It ended about four hours after this video..
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2:14 – Linds and I leave Los Angeles in Linds’ car with the air conditioning blasting, bags packed for Tahoe, and enjoyable music drifting in the background.
2:33 – Linds and I observe her temperature gauge flying above EXTREMELY FREAKING HOT.
2:37 – “Should we pull over?” I ask timidly, knowing Linds likes to keep a tight schedule.
2:38 – “Naahh…it should be fine…”
2:39 – Jerk. Jerk. Clunk.
Car is not fine.
2:41 – I glare at a truck driver who honks at us while we look under her hood. Radiator fluid everywhere. “Yeah….” She says, “that’s not right.”
“Well let’s just go back and get my car,” I suggest. We both look at each other—my car has no air conditioning and it’s approximately 216 degrees outside. “But it’s a dry heat” means nothing in this kind of weather.
Since Linds’ car is jerking on the road and sputtering as though it might fully rupture at any minute, I also suggest that we take a surface street back to Pasadena. “Here, look, that’s Foothill. It goes back to where we want to go,” I offer.
Linds looks at me. “All Foothills are not the same,” she says with a laugh.
“Well it’s headed South, which is where we need to go so let’s try it…”
3:15 – Freeway is missing.
3:30 – Freeway found.
3:40 – Car dies in an intersection. We receive death threats.
4:00 – “Hi, um Dad? Yeah we’re going to be a little late….”
4:10 – We stop at 7 – 11 for Slurpees—a necessary component for any long-distance, high-heat, no-air driving expedition.
4:45 – Traffic decides to take a break and hold still on the shimmering hot black freeway.
4:50 – We vaguely hear a song above the roar of the wind once the traffic moves again—but we belt it out anyway.
6:30 – We get to Bako and jump in my dad’s car with Lil Bro and head North.
7:30 – The four of us stop for food at a Jack in the Box with a line that doesn’t move for twenty minutes. And there are only fourteen, extremely unusual people in that line. The line remains a mystery.
7:50 – We stock up on snacks at the gas station. Beef jerky and soda for dinner? Why not?
8:20 – Dad loses cell phone in a parking lot.
2:00 am – We arrive in Tahoe.
We think.
2:15 – “What the H?! This is a dead end road….” Dad to Lil Bro as we continue spinning the wheels in the woods. We pass a hitchhiker fifteen times. I’m sure he hated us.
6:30 am – Lucas, my three year old nephew bounds into the bedroom and onto our heads with a “c’mon everybody! Time to play wif trains!”
Who can deny that red-headed doll?
Not me. Trains it is.
Return Trip:
9:30 am Monday – Departure from Tahoe.
11:30 am – First Coffee break.
1:30 – Second Coffee break.
And so on….until…..
5:30 pm – Linds and I pack back up into my car (from my parents’ house where we loaded into my dad’s car) to return to Los Angeles.
6:15 – Honda sputters and dies mid-flight whilst heading through a barren wilderness.
6:30 – “I think it’s the oil. Let’s have D bring us some when she drives down to L.A. in a few hours.”
“A few hours?” Linds says to me, incredulous.
“Ok let’s call her now. But let’s also look around for a gas station.”
D promises to be there shortly with plenty of oil.
“What kind of oil?” She asks.
“Hmm….what kind do you think?” I respond.
Silence.
“Ask dad what he uses in his car.” I venture.
Dad gets the oil.
7:00 pm – Linds and I are on a desolate road about a mile from our car.
“I don’t see anything that suggests a gas station.”
“But I do have to pee.”
7:10 – Linds nearly gets caught on the side of the road when a red truck bumbles its way juuuuust past her half-bare bootay.
7:15 – “Two cars in one weekend? Seriously?” We say to each other while we make up songs about how sucky this trip has been.
7:30 – World’s most Beautiful Steel Bridge. Watch the video. “At least we have that, right Linds?” I say.
8:15pm – “Dad said to be really careful with the oil…here are some directions.”
I don’t like directions. I shrug them off and pour in the oil.
No luck.
8:20- “How about if I jump it?” D offers sweetly.
Doesn’t work.
8:30 – “I’ll call AAA,” Linds says.
9:15 – “We don’t have enough trucks available tonight to tow it all the way back to L.A., but we can tow it to a lil shop in town,” the heavily liquered, but nice, truck driver offers. “Or you can wait three hours for another truck.”
“We’ll go to the shop in town.”
9:30 – The “town” consists of a bar, a gas station, and tow truck company.
9:31 – “If we have to wait here for three hours we’re spending some serious time at that bar,” we all decide.
9:50 – We decide to just leave my car at the tow shop and head south in D’s car.
10:00pm – I realize we left more than my car at the tow shop.
10:01pm – “You left your purse in a car in the middle of nowhere? With cash and cards in it?”
Yep I sure did. Don’t tell me, I know-- I’m a genius.
11:15pm – After dropping D and Linds in Pasadena I head back out on the freeway for BFE where my car is located to retrieve my purse. I get on the phone with AAA.
11:20 – “Hi, I wanted to see if there was a tow truck available now that it’s later…I am driving back to my car and…”
“Oh, I see your call. So you’re located on the freeway near Fort Tetaaawn, right?”
“Uh. No. I WAS on a freeway near….” I sighed. Who cares if he had the name so completely wrong it was humorous? I just wanted to get my car to Pasadena.
“But your car is currently not stuck on a freeway?”
“No, I called et 8:30pm, AAA had a car tow my car to a town nearby…” Did he really think I was STILL on the freeway three hours later?
“Now where is your car located exactly?”
I gave him the towing company’s name, #1 Tow or whatever it was, and the address.
“Now what is that exactly?”
“The address of the tow truck company….it’s what you asked requested…”
“But what is it exactly?”
“That’s the address of #1 Tow,” I said louder into the phone. Was he kidding?
“And that’s the tow company’s name?”
Oh. My. Gawd.
“YES…that’s the two company’s name and address.”
“And your car is there?”
“Yes.”
“So is it like a parking lot?”
“It’s their towing lot, yes. Lots of vehicles will be there.”
“But what is it exactly?”
I didn’t say anything. I was trying not to laugh heartily into the receiver. Was he on something?
11:45 – I decide to turn around and head back to my apartment. The towing company said they’d put my purse back in my car (the driver had taken it to the office so that it wouldn’t be stolen in the night) and send it with the car when it was towed to Pasadena in the morning. Whew.
7:15 AM – Groggily I drive Lindsey to the repair shop and borrow my brother-in-law’s car to get to work.
8:30 – “Hi Eileen?” I say to an assistant who could call a pass in for me in order to get onto the lot.
“What’d you do THIS time?” she says back with a chuckle.
“Well my pass is in my purse which is in my car which is in another town broken down….and I need a temporary one for the day.”
“Ok, I can do that—you have some other form of photo ID to retrieve the pass, right?”
“Uhh….no…not really. Everything is in my purse…which is…”
And so it went. But I did get on the lot—thanks to Billy, my favorite guard.
090307_19141(2).3g2
2:14 – Linds and I leave Los Angeles in Linds’ car with the air conditioning blasting, bags packed for Tahoe, and enjoyable music drifting in the background.
2:33 – Linds and I observe her temperature gauge flying above EXTREMELY FREAKING HOT.
2:37 – “Should we pull over?” I ask timidly, knowing Linds likes to keep a tight schedule.
2:38 – “Naahh…it should be fine…”
2:39 – Jerk. Jerk. Clunk.
Car is not fine.
2:41 – I glare at a truck driver who honks at us while we look under her hood. Radiator fluid everywhere. “Yeah….” She says, “that’s not right.”
“Well let’s just go back and get my car,” I suggest. We both look at each other—my car has no air conditioning and it’s approximately 216 degrees outside. “But it’s a dry heat” means nothing in this kind of weather.
Since Linds’ car is jerking on the road and sputtering as though it might fully rupture at any minute, I also suggest that we take a surface street back to Pasadena. “Here, look, that’s Foothill. It goes back to where we want to go,” I offer.
Linds looks at me. “All Foothills are not the same,” she says with a laugh.
“Well it’s headed South, which is where we need to go so let’s try it…”
3:15 – Freeway is missing.
3:30 – Freeway found.
3:40 – Car dies in an intersection. We receive death threats.
4:00 – “Hi, um Dad? Yeah we’re going to be a little late….”
4:10 – We stop at 7 – 11 for Slurpees—a necessary component for any long-distance, high-heat, no-air driving expedition.
4:45 – Traffic decides to take a break and hold still on the shimmering hot black freeway.
4:50 – We vaguely hear a song above the roar of the wind once the traffic moves again—but we belt it out anyway.
6:30 – We get to Bako and jump in my dad’s car with Lil Bro and head North.
7:30 – The four of us stop for food at a Jack in the Box with a line that doesn’t move for twenty minutes. And there are only fourteen, extremely unusual people in that line. The line remains a mystery.
7:50 – We stock up on snacks at the gas station. Beef jerky and soda for dinner? Why not?
8:20 – Dad loses cell phone in a parking lot.
2:00 am – We arrive in Tahoe.
We think.
2:15 – “What the H?! This is a dead end road….” Dad to Lil Bro as we continue spinning the wheels in the woods. We pass a hitchhiker fifteen times. I’m sure he hated us.
6:30 am – Lucas, my three year old nephew bounds into the bedroom and onto our heads with a “c’mon everybody! Time to play wif trains!”
Who can deny that red-headed doll?
Not me. Trains it is.
Return Trip:
9:30 am Monday – Departure from Tahoe.
11:30 am – First Coffee break.
1:30 – Second Coffee break.
And so on….until…..
5:30 pm – Linds and I pack back up into my car (from my parents’ house where we loaded into my dad’s car) to return to Los Angeles.
6:15 – Honda sputters and dies mid-flight whilst heading through a barren wilderness.
6:30 – “I think it’s the oil. Let’s have D bring us some when she drives down to L.A. in a few hours.”
“A few hours?” Linds says to me, incredulous.
“Ok let’s call her now. But let’s also look around for a gas station.”
D promises to be there shortly with plenty of oil.
“What kind of oil?” She asks.
“Hmm….what kind do you think?” I respond.
Silence.
“Ask dad what he uses in his car.” I venture.
Dad gets the oil.
7:00 pm – Linds and I are on a desolate road about a mile from our car.
“I don’t see anything that suggests a gas station.”
“But I do have to pee.”
7:10 – Linds nearly gets caught on the side of the road when a red truck bumbles its way juuuuust past her half-bare bootay.
7:15 – “Two cars in one weekend? Seriously?” We say to each other while we make up songs about how sucky this trip has been.
7:30 – World’s most Beautiful Steel Bridge. Watch the video. “At least we have that, right Linds?” I say.
8:15pm – “Dad said to be really careful with the oil…here are some directions.”
I don’t like directions. I shrug them off and pour in the oil.
No luck.
8:20- “How about if I jump it?” D offers sweetly.
Doesn’t work.
8:30 – “I’ll call AAA,” Linds says.
9:15 – “We don’t have enough trucks available tonight to tow it all the way back to L.A., but we can tow it to a lil shop in town,” the heavily liquered, but nice, truck driver offers. “Or you can wait three hours for another truck.”
“We’ll go to the shop in town.”
9:30 – The “town” consists of a bar, a gas station, and tow truck company.
9:31 – “If we have to wait here for three hours we’re spending some serious time at that bar,” we all decide.
9:50 – We decide to just leave my car at the tow shop and head south in D’s car.
10:00pm – I realize we left more than my car at the tow shop.
10:01pm – “You left your purse in a car in the middle of nowhere? With cash and cards in it?”
Yep I sure did. Don’t tell me, I know-- I’m a genius.
11:15pm – After dropping D and Linds in Pasadena I head back out on the freeway for BFE where my car is located to retrieve my purse. I get on the phone with AAA.
11:20 – “Hi, I wanted to see if there was a tow truck available now that it’s later…I am driving back to my car and…”
“Oh, I see your call. So you’re located on the freeway near Fort Tetaaawn, right?”
“Uh. No. I WAS on a freeway near….” I sighed. Who cares if he had the name so completely wrong it was humorous? I just wanted to get my car to Pasadena.
“But your car is currently not stuck on a freeway?”
“No, I called et 8:30pm, AAA had a car tow my car to a town nearby…” Did he really think I was STILL on the freeway three hours later?
“Now where is your car located exactly?”
I gave him the towing company’s name, #1 Tow or whatever it was, and the address.
“Now what is that exactly?”
“The address of the tow truck company….it’s what you asked requested…”
“But what is it exactly?”
“That’s the address of #1 Tow,” I said louder into the phone. Was he kidding?
“And that’s the tow company’s name?”
Oh. My. Gawd.
“YES…that’s the two company’s name and address.”
“And your car is there?”
“Yes.”
“So is it like a parking lot?”
“It’s their towing lot, yes. Lots of vehicles will be there.”
“But what is it exactly?”
I didn’t say anything. I was trying not to laugh heartily into the receiver. Was he on something?
11:45 – I decide to turn around and head back to my apartment. The towing company said they’d put my purse back in my car (the driver had taken it to the office so that it wouldn’t be stolen in the night) and send it with the car when it was towed to Pasadena in the morning. Whew.
7:15 AM – Groggily I drive Lindsey to the repair shop and borrow my brother-in-law’s car to get to work.
8:30 – “Hi Eileen?” I say to an assistant who could call a pass in for me in order to get onto the lot.
“What’d you do THIS time?” she says back with a chuckle.
“Well my pass is in my purse which is in my car which is in another town broken down….and I need a temporary one for the day.”
“Ok, I can do that—you have some other form of photo ID to retrieve the pass, right?”
“Uhh….no…not really. Everything is in my purse…which is…”
And so it went. But I did get on the lot—thanks to Billy, my favorite guard.
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