Sunday, July 09, 2006

One good idea turned bad...

Last night my husband actually had time off so we took the boys to see a movie, Dead Man's Chest the Pirates of the Caribbean. We had fun. Laughed til we cried, at least I did. Zeb did great til almost 9pm (1 hr and 50 min into the movie) when he wanted to go and get his blanket out of the car. Needless to say Duner and I played hot potatoe with the boy until eventually he fell asleep.

So, Today we went up to our cabin to get the pontoon and take it out for a spin with the boys. We loaded up with sub's snacks and something to keep the food cold. We took the tarp off the boat and attached everything to the car and hopped in to get going.

Suddenly Duner notice's the 'Check Gages" light on the dash board. We look and the car was overheated. We quickly shut it down and waited. While we discussed our options we ate our sandwhiches and snacks. Bummer. We had left the dogs at home, luckily we did make sure they had water when we left, but they would not be good all night outside. Not to mention our poor neighbors, what they would have to listen to. We hoped we would figure out a way to make it home.
Apparently there is a safety fan on the engine when it gets too hot kicks out radiator fluid on to the ground. We probably lost 1/2 to 1 gallon. We figured we would be out of luck trying to find a mechanic on a Sunday afternoon, so we filled it with water and turned it on. Yeah it went to half and stayed there. As we kept it running it rose slightly but that was since we sat still. Ok, so the plan we figured was to keep moving and we could make it home. We turned off the car, unloaded the pontoon boat, covered it back up, loaded our cooler back in the car and took off. We figured at the very least we did have our cell phones and Duner's Nephew Mike, said if we needed to we could call. He just happened to be up there at the time, which worked out well.

So we headed home. I watched the gages for about 5 miles and then just periodically the rest of the drive. We didn't take the normal way we take home since we wanted to avoid the traffic lights.

We made it home safe and sound, all fingers and toes.

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