Excitement and Adventure

I have got a splitting headache, so if this ends up incoherent, blame the skull-crushing pain.

Lady Luck and I left work early Friday afternoon. Our plan was to sneak out of town before traffic got too nuts.

In the time we've lived here, the I-17 has always been under some sort of construction just on the edge of Phoenix. On a busy weekend rush out of town, one can spend a whole lot of time sitting in slow-moving traffic.

Anyway, traffic wasn't as bad as it could have been, but it was far from speedy. After twenty minutes of stop and go, traffic loosened up.

About 30 miles later, we heard a funny noise come from under the hood. Then we noticed the temperature gauge was pinned to HOT. We pulled over right away, and I popped the hood to see what the deal was.

There was coolant EVERYWHERE.

I also noticed the radiator fan was not running. I checked the fuses, just in case. They were all fine.

We waited a few minutes to let the motor cool, then I put down the hood again and we tried to drive on. The temperature started rising again right away.

We got off the freeway at the next exit, in Black Canyon City. We stopped at a restaurant just before the darn thing started boiling over, and called a tow truck. The truck showed up within fifteen minutes - I was amazed.

So, we got the car loaded on to the truck and rode the 60 miles home again. The driver was a pretty good guy. We arrived at the mechanic's shop in Mesa about an hour later. By this time, we were in a bit of a rush, as we didn't want to keep the mechanic. He was trying to close up his shop. We also wanted to get a rental car before the rental offices closed.

The tow truck driver had a bunch of problems with the paperwork. He gave up halfway through in order to unload the car so we could get it into the garage. Once the car was off the truck, the mechanic drove it in to the garage. Then the tow-truck driver and I went back to the truck to finish up the various forms and payment, while Lady Luck and a friend of ours went to pick up a rental car.

I was waiting for the driver to finish up when my phone rang. It was the mechanic, asking if I had the keys to the car. I didn't, so I called Lady Luck. She had taken them by mistake. She came back as quickly as she could.

In the meantime, the mechanic had been searching for OUR keys, and accidentally locked himself out of the shop. His keys and phone were both inside.

He managed to break back in to the garage, just in time for Lady Luck to arrive with the keys to the Mustang.

By this point I was giggling a bit at the bizarre evening I was having.

Anyway, we got rolling again, this time in a rental car (A Kia Rondo. Although reasonably comfy, the Rondo does not accelerate or turn like a car should.). We reached the spot where we'd been picked up again about four hours after we'd called the tow-truck.

Our perserverance was rewarded the next morning, when we woke up in Flagstaff and everything was covered with a couple inches of fresh snow. By that afternoon, it had all melted, so it was like a special treat just for us. That night we had pizza at Fratelli's. In all, a good day.