Saturday, July 15, 2006

It Started Out As a Lack of Gas

My trip was wonderful, except that I paid a lot more than I had planned. I never would have imagined the trouble I had. It started out with me running out of gas.

See, we were driving up to Mohonk, and suddenly my car stalled. It's a mountain, and I was running my car low on gas. It was stupid, but understandable since I don't normally drive up mountains. I was in a bad place too, because you couldn't see around the corner where my car was. There was basically nowhere I could move the car where it wouldn't be in the road.

A nice gentlemen in a truck who was going up the mountain saw me and offered to tow me. There was nowhere on my car to really hook to, so he hooked around the frame. He was pulling me up the mountain, and everything was good. When he was at the top, we was planning to make a wide turn at the gate so I wouldn't have any trouble, but a car happened to be in the way, so he ended up making a much sharper turn. Without power steering, I couldn't turn my car sharp enough. I couldn't seem to brake fast enough either. My car pulled on the chain, and the chain got wrapped around the axle. It completely shreaded my tire.

When I finally got gas which Audrey's aunt and father brought, I headed back to a gas station to put more gas in my car. I was beginning to run low on cash and I knew fixing the car wouldn't be cheap. The steering was about 40 degrees off. I took it to a garage to have it looked at, and they told me I'd never make it back to Virginia unless I got everything fixed there that needed to be fixed. They put on two new tires, realigned my wheels, and replaced the tie rods. I had to pay $600 that I didn't have on hand. My ATM card didn't work there, and I didn't once think about writing a check for myself to get cash at the time. So Audrey's aunt paid for it and told me I could pay her back when I got home.

I'm home now, and looking back I've certainly learned a lesson about gasoline -- don't run it low when you're drive up a steep hill! It happens to all of us, and it doesn't really bother me. The part that bothers me is all the other trouble that came after it.

1 comment:

Audrey said...

Well at lest you maid it home safly. Oh, I did not call because I thought it would be better wait until I knew you where not busy. No need to keep calling your grams every five minutes. Talk to you later Honey.