Now I'm here, and I don't know why...
I finally got out to New York after my car decided to go belly-up on I-80. I ended up flying AirTran (must be a new airline, 717's... not too small but not a hell of a lot of leg-room) I got flagged for additional security checks, which was something of a pain in the ass, but the flights themselves were pretty uneventful. There was a bit of a lay over in Atlanta, and then my bag got sent directly to the Baggage Services area in La Guardia, so I ended up sittin out there waiting on it like an ass for half an hour before I went and checked in there. The chick behind the counter actually scolded me (half-jokingly) for not coming to get it sooner: apparently she'd given 2 or 3 PA system calls, but I didn't hear it... I did hear some stuff on the PA, but if you've ever been to La Guardia you'd know what it's like trying to decypher that cacophonous babble...
The past few days have been really frustrating for me: my time to see my family and friends out here was cut down from a week to about two days because of that goddamn car >< That was a pain in the ass -- I got about 50 miles out from Rock Island along rout 80 and the car suddenly made this wicked, squeeking noise and dropped from around 60 to 50, 55mph. I was still close enough to turn around, so I decided to get to the next exit and head back home. I got maybe 5 more miles and the car had another fit and dropped to 45mph. At that point I figured it wouldn't even make it back to the apartment without the car breaking down, so I pulled into a rest stop (actually, I kinda coaxed it in there: it got to the point where the car was doing 30 and the engine was working like it was doing 80, so I figured it was stuck in first gear and the tranny was going) and gave my dad a call to tell him what was up. He kept telling me on the phone to try and drive it back to Rock Island... on the shoulder if need be >_>, and I kept telling him "Pop, it's not going to make it." But my father can be a very stubborn man, and he has this way of making me so angry I just don't give a fuck anymore. I was already pissed off a the situation, and when he finally said "you can try to drive it back" for about the sixth time, I blew up, said "OK. I'll drive it back", hung up the phone and went out to the car, knowing it wasn't going to make it. Like I said, my dad can piss me off like no one else on earth :\ I should have stayed there and called Kim, but when I get that angry, I'll do things I know are stupid. I guess I can be self-destructive too if I get my button's pushed right :\
So I got about 15 miles back toward Rock Island, doing 45 with the engine screaming at me "dude, what the fuck are you thinking?" and it starts to do the old "thump-jolt-you're tranny's going you fuckin retard-thunk-a-clunk" routine. At that point I'm pretty much resigned to the fact that I'm gonna have to have it towed back, so I tried to get it as far as I could. Finally the transmission just dropped and the car started losing accelleration (the engine was working fine still, so I knew it was the transmission... you should have seen me cursing up a storm >< ). I actually ended up stopping dead in my tracks on the narrow shoulder of an overpass, so I had to get out and push the damned car about 20 yards to the roadside between mile-marker 40 and 39 and then off the shoulder into the grass a bit. It was getting dark about then, so I hopped in the back, changed into some long pants and grabbed all my important stuff out of the car and threw it in my shoulderbag, locked it up and hit the road. I started out walkin on the grass by the shoulder, but it dipped down pretty far and the undeaven footing was killing my ankles, so I moved up to the very edge of the shoulder as far from the right lane as I could. dozens of cars passed me by in the time I was walkin there, not one of em stopped... not that I expected em to, but I kept thinking "damnit, if I was a chick I wouldn't be walkin." Of course, the chances were also good I'd be getting raped or worse, so in retrospect I'm glad I have a penis, even if it meant I had to huff it on the roadside.
I walked about 3 miles down, and by now it was pretty well past dusk. I could have headed back toward that one rest stop I had passed 10 miles or so back, but I figured the nearest exit would be back west. I saw a billboard for a Harley Davidson dealership... "Next Exit 12 MIL"... that sucked. I can't describe how much that sucked, seeing that sign. It meant that I was basically half way between exits... exits about 20-25 miles apart. Even if I had gone back at that point, I would have had to have walked the same distance, so I decided to just keep trudging foreward. I'd find a phone and call Kim up when I got to the next exit. Luckily, it must have been an old billboard or something, because I started seeing signs at around mile 36 for gas/food/lodging at exit 33... which meant I had about 3 miles to go instead of 12.
I got to exit 33 and saw the Holiday Inn Express across the road, so I hopped over and was confronted by a barbed-wire fence... luckily it only ran along the side of the hotel parking lot that faced the highway, but I still had to walk around it (the one gap in the fence was too narrow to fit through: kim could have perhaps, but I was SOL), which was a real pain in the ass because my legs had had about enough walking for one evening. I got in and called up a towing service: they could get the car, but not till the morning. Next I called a taxi service... no answer, just a machine. Only one in town too, the other number listed in the book was a residential phone belonging to an older woman who obviously got a lot of calls asking for a taxi... needless to say, it's an erroneous listing.
So I got a room at the hotel (I slept horribly, something thats unusual for me, I usually sleep like a rock in a hotel bed) and the next morning I arranged to get the car towed. I got a ride with the truck... it was actually cheaper than getting the car towed into Annawan (the town I had stumbled into, near Prophetstown and Kiwanee... I think it was) and then catching a taxi back to Rock Island. The trucker was a very cool guy named Troy: he used to work at Sexton Ford as a mechanic, and he also does work now as a DJ (you wouldn't guess it from looking at him: he was about my hight, hefty guy, bald with a blond mustache... when I got into the cab of the truck, the first thing I noticed was that Closer was playing on the radio). The trip wasn't too long back, and backing the car into a parking space outside the apartment took about 2 seconds, which rocked because I was thinking we'd have to throw it in neutral and push it around... but he'd brought a flatbed, so he basically just backed the truck up to the spot and rolled the car back on the cable and unhooked it.
He offered to take a quick look at the transmission fluid, and it turned out it was still full, so most likely one of two things happened: when I got the oil changed the day I left, the mechanics showed me the tranny fluid and suggested it be changed (it was brown-black, so I was like "yeah, go ahead and do it"). Either they didn't put the filter back on propperly when they flooshed and refilled the fluid, or they didn't flush it well enough and some of the old residue clogged up the works (this is my guess). Either way, my transmission's kaput ><
But I've got the SAAB now, so the only pain in my ass is going to be getting rid of the Toyota.