Oh the guy I saw had a red one I think. Hat, glasses and mask so couldn’t really see him. Tall guy. Walked past when I was talking to somebody or would have said hi. Does get me thinking I’d love to see a board shindig sometime when things are back to normal-ish.
I did see all the bags… geez what a mess.
After another $700 in car repairs this morning in Vegas, we finally just pulled in the driveway at home. Feels like I’ve been gone for 3 weeks instead of 4 days.
Amazing experience, but I am DAMN glad to finally be home.
Something had cracked and was causing issues with depressurization (?, might be the wrong word) in the engine. Work order says they replaced the “valve cover gasket”, whatever that is. They took me back and showed me exactly what it was, with a big crack and a hole in the cover of something. A bunch of squealing noises as soon as he started up the car, which stopped as soon as he covered the hole. I know literally nothing about cars, but it seemed pretty legit to me. My battery was also just about dead, so I had them replace that as well (it was the original battery from when I bought it 6 years ago, so it was probably due for a replacement anyways).
I’m sure they probably suckered me because they knew I was over a barrel, but I really needed to just get it fixed so I could get home.
That was my son.
If you’re like me, this trip will probably be unforgettable for you (although you’d rather forget it). I’m sure you think it was worth it. I do. But right now I don’t want to fly again for about 6 months.
When the gaskets around the heads crack or go bad it becomes impossible for the piston to compress the fuel/air mixture correctly.
A valve cover gasket would cause an oil leak.
An intake manifold gasket would cause a coolant leak, and misfiring.
This trip did give me a bit of an epiphany regarding travel.
My job over the past 10 years has been primarily coordinating leader development workshops for federal government agencies, both in the US and in other countries. Kenya, Rwanda, Ghana, El Salvador, Uganda, Nepal, etc. While I sell the training and manage all the logistics, I’ve don’t typically travel to the actual trainings themselves, even though I have the green light from my bosses to go. The only travel I did was to the main government hubs (DC, Atlanta, Denver, etc.) to make the sale.
I quite often get asked “it sounds like such an amazing opportunity to go to [Country X]…why haven’t you gone?”. The answer is that I find travel to be incredibly stressful. Even when everything goes perfectly right - flights are on time, hotels don’t cancel, and the weather is great - I am totally stressed out whenever I travel. When it ALL goes wrong like it did this trip, I’m a mess. It’s just my personality, and I don’t enjoy it a bit. If Mrs. SkinyUte hadn’t pushed me to do the flight on Friday, I would have been watching the Rose Bowl from a hotel room in Vegas.
Even though it’s been a huge part of my job for a decade, I’ve never been able to get over the stress of travelling. It’s just not something I’ve ever enjoyed doing.
Reading some of these experiences makes me appreciate how well our trip went. We drove my son’s very comfortable, new car and had a very enjoyable time. The only low light was my frugality landed us in a bit of a dump of a hotel in Vegas for the one night. It was fine though and the bed was comfortable. The hour to get from Mesquite through the construction at Littlefield was a bit annoying but that was it.
All in all it was a great experience to spend some time with my adult son and enjoy a spectacular football game and all the attendant festivities of a Rose Bowl. We went in thinking that this would be a one time, bucket list check, kind of thing but came away wanting to go back again. I hope Utah can go again next year.
With what you described as the issues and cause you got off cheap, not taken.
Same. I thought flying out of LAX was going to be hell the day after I bumped up to first class. Easy walk right to the gate. The only bad thing was the snow when we landed and being on a flight with Buckeye players going home to Nashville. Kirk’s kid doesn’t know what over the nose means when wearing a mask, btw.
Good to know, that actually makes me feel a bit better about everything.
I never know with cars…they could tell me my enflooferator system needed a reinsprinkling infusion and I’d probably just hand over my credit card. LOL
The Thelman Wire was corroded, so they needed to replace the engine.
I just had a tire pressure management sensor go bad on my car on Sunday. I didn’t know they had a non-serviceable battery and a working life of 5 to 10 years until I Googled it. $100 for one.
My thought on yours was you had maybe $125 for a battery (new ones are not cheap these days), a $200 valve cover part, and 4 to 5 hours of labor at $80/hr. Seemed about right.
I’d like to salute that fans that didn’t travel (me). The jealousy we experienced by not being there, will fade probably sometime in the afterlife and we’ll have more money to leave to our beneficiaries
LOL, that’s an awesome story.
As stressful and frustrating as the trip was, I think we were actually very fortunate to have things turn out the way they did. The car didn’t die in the middle of nowhere and leave us stranded, we were able to easily find an honest mechanic to get it fixed, we ended up avoiding the LAX cancellation nightmare on Sunday by flying out of Burbank instead (after Delta cancelled us), we didn’t slide off the road in the ice and snow on Friday (like the dozen others I saw), etc., etc.
All things considered, it ended up with a very positive outcome and the only thing we were out was some extra $$. I can always go make more, and the trip was certainly worth the memories. 
This is awesome. Once we were driving back from Corpus Christi to San Antonio on a vacation and I swore there was a good gas station not too far away (from what I remembered when we lived in Austin and went to the beach a couple times). Turns out my memory was bad and we got low. I slowed down to 55 and finally after 20-30 miles, there was an exit. On the downhill off ramp, the car sputtered and the engine stopped. We stopped at the stop sign and I got out in the 100 degree weather in flip flops to push while my wife steered. Just as I start pushing, an F350 pulls off on the shoulder and a guy in fatigues jumps out and helps push. We had to push the car under the interstate to the opposite corner to a gas station. I was sweating like a pig and one of my flip flops came off but I was not going to stop since I had a soldier helping. As I almost collapsed and caught my breath, I turned to thank him and offer to buy him a drink or snacks, but he was already 50 feet away jogging back to his car. God bless our military and the men and women who truly serve.
Another time in west Texas, we were driving through the night (had a newborn) and pushed it a little hard. We slowed the car down to get better mileage and eeked into a gas station on fumes. One of those times you fill your car up and get out the manual because you didn’t think the tank held that much.
I’ve had my share of plane experiences (right now even - my parents 4pm, then 10pm flight was cancelled yesterday - time for them to go home 
), but road tripping usually is so much easier to control (except for car issues).
I went to the CCG and wanted to get to the Rose Bowl but just couldn’t make it work. We had my parents coming out, so it was fun to share the major bowl game watching with my dad (even if both my parents went to the school which shall not be named). Definitely will hope and try harder to make a future Rose Bowl.
Sometimes perspective is comforting . 19 hour delay and counting……
Or from my hometown - just a commute back from work via tram gone wrong:
We were caught up in a mechanical problem with a Delta flight at the Denver Airport three or four years ago that made national news - but really was just an inconvenience for our flight. But it was a perfect example of the “flight Crews needing to leave” then “the pilots need to leave” then “the flight Crews needing to leave, again…” We wound up being in the Denver Airport for 23 hours.
I learned a lot though: first of all, as soon as the part problem was reported (we were waiting for a part to come from another airport) one of the passengers, a woman immediately demanded a hotel for the night and arranged for flights the next day. In the long run, I’m sure she had a very comfortable meal voucher dinner and an easy, restful night while we were all sleeping on the carpet. It’s pretty remarkable to be sharing carpet space with first-class passengers.
One last aside: the part that was broken was an air intake valve malfunction which apparently broke down immediately after leaving the Atlanta airport, but it wasn’t until the pilot’s got to the foot of the Rockies they decided that it just wasn’t safe to have the air coming from the other intakes and being diverted to the other engines. So they decided to bang an immediate right turn (I mean, abrupt) and announced that we are going to be making an emergency landing in Denver. The most chilling of all of it was when the pilot said “Don’t worry, we should be okay; they’re all waiting for us on the ground…” :-0
Meanwhile we’re all sitting with our heads in our laps…
Good times.
I used to have that issue of MAD!
