If you think you have bad luck with cars...

The plan: Last weekend we headed down to Provo for Klay's grandpa's funeral on Friday, stayed with my cousin in Ogden area, and planned on hitting the Utah State football game on the way home Saturday.

The background: We bought a 2002 Honda Civic about 2 months ago knowing it needed a lot of work but got a killer deal on it so we figured it was worth it. We had a ton of work done on it when we first bought it and the klutch and baring kit replaced just last week. We thought since we've replaced basically everything in the car besides the engine it should be good for another 100,000.

The 'check engine' light has been on in our Altima for a while and it wasn't starting up very well. This made me slightly angry since it was doing the exact same thing one short year ago and we paid $650 to have it fixed. So we dropped the Altima off to the mechanic on our way out and headed to Utah in the Honda.

What really happened: The Honda ran great on the way down to Ogden. Not a single problem... until we exited the interstate late Thursday night. I was driving. I was in 3rd gear and when I hit a tiny bump it popped out of gear. Weird. I kept driving and the car was making a funny noise. I've only been driving a stick for 2 months and there was someone right behind me so I was super nervous that the car was acting so weird and kept popping out of gear. Klay was getting frustrated with me so I pulled over and he drove the few last miles to my cousin's house.

Friday morning my cousin and his wife (Josh and Annie) were so nice to watch our kids while we headed down to the funeral. We started driving and soon found the car in worse shape than we thought! It would pop out of 3rd and 5th and wouldn't go into 4th at all! So the whole way from Ogden to Provo Klay went from 1st to 2nd to 5th! And he had to manually hold it in 5th on the interstate. After a while we also noticed a weird, nasty smell coming from our car. Awesome.  

We made it there and the funeral was very nice. Klay's grandpa was 97 years old and has been ready to go for a while now. It really was a celebration on life more than a funeral (but I'm still so glad for the knowledge that we will see him again... but I digress). After the funeral I spent a few sort of stressful hours trying to figure out what we were going to do. I was on the phone with U-haul trying to reserve a car dolly, trying to find out who had extra seats we could split up and ride home with, maybe looking for a rental car instead so we could still go to the game. (In case you're wondering, one place quoted us $500 for a one-way rental from Salt Lake to Idaho Falls. Seriously? I could buy a first class plane ticket for that!)

After all this stress Klay's dad finally heard of our predicament and told us to take grandma's car up to Idaho Falls. She can't drive anymore and they were going to drive it up anyway and try to sell it. Perfect! Klay's brother was going to haul our car and we had a car to drive home. The car was a 1988 Buick with only 55,000  miles on it. A 22 year old car in perfect condition minus one thing... air conditioning. But we were just grateful to have it and it was worth the heat.

We set out on the road, already 3 hours later than we planned on leaving the kids and I was feeling awful for Josh and Annie. Of course we got stuck at a stand still in North Salt Lake because it was rush hour by this time. And just our luck, smoke starts coming out from under the hood! So we're sitting in the middle of the interstate, 4 miles south of Kaysville, with a smoking '88 Buick, and I'm sweating my guts out with no AC. Just great. On the bright side, at least we didn't have kids screaming in the back seat! We quickly pulled to the shoulder and opened the hood to let it cool. Klay's brother-in-law, Kirt, was about a half hour behind us so we told him we would let it cool and try to make it to an exit with a gas station but if they saw us on the side of the road to come save us! We waited until traffic started moving and we made it to the gas station without any more smoke. Klay opened the cap to check the coolant and it was bone dry. Dusty even! We bought some antifreeze and dumped the whole thing in. About that time, Kirt pulled up and he is very knowledgeable about cars. He started looking at it, tried to start it and it DIED! Completely dead. 2nd car down for the day. We called the junk yard and they came to pick it up. We're convinced that one of two things happened. Either grandpa knew the car was going to die and he's such an honest man he figured he would kill it before we sold it to someone and they got a lemon, or he knew something worse would happen like rolling the car or being stranded with the kids IN the car so he picked just the perfect moment to do it.

It was once again time to figure out how we were going to get home with 2 car seats. Kirt dropped us off at Josh and Annie's house and Klay's parents were heading home that Sunday so they were going to pick us up.

Josh and Annie were SO nice to let us take their car to the game (especially after we had killed 2 cars the previous day) and let us crash an extra night at their house. Thank you guys so much! When Klay's parents pulled up Sunday morning Klay's dad pulled a box FULL of tons of screws and washers he had gotten out of grandpa's garage and the bottom completely fell out of the box. Hundreds of screws everywhere. It was the last eventful thing of the weekend, thankfully.

So we made it home safe and sound a few cars later. The Honda is still with the transmission mechanic and I'm dreading that phone call and the number I'm going to hear.

On a better note, we got the Altima back and it was less than $100 to fix. We have an awesome mechanic that is one of Klay's friends so if you need any work done on your car you should definitely take it in to him. 

The end. If you've read this far you deserve a medal. Especially with no pictures.