My Mom and I had an adventure while I was back in Minnesota. It wasn't a welcome adventure, but I've had worst times.
We drove to Rochester for lunch. It's only about 40 minutes from my parent's house in Farmington. We met our friend Lois A, who I've written about here before. She lives in Iowa part of the year and Pecan Gap, Tx part of the year. She's in Iowa for the summer, so we drove to Rochester to visit.
We had a nice visit over terrible food at Wong's in downtown Rochester. The lack of quality to our meal surprised us, as Wong's has enjoyed a fine reputation in Rochester for decades.
So, we left. We had to get back in time for Dad's golf game that evening, and he didn't want to leave my guys alone.
We got to Zumbrota and made the obligatory stop at Dairy Queen for Blizzards. When we got on the exit ramp to DQ, the speedometer on my car suddenly jumped wildly and I felt a hesitation in the car. Then the speedometer went dead. This, of course, did not deter us from getting our Blizzards. When we came out of DQ, we took a test drive through Zumbrota and back (about 5 minutes) and everything seemed fine. So we entered the freeway again.
It became apparent immediately that something was horribly wrong. The car would not shift out of 1st gear. It was just screaming and the speedometer was just sitting there.
Fortunately, Zumbrota has 2 exits (population 2789 and 2 exits...go figure!). So we got off right away and sat under a billboard.
First thing, Mom said "Call Dad. Tell him we're delayed and he should just go to the golf course". It's never wise to tell a golfer not to keep a tee time. But, what if we were to be stranded for a while and need a ride back home?
A little lightbulb came on in my brain....seems there's some sort of handy dandy roadside assistance card in the car somewhere. Let's call that. Found the little card...Daimler Chrysler Customer Car Card. Called the number. They took our information, sent a tow truck, who towed us back to Rochester to the dealer. Dealer gave us a rental car and we were on our way back home.
Of course it was 4:30 on Friday afternoon by the time we got to the dealer. Too late to have the car looked at. I had to drive one of those wearable cars...a Sebring...for the weekend. Monday the dealer called and had it all fixed and my cousin Judy and I drove down to Rochester to pick up "Big Greenie".
Of course we stopped for a Blizzard in Zumbrota on the way home.
Things could have been so much worse. We could have had 4 kids with us...we had originally planned to have my sister and all 4 kids with us. Could have been 30 below. Could have been dark. Might not have had a cell phone or signal. Could have gotten stuck BEFORE we had DQ. But it was a pleasant day and we were full from ice cream and we just visited and waited.
8:10:32 AM 
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