A really good story

Cory had no classes yesterday, due to the fact that registration for next tri was taking place. Given that a weekday off from school is very rare, we thought we would take advantage of it and do something fun. I took the day off from work and we planned to go to a Six Flags. The nearest Six Flags is between Rochester and Buffalo – about an 1 ½ hours of a drive. We packed our lunch so we wouldn’t have to spend tons of money while in the park, took a book (for me) and homework (for Cory) to read while standing in line and left our house. We were only 10 minutes away from the park when Cory noticed that the check engine light was on … and the temperature needle was buried. AGH! We exited the thruway and pulled into a gas station. By this point, smoke was pouring out from under the hood. We popped the hood and … drum roll, please … there was a big crack in the radiator. Antifreeze had spewed everywhere … all over the engine, the windshield, the passenger-side window. We called my dad (of course) and called our mechanic from home (home, in this case, being Farmington). Editing out some of the more boring details, we found a guy who specialized in radiators only 10 miles away from where we were. We filled the radiator with water … and it took us 45 minutes to go 10 miles. We had to stop twice to put more water in and let the engine cool down. We finally got to the shop and the guy put a brand new radiator in while we sat in his dingy waiting room and ate our sack lunch and read our book/homework. I was very glad we had thought to bring something to do, though we had no idea our radiator was going to explode. He got it fixed, we paid and we drove off, laughing at our situation. This always seems to happen to us whenever we are not close to home. We were 100 miles from home in a very unfamiliar place … last time something this catastrophic happened, we were in West Virginia and the muffler and all the piping just fell off the undercarriage of the car … and made the most awful dragging sound you can imagine. Plus, the muffler was no longer attached, so the car was sooo loud – it sounded like something right out of “Pimp my Ride.” My point is, things never seem to happen to our cars while we’re home … but when we are miles away, that’s when things go junk. Aaaah, don’t we have the best of luck? We managed to salvage our day by stopping in Rochester at an IMAX/3D movie theater. We saw Journey to the Center of the Earth in 3D. We even got our own 3D glasses that we got to keep. It was pretty cool seeing the movie in 3D. So all’s well that ends well … we were fortunate that nothing worse happened and that we could get everything fixed and arrive safely back home. Even though bad things always seem to happen to the car when we are miles from home, we always have been able to make the best of the situation … and for that, I am grateful. I wish I had pictures to post, but we didn’t have our camera with us, since we thought we were going to be spending the day in an amusement park and we didn’t want anything to happen to it. Oh well – use your imaginations :)