Snow . . . Transmissions . . . No Cells!
Mood:  caffeinated
Topic: family
We had 6-7 inches of snow dumped on us Thursday afternoon!  Not only that but my husband left work at 1:30 - was re-routed from his normal route thru a neighboring town due to the high hills & people sliding up & down them.  He ended up in the college town to the north of us when what should happen?  He couldn't get the vehicle to shift gears. So a very nice man in a pick up behind him helped him get the vehicle off the road & then drove him about a mile & a half to the nearest convenience store.  Since we have no cell phone, he called me collect from probably the last remaining working pay phone in a 100 mile radius & said the tow company next door to where he was said it would be about midnight due to the high volume of cars stuck in the muck, snow, ice.  I called several tow companies in the area where he was & they either wouldn't pick him up & go back to the vehicle & then tow it 15 miles south to where we live or they said it would be midnight.  (For the record it was 4:50 when he called - took him a little over 3 hours to get to where he was - normally a 20 minute drive.)  One company - very reputable - said they could do it in 3 hours so I said ok.  Then hubby called back & said he'd walked - WALKED!!!!!! - in all that ucky stuff back to the vehicle, got it in gear & babied it to the store.  The guy was nice enough to allow him to leave it there overnight so I trekked out in that mess to go pick him up. Tow company was actually going to get to him first & I told them THANK YOU (since they were actually going to help us) but suggested others were probably in worse straits than we were.  Now on a normal rush hour day - traffic going north is horrible & it was 10 times as bad Thursday evening. But at least no one could drive fast - too much traffic - so we were all slow going but safe.  Took me an hour to get there & about 35 minutes home as by that time a lot of the ice had melted & I could drive almost 35 mph & no traffic. Saw some idiots - yeah, you in the FedEx truck - going the speed limit (60 mph+) - what were you going to do if someone had to slam on their brakes in front of you?  So the Transmission shop had the vehicle towed on Friday a.m. to the shop.  Not even going to think about how much this is going to cost.  This is after we had the same vehicle in the shop a week ago for U-joints & my vehicle in the shop earlier this week to fix the compressor.  I'm taking donations!
On a good note - the ice & snow are gone now.  Sun is shining & I'm really hoping that is the last of the bad weather we're going to see for awhile.