not quite as planned...

The plan for Saturday morning was to pick up Andy from school in Adrian at about eleven-ish. As it was a beautiful, sunny spring morning the plan also called for driving the X (yes, there is enough space in the front trunk for all his laundry) with the top off of course. After eating a leisurely breakfast & seeing Sue off to work I saw that it was still earlier than I needed to leave but decided that I'd take off early anyway. It was a fun trip north, that is it was fun until I got almost to Wauseon & discovered the car's temperature gauge was reading WAY hot. CRAP!!! Taking a quick look around I realized that I was only about a half mile from Kent & Sharon's house so I pulled into their driveway and shut the car down ASAP and then listened to the coolant overflow whistle like a tea kettle till the engine began to cool. Now what?? Kent & Sharon weren't home so I pulled out Sue's cell phone (I don't usually carry a phone but just happened to have hers this time) and called Dad to see if he'd like to take a road trip to Adrian to pick up Andy while the X cooled down. Amazingly he didn't have any plans and in no time he was there and we continued the trip to Adrian in his new van. We had a nice chat on the way up, got to Andy's dorm at almost exactly when planned and continued to visit with Dad and Andy on the way back. We continued talking when we stopped for lunch at Arby's in Wauseon on the way back and despite my anxiety about my car I really enjoyed our time together. After stopping at AutoZone to pick up more coolant we headed back to the X, filled the coolant tank, said bye (and thank you) to Dad, then Andy & I jumped into the X and headed back to Napoleon with our fingers crossed and the full expectation that we may need to shop and let the car cool down before we got home. To my very pleasant surprise the temp gauge rose to normal and stayed there. We did make an unplanned stop on the way home though, at the small model airplane air strip that's just north of Napoleon and we stayed a fair while watching several guys there fly their R/C planes and talking about the PhotoShop seminar that Andy had taken the day before. From the air strip we went home (no overheating problems) and Andy spent the afternoon working on a school project & I went out to my shop to play, er, make that work with kitchen planning stuff. We had a nice dinner (steak, salad, couscous) after Sue came home from work and later in the evening I called Sharon to thank her for the use of their driveway (thought it would be a good idea if she knew what hew neighbors were talking about when they ask her why there was a little red car parked there all day). We had a very nice long chat. Very enjoyable - even though (and maybe because) the call wasn't part of my day's plan.

All & all(assuming no permanent car damage), a good day - even if it didn't go as planned... dj