A Nearly Painless Breakdown...

In 30 years of driving back and forth to Indiana, we've had a couple incidents of car trouble, but nothing that couldn't be dealt with so we could get back on the road.

There's a first time for everything, right?

We'd just had some front-end work done on the car which didn't get rid of some odd noises that had been going on for a while; I mentioned it to My Sweet Baboo; he said he thought it was the power steering pump...we'd get it looked at when we got home.

About 5 minutes down the road on the return trip yesterday, he completely lost the power steering.

We pulled off just before we got onto the interstate and he checked under the hood to make sure the accessory belt was not being hindered by the non-functioning pump, but it looked just fine and wasn't making any noises, so we got back on the highway and kept going...rather carefully.

At lunch, he called a car dealership that we'd be passing in just a bit to ask if the non-functioning pump could cause additional problems, or would we be ok if we kept going? The service guy told him that as long as he didn't mind the muscle required to go around turns, he should be fine.

So we kept going.

Just north of Nashville, I heard a slight noise that I thought was in the music playing on the car stereo...only the noise didn't really change from one song to the next. I turned the music down, but MSB said he thought it was something caught in the fan. We kept going.

We hit a traffic snarl at the I-24/I-65 junction and had to slow down to a near stop; suddenly we smelled something that smelled like hot brakes. Surely it was the brakes on the big truck in front of us...right?

We kept going.

South of Nashville, I heard the noise again...a little louder this time. I turned the fan off and the noise didn't stop. 'That's not the fan' I said.

'I don't know what it is.' MSB replied...suddenly, there was a thump and the noise quit. 'Must've been something caught in a wheel' he ventured.

But a couple of moments later, he exclaimed and began to try to pull across the highway. 'That was our belt' he said.

I knew from a past experience that that meant the belt that ran everything...the power steering, the water pump, the engine fan, the alternator...all those systems were dead.

And we were in the High Occupancy Vehicle (far left) lane of I-65, going 70 MPH, at about 4:50 PM...just in front of Cool Springs Mall.

Somehow, we managed to get across all the lanes of traffic, to exit at Cool Springs Boulevard and kind of coast down to a Shell station just past the stoplight at Mallory.

Fortunately, we have AAA premium road service, so MSB began making phone calls.

We were within the 100-mile free towing radius (the dealership to which we would be towing the car clocked in at 93 miles), and they could get us a discount with Hertz on a rental. The tow truck would be there within 45 minutes.

We had less luck w/Hertz. There was an rental office in Franklin, but it was closing at 6 and MSB didn't know where it was. The only other option was the office at Nashville Airport, which was not at all close to us and we'd have to call a taxi to get there.

He relayed this to us, but kids grabbed their smart phones and googled the Franklin office, which looked to be about a mile or a mile and a half away...we could walk it if necessary.

He called them back, only to find that that shop had moved to the next interstate exit about 4 miles away. Not possible to walk. And, besides, they didn't have anything that would hold 6 people.

Just at that moment the tow truck pulled up, and a young guy hopped out and looked in the windshield at a car full of folks. 'Holy Cr*p' he said, then offered to take MSB to the Hertz place down the road. So they took off, in plenty of time to get there before 6.

At about 10 after, the tow truck and a Kia minivan pulled up and while the ailing van got hitched up for the ride back to the Rocket City, we transferred almost all our luggage and Christmas cheer to the rental.

'I thought they didn't have anything that would hold 6 people?' I asked MSB...he replied, 'This came back in just before we got there. It hasn't been cleaned, but as long as we bring it back with as much gas as it's got now (about 3/4 tank), we're ok.'

The Artist rode in the tow truck, just to make sure he knew where to go, and the rest of us hopped into the Kia. We'd been off the road for a little less than 90 minutes.

I got the rest of the story after we were going. Turns out that our young tow truck driver had gone to high school with the clerk at the car rental desk, and offered to tow the rental back to the rental place...which was almost just across the street from the tow truck shop...to save us the 1-way drop off fee...since he had to come back to Nashville anyway. The clerk was fine with that.

We followed the tow truck almost all the way into The Rocket City; they turned off just north of town to go to the car dealership while we headed on to our end of town. We filled the rental tank, pulled up to the house and had the car unloaded when Tow Truck Guy brought the Artist home and hooked up the rental for the trip back north.

All of the extra bother cost us less than $100, including a tip for Tow Truck guy. It remains to be seen what the repairs to the van will cost. Guess it's a good thing we've got a little bit of Christmas money in our pockets.

It could've been sooooo much worse; the timing on everything, from when and where the car belt broke, to My Sweet Baboo nursing the car across all the traffic and to the gas station, to which of the tow truck drivers came to get us, to the return of the Kia van...was truly amazing. God is very good. Very, very good. I'm incredibly grateful this morning.

Oh, and there another first...this was the first time there was snow on the ground for the entire trip. It was a White Christmas for everyone...