zhie | Adventures Happen

Those of you who are friends of both mdarkdreamer and myself may be aware of the upcoming ‘Nuipalooza’ as in, Nuinzilien’s trek up to the great North from the mid South. And those who didn’t know about that do now.

Nui’s going to be residing at Dark’s place, and hence a place in Dark’s place needed to be found for Nui, and Nui’s adorable kittiefolk – I am sure there will be blogging about the trek of the kitties next week.

Dark often blogs on the basement adventures themselves, complete with pictures. I don’t have any pictures, just the adventure of the afterwards of yesterday. It was foreshadowed while driving to Dark’s house with Vonn, during which she said she made it a point to expect every day to be an adventure, that way, she wasn’t disappointed.

When we left Dark’s house, we began the search of a drive thru with food suitable for eating at 45mph. A McDonalds appeared twenty minutes away, like a beacon in the early evening. How much did we want to get there? Enough for Zhie to drive across three lanes of traffic into the entrance BEHIND A COP without signaling.

Don’t worry… the cop either didn’t see us, or knew I travel with a balrog slayer in the backseat.

We get into the drive thru, order with much happiness, notice the fact the building is partially missing as they are doing some major repairs on it (brick missing; just plywood on one side of the drive thru). No matter. Taking longer than usual. I tossing the car to park as we sit. We pull up to the next window. Again taking a while. Throw the car back into park and discuss the fact that I shall sample my delicious beverage once I receive a straw.

Food received. Much happiness. Until… the car won’t move. It’s on; the radio and air are blasting, it seems happy… no moving. The shifter is locked in the park position. I try turning off the car, restarting, try again. No go. Move steering wheel. Nada.

Explain to very, very nice lady at the window what’s going on. Continue trying. Nice lady says, ‘we’re going to come out and help you push it to the side’. I inform them ‘great, but I can’t get it into neutral’.

Bit ‘Ooooooh….’ Now, luckily, most McDonalds, such as this one, are equipped with double windows, and being we were stuck at the first one, they were able to continue business at the second window.

Oh, but remember the construction? Yeah. Little bitty pieces of McDonalds were landing on the top of the car. A small chunk rolled down the windshield.

Vonn informed me ‘if you wanted to bond, Zhie, we could have just gone for coffee’.

Indeed. But this was much more memorable, no?

After calling triple A (it’s your transmission, guesses the person at the call center… thanks, lady) and the husband (he taped all the Olympics for me! ^_^) and the coworker (I won’t be in tomorrow!) and freaking over the fact that my phone only had one bar of power left on it, we were given a 45 minute wait time (turned more like hour and a half). I turned the car back on, and prompted by Vonn, we continued to sit and eat our food while parked at the drive thru window – it’s something I highly suggest to everyone. If you need more food, you can just roll down your window and someone hands some to you! Apparently, I was a bit calmer than most would be – there was no swearing at the car, or banging on it involved. I continued to try to get it going. We watched as 2 by 4s and welding stuff was taken into the restaurant, people behind us glared, and the gals at the windows giggled politely (we were laughing pretty good about it at some points).

I was quite a ways from home, so the tow actually cost more than the fix >.< The driver was an interesting guy – if I were Dark, you’d have a picture of him, and one of him and his tow truck, but instead you just get my description. Very nice ‘biker dude’ type with lots of information on those garmin things which was very interesting and info on other stuff I can’t recall at the moment. Not at all like the ‘creepy’ type of tow truck drivers… just like a guy with a tow truck, if that makes sense. Passed a guy driving a car and drinking a can of beer. Good times.

When we got there, the driver tried something (jabbing his pocket knife which was more like a small machete into the ‘guts’ of the car) and… it unlocked. Soon as he pulled it out, back to locked again. Had I known how to pry that off and such, we’d have been set. Oh, well, now I know. At least it confirmed it was NOT the transmission (Ha ha, call center lady who can’t spell Car-X!).

Repair guys this morning told me it was a ‘common old Toyota problem’ and they would just remove the faulty part. Means now, if I wanted (why would I?) I can move from park to drive without my foot on the brakes. Then I realized… oh, like my Chevy. My Chevy’s so old, they didn’t have that back then, the ‘child safety’ feature (child safety in a Chevy wagon was tossing the kids in the furthest back seats, and only leaving the kids alone in it for a period of time not to exceed the time it would take for them to get bored and climb to the front).

Speaking of my Chevy, the war wagon drove beautifully today. Had to take some fish food into work (got a call later that Felagund had died in his bowl… told everyone to leave him as I’m not a hundred percent sure he’s dead… he’s one of those betas who will play dead sometimes… really hope he’s not, only had him a short time and he’s a lemon yellow color, only one I’ve ever found like that) Mark lost his betta the other day; not sure what happened to Jimmy (Hendrix) but we again reminded ourselves that we shouldn’t name fish after dead singers or elves… Morrison was a very short lived betta; Ambarto died within a few days of getting him :( and so did Hephaestian. Okay, no dead singers, elves, or Greek heroes. Oy. No dead people names.

Longest lived betta right now is David Lee, who actually traveled with me back and forth where I used to work about four times, I think, and he’s still swimming strong. This is my third summer at this library, so he’s had a few birthdays now.

And since I’ve deviated from the story now, I’ll wrap things up, but that ‘magic button’ thing is good to know in case any of you ever have that trouble. It’s a little thing near the shifter… you pop it off, stick something in there, and then shift the car. It’ll save you a tow, at the very least.

Unless you happen to break down at the drive thru window of a McDonalds. In that case, I suggest you stay a while.