that oil leak we had all along wasn’t an oil leak, but a transmission fluid leak. This realy annoys me, because as mechanics they should have been able to tell the difference between leaking motor oil and transmission fluid. If they had told us it was transmission fluid we would have gotten the car looked at much sooner and might not have had the transmission go out at all.
Yuck, pegasi! Transmissions can be such a pain…as can mechanics who make errors. Everyone’s human, but still.
That’s too bad, Stephanie. I’ve been very fortunate on the road so far, considering all the traveling I do to conventions. *knocks on wood*
I hope everything gets better for you soon.
Yikes!! 😯 I’m sorry you have all had such horrible experiences. Other than running out of gas, I was the passenger and couldn’t see the gas gage from my side. Though when we got our first car/SUV (Ford Explorer), my poor bf got hit 3 times from behind, each time while he was stopped at a stop light, in the middle of the day, all in the same month. How do you miss a big, black SUV in the middle of the day, stopped?
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