So on Tuesday afternoon about 4PM, we left town to drive to Pennsylvania to visit the in-laws for the mother-in-law's 75th birthday on Friday. The plan was to drive to Wheeling, WV, spend the night, then visit Cabela's the next morning and head out from there for York, PA. Then Thursday I was going to drive down to DC and visit our secure, undisclosed colocation facility to look at some changes we want to make.
Best laid plans of mice and men.
We made it to the first rest stop in Ohio where we got out to use the facilities, and the first thing we noticed was that the car looked like someone had thrown a Dr Pepper at the hood. I'd been noticing some sort of crap building up on the back window for the past 30 or 40 miles, but chalked it up to having driven through construction areas and picking up a lot of dirt and crud. I picked some of the liquid up and gave it a sniff.
Transmission fluid. Shit.
But I had no dash lights or any indication from the transmission that anything was wrong. So I thought I'd drive down to the next exit, turn around, and head back to Richmond. But by the time we got to the next exit, I was pretty much unwilling to drive much farther. So we stopped at the Pilot station and, long story short, they called a local mechanic for us, I talked to him, he said we'd be better off going to the Ford dealer just south of us, and we took off down the road to Eaton, Ohio.
We reached Dale Carter Ford and spoke to the owner. Unfortunately it was after 5PM and their service department was closed. But Mr. Carter said he would leave a note for his service manager to take us first thing after they opened at 8PM. We left and wandered back north to pick up a couple of quarts of transmission fluid at the local auto parts store and then back to the I-70 interchange to find the one and only motel in the area. The New Budget Inn. $39/night for a single. Formerly an EconoLodge. Now apparently owned by Southwest Asians and managed by a Mr. Patel.
We have since been calling this motel the Norman Bates Motel. It really wasn't that bad. It was not fabulous but it had been remodeled within the past 10 years, the beds were decent and insect-free, the bathroom had a nice clean fiberglas tub. But the TV didn't work for shit and this put Sally out, because she was unable to watch the Dancing With The Stars finale. Oh well. We got dinner at the Pilot next door, at their Subway concession, and the manager was nice enough to lend us a couple of the shower towels after Sally opined that the towels at the motel were too small.
We got the hell out of there about 7AM, took the towels back to the Pilot, and headed back to Ford. The service manager told us that he wasn't sure if they could fix it or not, but he'd put his mechanic right on it. I think at the time he thought we'd blown the transmission.
Anyway, it turned out that we'd blown a hole in the transmission cooler. I have no idea how. The only thing I can figure is that we went through a lot of construction and maybe a truck kicked a rock into the engine compartment. Dunno. Anyway, they had to send to Dayton to get the part, which in reality is a combined radiator, a/c condenser, and transmission cooler all in one. So that came in at around 11:00 and the mechanic set to. He was nice enough to work through his lunch hour to get us back on the road.
Now, I must also note that the service manager, Marc Fisk, went out of his way to make sure we were comfortable during our wait. His wife, Lisa, who is the accountant there, drove us up to the Eaton Place restaurant for breakfast, and came back to get us when we were done. (Best. Damn. Biscuits and gravy. Anywhere.) Dale Carter came back and made sure that we were being taken care of. These folks are really great. I'd seriously consider buying my next car there if they weren't two hours down the road.
And in the end, a $439 repair cost $107 because it was covered by the extended warranty I bought with the Escape. Bonus. And they took the time to wash the car off for us, too, because as Marc noted, if they didn't get the fluid off the glass and we hit rain (which we did, later in the day), it would smear and we'd never get it off with the wipers.
We got back on the road about 1:30PM. The only place we stopped for any amount of time was Cabela's in Wheeling, mostly to just get out and walk around for awhile. I bought another pair of the Meindl walking shoes that I bought back at Thanksgiving, some shoelaces for the old pair, and a gun case for the Bersa and its mags since I was going to be driving to Maryland the next day. Then we just kept a'drivin', and made York, PA by 11PM.
The next day, driving round-trip to DC on business, was anti-climactic. However, I thought it was pretty riotous that, as I drove across the Maryland line and was confronted by a whole line of signs telling me what I could and could not do in my car in the People's Republic of Maryland, the song playing on Sirius 7 was "Freebird".
I got the hell out of Mordor on the Potomac around 6:40PM and was back in York by 8:30 last night.
Hopefully the rest of the weekend will be quiet and calm.
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