Weekend Adventures

When you spend two hours on a Saturday convincing your kids to emerge from their weekend electronic stupor long enough to go spend some family time in  the great outdoors,  and then it takes another hour to drag their lazy, complaining selves out to the car equipped with adequate shoes and water bottles,  and then you get half way up the canyon only to have the transmission in your car go out and your engine overheat, the last thing you do is give up and turn around and go home defeated.

At least that is not how we roll.  When Dan noticed the car was acting up, and smelled a putrid burning spell,  he pulled over, opened the hood, checked out a few things, poured some water on the engine to cool it off, and then set out further up the canyon.  When I asked if we shouldn't turn around, he just replied, "Well, we've come this far, might as well keep going", and so we did.   Yes, we had transmission trouble the rest of the way up.  Yes, we were not sure if we were going to make it back down. Yes, I was a little bit freaked out, but hey, it was a beautiful day, and we had worked so hard to get those darn kids outside.

We were not able to take the hike we had planned on, because our dumb dog was not allowed.  So we took some pictures, and hiked into the place we had been sledding last January.  What a difference a few months makes.

 Last January

This July

All too soon, it was time to hit the road.  Miraculously, with a little coaxing and shifting, our poor car made it down the hill and to Grandma's house.  We let it cool off for a good long time while we ate pizza and ice cream, then we started for home.  Once we hit the free way, it started acting up again, so we pulled off on to the highway, which may not have been a great idea, because every time we stopped at a light, the poor car did not want to get revved up and moving again.  Because we have our priorties in order, of course we made sure that the car got us to Swig for our weekend soda run.  Then we babied, nursed and limped it along to the repair shop across the street from Dan's work.  We parked the car, made a mad dash across the street, carrying our drinks, our dog, our backpacks, and our leftover pizza,  and camped out on the grass, waiting to be rescued.  

On the other side of the post from Will's head, parked across the street, is our poor Golden Goose.

We were rescued by our neighbor, who drove all the way in from Syracuse to get us.

And now, we get to wait, and wonder what the fate of our car, and of us, will be.  

I am stranded at home all day tomorrow, and truthfully, I am looking forward to it.  Can't go anywhere, might as well stay home and try to be productive.