Last month, we headed to northern Wisconsin to spend vacation in a place called Lost Lake up by Minoqua & St. Germain, very close to the Canadian boarder. Quite lovely living up there.
This year, instead of flying to Wisconsin, we decided to take the Subaru, so we could hook our bike trailer and haul all our bikes, plus save a little bit of money by not flying (this little irony is important later). We spent a wonderful week up there enjoying fishing, biking, tennis, swimming, a small bit of antiquing, and napping. Our children each made some new friends and both got much better on their bikes. The little one mastered her 2 wheel pedal bike (no training wheels)!
A great vacation, well spent.
We packed up the Subaru and headed on our way back on our 2 day road trip back to Colorado.
Somewhere, close to the Iowa/Minnesota boarder, in 95 degree weather, the Subaru decided to up and die. Die! Right there on the highway, close to nothing! That's right, we were stranded, with our car packed full, bikes on the back, in 95 degree weather, sweating...sweating so much.
"What's going on with the car?" (me)
"It's dead...I told you we shouldn't run the air conditioner. That's probably what did it." (angry peacock)
"I'm sure it wasn't the air conditioner. It was only on for an hour. And I'm too F@#*ing hot, I needed a cool down." (me)
(Now I'm about 80% sure that something along the lines of "It's too hot to have the air conditioner running that long." was said. But it could be that "it's too hard on the car to have the air conditioner on"...either way...It's too hot for life and air conditioning and our car...obviously).
Long story, but we finally get ourselves and the car moved to a repair/dealership in a small town in Minnesota. They tell us the car is totally done, engine is done, gasket heads...oil leaking....antifreeze something or other...basically all the running parts of the car don't run... but... it's NOT from the air conditioner...just sayin.
We're trying to figure out how to get ourselves home with all our crap plus our bikes and the bike rack. I should also mention here that I STILL haven't removed the ski rack from the top of the car, so we have that too. The closest car rental place is an hour away and they are not answering their phones. It's coming on 5pm and we've been stranded now since 2:30.
So, I got this van I could could sell you.....
WHAT!? I say to the peacock. We aren't going to buy a minivan today, in the middle of Minnesota. That's insane! I don't want a minivan.
Well, it'll get us home, with all our stuff....and who knows, you might like having a minivan. Help you haul the kids around with all their stuff.
[Daggers are shooting out of my eyes at the peacock now]
I don't want to drive a minivan, it's too big and will it even fit in our parking spot (yes, it did....barely. But it did not clear our speed bump in the garage very gracefully).
So, we bought the minivan (and for those wondering, yes, a minivan is more expensive than 4 round trip tickets to Wisconsin, but it will haul 4 bikes, the bike rack, 4 suit cases, 1 family, 2 car seats & 1 ski rack). We drove the rest of the way home in the van WITH THE AIR CONDITIONER ON!!
We got home & prepared to sell it. We owned it for 2 weeks.
And you think the story ends there. However, when we were getting ready to bring it out of our garage for a test drive, the peacock was pulling it out and there was all this broken industrial glass on the street in front of our garage and he popped the tire on the way out...I'm serious. I literally can't make this crap up. So there we are with a guy ready to buy & a flat tire. This is why we owned it for 2 weeks instead of one.
 |
| Journal sketch with watercolor St. Germain, WI 2017 |
 |
| Journal Sketch with watercolor On the dock at Lost Lake, WI 2017 |
I'm thinking in about 5 years I will laugh at this...for now I'm still cooling down with the AIR CONDITIONER ON!
-Cheree
No comments:
Post a Comment