Hitting the Books

It’s because I’ve still not recovered.

From the first day of the trip.

My Tuesday went like this:

Went to bed about 330 a.m.

Daughter woke up about 335 a.m. with allergy itchies. Took another 1/2-3/4 hours to get her back to sleep.

Husband wakes me up at 5 a.m.

5:30 a.m. Pack the car in the pouring rain. Throw husband, daughter, and both dogs in the car and set off to slog through the first-day-after-holiday morning rush hour on Interstate 95.

It’s still pouring.

About 715 a.m.ish smell something weird. We figure it’s a car nearby, since traffic is very heavy, even on the HOV (which we were able to take, thank goodness)

Shortly after 730 take the Arlington exit towards Ronald Reagan National Airport. It’s still pouring, but at least it’s light enough to see. Car is acting strangely. I think it’s because the brakes are wet.

Then the power steering goes out. And the power brakes. Then we see that the temp gauge is railed on H. And the little dashboard light of the thermometer is a bright red.

I manage to pull into a hotel parking lot and crank the wheel enough that we’re not in the middle of the driveway (instead we’re dead smack dab in the middle of both handicapped parking spots).

Hubby calls AAA. They can’t be there until about 945. It’s now not quite 8 a.m. Hubby has to get to the airport pronto to get through security in time to catch his 10 a.m. flight. And National has got some of the tightest security out there.

Thankfully, the hotel lets him take their shuttle bus to the airport.

But he has to leave me there waiting for AAA. In the pouring rain. With a quite dead car. And a 20 month old. And two dogs.

The plot thickens.

I talk to my dad, who knows cars. His long-distance diagnosis–broken drive belt. The thingy that runs the entire car.

Ack.

Sure enough, once the rain lets up I see under the car, and there’s the belt, hanging off the bottom of the van.

Double ack.

Hubby makes his flight just fine (whew). But 10 a.m. rolls around and no tow truck. I call AAA. The tow truck is stuck in traffic and won’t be there until 11 a.m.

At first AAA wants to send us to a dealership across the river in downtown DC. I freak. What am I supposed to do with two dogs and a toddler in downtown DC? A very nice agent finds a much closer dealership (about 4 miles away).

Okay, so the car has a place to go. What about the rest of us? I don’t know anybody up in NoVa, not anymore. And certainly not anyone who could take two dogs and a carseat in their car. I put out an SOS to my church.

The tow truck finally arrives. The dogs are not pleased to be kept in the car while being towed (even on a flatbed tow truck)

Meanwhile, my pastor is driving up from Garrisonville (about an hour-1.5 hours south). He meets me at the dealership and takes us all the way to Dulles Airport, where we picked up the key to my aunt’s condo in Ashburn.

My mother was already on the road from WV, met us in Ashburn, and then we all drove back to WV.

I was hoping to be in WV by about 11 a.m. that morning. Even with traffic it should have only taken 2.5 hours from DC to Mom and Dad’s place.

We arrive at their apartment about 630 p.m.

Needless to say, I was quite bushed/shattered/braindead.

The dealership actually had our car fixed by the next day (amazing, huh?). A pulley on the drive belt had broken, so we had to replace the pulley, a tensioner, the belt, and some shield that was supposed to be underneath the car to help protect that area from bumps and elements. A shield which I’ve never seen in all the times I’ve changed the oil in that car. I don’t think it had that shield even when we bought it (we did buy it used). Which is the probable explanation for why that part of the car decided to fall apart.

We had a nice visit in WV, then Friday we got to reverse the trip. And that was all sorts of fun too.

Getting into town wasn’t too bad, since we were going against traffic.

Until we couldn’t find the dealership again and ended up on the wrong end of Glebe Road and had to backtrack through Arlington. Yes, we had directions from the Internet. But like Internet directions, it took us the straightest route = straight through the suburbs of DC. I refused and plotted an alternate, mostly interstate, route. And managed to get us lost. Which is strange, because I’m usually very good with maps and directions and whatnot.

Finally picked up the car around 4, got everything switched back over from Mom’s car to mine, and hit the road around 415 p.m.

Just in time to hit Friday afternoon rush hour traffic.

It took me 1.5 hours to go 20 miles.

Got home before dark, unloaded the car, and collapsed.

Could have been a lot worse. Car could have died on the interstate, the engine could have seized, the water pump could have broken, hubby could have missed his flight, we could have been on the wrong side of town, could have been stranded for longer, car could have cost more than it was worth to fix, and so on.

But it was still exhausting.

To top it off I had 3 Irish dance performances Saturday, family get-together Sunday, and pictures for the Punkin Monday morning.

And I miss my hubby

I’m going to go collapse in my bed now. I’m hoping to post a review of the Temeraire series tomorrow.

Later.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 11th, 2006 at 1:01 am and is filed under Random. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.