This is a long post, but I wanted this experience documented for my family, so skip or enjoy...your choice.
We packed up, locked up, and left our little house in Virginia to head towards the West, our new place of residence. Friday night we were just planning to drive to D.C. which was less then a couple hours away. Our plan was to spend the night in D.C., then spend Saturday in Philadelphia, Sunday in New York City, then on Monday start driving towards Colorado. We had been very good with this move, planned out all our stops and even made advance hotel reservations at all our stops. How does that saying go..."the best laid plans...". Friday night, when we were 5 minutest from our hotel...my trusty car, Wanda the traveling Honda, called it quits at a stop light. Just like that! No warning! boom. We thought it was the transmission, but weren't sure. I could see all our awesome plans for the weekend (Independence Hall, Statue of Liberty, NYC, Mount Rushmore) slipping away into a pit of waiting for our car to be repaired. We were so, extremely, sad.
Of course, this all had to happen on the weekend we were moving...and it couldn't have happened weeks before when we had time to spare to do something about it. Isn't that how it always goes...your car picks the most "convenient" time to call it quits? Bright and early Saturday morning, Matt started making some phone calls. He got hold of an Aamco garage that took pity on us and was willing to look at our car first thing. We got it over there, they looked at it...and yay! It wasn't the costly repair of replacing a transmission. It was a couple of sensors and the connecting arms that needed to be replaced...still a chunk of change, but not nearly as expensive as a new transmission. Blessing number 1. Well the parts had to be ordered and the garage was closed on Sunday (rightly so), so that meant our car had no hope of being fixed until Monday. Now during all this we had decided to do a partial "do it yourself" move. We had about 1000 pounds of our belongings packed between my car and Matt's truck...with barely enough room left for humanity to sit. 4 kids were with me, and 1 kid was with Matt. There was no way we could off load enough stuff so we could all fit in Matt's truck. Problem #1. Next, we only had our hotel in DC for Friday night. Our next hotel was up in Newark. Problem #2. As we are talking about this at the garage, we look up and see a rental car agency across the parking lot. Angels sing, blessing #2. We decided to see if they had a rental car big enough for our family, so we could still head up to Philadelphia, NYC, then we would have to back track back down to D.C., pick up our car and try to make our next hotel Monday night in Ohio. As we are standing in line, we over hear them renting out their last mini-van. Devastation starts to sink in...but we are still holding on to a sliver of hope and a prayer. We had already invested a lot of money into this weekend, and we didn't want it to go to waste. We talk to the agent, and he has 1 last vehicle that would work for us. A big, black, full size SUV. He can rent it to us cheap...for the whole weekend he gave it to us for the price of 1 day. He was so awesome! Blessing #3. So we start to try to salvage our weekend plans. The biggest time crunch we are facing was our Independence hall tickets. We had 3 hours to get there 1 hour before our tour. We rush to the hotel, pack up, rearrange Matt's truck and long-term park it, load up kids and hit the road. Through the amazing kindness of a Park Ranger, our tickets were waiting for us and we made it to Independence Hall without a minute to spare, Blessing #4. We were able to spend a lovely evening with my Sister-in-laws wonderful parents. Blessing #5. And we made it to our fun in New York City, when we thought for sure just the day before that we wouldn't! Blessing #6. Our final blessing, because all good things come in 7's, right? Monday we drive back to D.C...now naive me, I thought that the garage would get parts and start working right away. After the 4 hour drive to D.C. we would be able to pick up our fixed car and drive off into the afternoon, right? Not! We get to D.C. about 1pm, after many phone conversations with the garage, and find they haven't even started on our car. Yikes! Our hotel is in Cleveland Ohio....we didn't have any place to stay in D.C. Ok that's not true...we have some very dear friends in the area, and we were so close to calling them up and begging for a room! At 2pm they finally start on our car, with no promises that it would be done. We set ourselves a time limit. We figured as long as the car was done by 5pm, we could make it to our hotel in Ohio in a reasonable amount of time. If it wasn't done by 5pm...then we would cancel our hotel and call our friends and redo our routes and stops. BLESSING # 7! With not a minute to spare, I mean, Matt was literally online about to cancel our hotel, when the garage called and said our car was done. We checked out the work, paid, re-loaded and arranged all our junk and loaded kids and we were on our way by 530pm. We pulled into Cleveland, OH just after mid-night. We were back on schedule, headed towards Mount Rushmore, Colorado and our new home!
Through out this experience I learned there is still goodness and kindness in the world. I don't want to know how many people's cars got bumped at the garage so they could work on ours first. Kindness. The park ranger didn't have to bend the rules and hold our tickets in Philadelphia instead of releasing them to the public like their policy states. Kindness. Mr. Car rental guy didn't have to give us a screaming good deal on a rental. Kindness. Most of all, I can't count the number of people who stopped to check on me, I lost track. As I was sitting on a small stretch of grass with a little shade, in front of a strip mall next to the garage our car was at, all our luggage, car seats and kids spread out around me. So many people stopped to see if I was ok. I am sure they thought I was either homeless (which technically I was) or abandoned. It is very humbling being at other's mercy (the garage) with no where really to go. I was very touched during this trip, by the many kind acts that were blessings to our family.
So exhausted Monday, from waiting for our Wanda to be fixed.
What we looked like sitting on the curb....
What we looked liked sitting on the curb...waiting and waiting...
Finally! Wanda is done, and good as new, we hope!
Wanda and Willy Nissan are ready to blow this joint!
