Off We Went.
This weekend was an adventure. It was supposed to be just another college road trip; instead, it was an adventure.
We were ready to leave right after Shane finished school – and surprisingly, got into the car on time. We turned on the engine to back out of the driveway.
“Oh!” I exclaimed, grabbing a napkin, “There’s a spider in here!” I let the spider crawl from the radio onto a napkin, then handed the napkin to Shane. He hopped out of the car and put it in the grass.
“It wasn’t a spider,” he said as he got back into the car. “It was an ant.” As he said it, another ant surfaced through a crack in the dashboard. We set it outside, too, but where there are two ants, there are usually a hundred.
We tried to leave, but the ants kept coming. We only got to the end of our street before we drove back home. We told Bill about our issue. While he was taking apart the glove compartment, I found a long trail running outside of the car, near the engine. Bill grabbed the hose and tried to guarantee that we could drive ant-free to New York. Somehow the ants transitioned during the two-night trip and by the time we got home, they were swarming at the back of the car. The hose accomplished very little.
Meanwhile, we drove: seven hours to the first college, two hours to the next college, and six hours home.
During the first leg, I ran over some huge chunks of glass so I decided to check our tire pressure. One of our tires was twelve pounds low! We filled it up and tried to find somewhere to patch it – which was not an easy task. The gas station had no garage and sent us to a tire place.
“We’re going to need the car for the whole day,” said the tire shop concierge.
“I need to be in Rochester in two hours,” I said. Shane was touring the University of Rochester.
“That’s the best I can do,” he said. “You can try the tire center down the street, but they’re booking two weeks out.”
He begrudgingly mentioned a third shop half a mile away, but they were busy, too. “It’s only me and one other guy,” said the new tire guy. “It’ll be at least a couple of hours before I can look at it.”
I told him where we needed to be and he said, “That’s like five minutes from here!” And sure enough, we could have almost walked to our tour from the shop. So we drove into Rochester, found a better tire shop (thanks to Bill, who was researching from Maryland), and they took us in immediately.
We waited about half an hour, then our car was pulled in – and back out – in mere minutes.
“The valve stem was pushed in,” said our new best friend, Ray. “They pulled it out so you should be fine now.”
No charge. Off we went, just in time for our college tour.
We spent the night near Ithaca College, and thoroughly enjoyed their Open House the next day. We had no more tire problems, and the ants weren’t bothering us much.
After the Open House, we hit the road. I drove for about an hour, then asked Shane to drive. Almost instantly, I fell asleep – the night before had been rough, and I hadn’t gotten much sleep.
Suddenly a loud thwunk woke me; I sat up quick.
Panicked, I asked Shane: “What happened?!”
(to be continued….)