Trouble in Texarcana

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As you can probably guess, today did not go as planned.  As soon as we started to drive out of Texarkana, a bunch of scary warning lights came on in the Pilot, and the car had almost no power.  I was able to quickly get off the highway and into a church parking lot, where we analyzed the situation.  I had Aliya, Norah, the cat, and a car full of stuff that wouldn’t fit or couldn’t go into the moving truck.  Ben had Adlani (the birthday boy) in the truck and was in the church parking lot with us.  It’s been a LONG time since I’ve had a breakdown, although I remember it happening pretty often when I was a kid.

The best thing about being a kid – which kids don’t realize at the time – is that you don’t have to worry about stuff like broken-down cars and the cost to fix them, not to mention the cost of a rental car, hotel, extra days with the moving truck, etc.  Don’t get me wrong – I don’t want them to worry about this stuff…I just don’t want to have to worry about it either.  Isn’t there someone I can call to rescue us so I don’t have to figure anything out by myself?

I couldn’t find a mechanic open today, and some of the rental car places were even closed.  The Penske truck has room for Ben + 1, so Ben drove Adlani back to the hotel, got our room back, and left Adlani there.  He came back to the church – about 10 minutes away, and took Norah, then came back for Aliya and Wally.  Finally, he came back and drove me to the airport to pick up an obscenely expensive rental minivan.  The airport is tiny – in fact, the rental car lady told me that she had the rental pulled up to the curb where it sat right in front of the terminal door unattended until I got into it.  Meanwhile, Ben was in a parking lot just short of the terminal…an Arab in a rented box truck in front of an airport might get some unwanted attention.

We went back to the hotel and left the truck, then drove the minivan back to the church parking lot, called AAA, and loaded most of the crap from the Pilot into the rental.  AAA showed up about an hour later and towed it to the dealership where I wrote what I hope is a note that will inspire the technician to get right to work, figure out the problem, fix it in record time, and charge us very little.  Yes, I know.  Probably unlikely.

By the time we had dropped the car at the dealership it was around 2 and I had not had anything to eat or drink.  I’m not ashamed to say that I cried when Ben directed me to Starbucks which appeared to be inside of Target which meant that they probably wouldn’t have breakfast sandwiches.  It turned out that Starbucks was a half mile away, not inside of Target, and I got my slow-roasted ham and swiss (and stopped crying).

Back at the hotel, Aliya and I spent the rest of the afternoon sorting through some of the crap that had been thrown into the Pilot because we hadn’t had time to finish packing it properly.  We got rid of some trash and have a basket of stuff to donate.  I don’t know if the weight of all of the junk contributed to the car problem.  Hopefully not.

I took the kids out looking for dinner but nobody could settle on what they wanted, so we had pizza delivered after eating ice cream.  Whatever; it’s Adlani’s birthday so an ice cream appetizer is the least I can do.  Other than that, the kids have watched the Olympics and hung around.  When we broke down Norah said, “Everything happens for a reason!  Now we have time to go to the pool!”  I have been working so that when we finally get back on the road I won’t have to worry about any deadlines.

More to come tomorrow…hopefully good news.