Perfect Way to Cap Off Labor Day Weekend

In addition to letterboxing and lobstahs, Kenji and I had plenty of fun in Maine with Heather², Jon, Patti, and Keisha, and all the many many kids! We had campfires in the yard and on the beach, s'mores, sparklers, silliness and even a couple of hours of kayaking on Sunday.

Monday morning, Kenji and I got an early start, leaving Kennebunk by 7:30am. We stopped in East Hartford, CT to check out Cabella's, and then stopped in West Hartford to have some Harry's Pizza. Except we never made it to Harry's. As we turned the corner from Park Road onto South Main Street, we suddenly had a flat!

We pulled over onto a quiet side street and parked under some shade. A flat tire normally isn't such a big deal, except the wheels all have locking lug nuts on them... and as I removed the donut and tools from the back of the car, it became apparent to me that we did not have the key. The nice folks whose house we parked in front of graciously tried to help us by lending their Honda's wheel lock key... it seemed to fit but as soon as we applied any pressure to unscrew the nut, the key popped off. So finally we gave up and called a tow truck to haul our butts over to Pep Boys. Fortunatley they were able to take care of it. All in all the whole fiasco ate up 4 hours and about $250. But I can think of many worse things that could have happened, so I'm not going to complain.

Now I know you're wondering why on Earth the key was not in the car. Well, when we bought the car, Honda put the locking lug nuts on the car for us. They took the original lug nuts off and placed those back into the package that the locking lug nuts came in. Then they taped the package back up with some nice fat green tape that you can't see through... When I brought the car home, I thought the package contained only the original lug nuts and not the key, because I couldn't see it through the green tape. So I stored the package in the house, thinking there was no need to keep the old lug nuts in the car.

Well, we made two changes right away when we finally got home that night. 1) The lug nut key is now in the car, and 2) we got AAA.

Busted Building

Last night I went to go dance to the Blue Vipers of Brooklyn in Whippany, and then went to the diner with a bunch of people for a chocolate peanut butter milkshake and some fries.

Around 2:00 a.m. I was just about home when I pulled up to the intersection at the end of our block and saw a white SUV all cock-eyed in the road, with its front end up on the sidewalk.

At first it just looked like the vehicle had just pulled up onto the corner of the sidewalk, and I wondered if they were going to try to rob the little deli that's there - though I can't imagine a little deli would have something worth stealing during off-hours. But as I pulled past the SUV I could see that the building had a big fat dent in it! It looked like the SUV had its reverse lights on and then off. I wasn't sure whether the driver was just going to try to pull away, so I called the police. They came within 30 seconds and so I thought that was a pretty good response time.

I feel bad for the people who own the deli since they are going to have a hard time doing business with the corner of the building all broken the way it is. I don't feel bad for the driver of the SUV... was probably a drunken schmuck.

More car trouble?

Ok, so I was just out doing my usual every-other-Friday book delivery routine, when somewhere around the time I crossed the intersection of Eagle Rock Avenue and Pleasant Valley Way, my not-quite-year-old Honda Fit began to make the most wacky-ass noise I've ever heard! It was a very loud, varying, but mostly high-pitched metal-on-metal scraping sound - sometimes squealing, sometimes clattering, but mostly a cacophony of sound that you generally do not want to hear coming from your car - ever.

When I noticed it, my first thought that something screwy was happening with my iPod so I shut the radio off, but to my dismay the sound was still there. Then I hoped it was the car next me making that sound, but that car passed and the sound remained.

So I pulled into my next stop - the sound continued though the frequency reduced as the car slowed and then stopped as I came to a full stop. As I stopped that first time after the noise began, I did hear a sort of a twanging sound, as if something just broke free of something else. Stepping on the gas while in neutral didn't produce the sound, so it must be something that depends on having the wheels in motion.

I got out of the car, dropped to my knees and looked underneath as best I could, but I couldn't detect any loose metal dangling things. I tried to look inside the wheels at the brakes as best I could - didn't see anything unusual. There was no smell of burning brakes, no sign of anything leaking.

So I delivered my books for this stop, took one more look under the car for leaks and such, and then continued gingerly along my way. As I backed the car out of the stall I did not hear the sound, but as soon as I turned the wheels and began to move, it came back loud as all get-out.

I proceeded along slowly, rolled down my window to listen some more... I'm not entirely certain, but the sound seemed to be coming from the front of the car. At my next and final stop, I checked under the car again, and this time I also tried pushing on all four corners of the car. Pushing on the left-rear sort-of produced a sound that could be part of what I was hearing while driving. I should note that in addition to the rate of speed, the noise also seemed to depend a bit on the road condition as it responded to small bumps in the road. Also, the noise seemed to get especially loud when turning the wheels.

Anyway, I know I wasn't just hearing things, because people did stop to look at me as I drove by. Heh how embarrassing.

After my last delivery, I went back to the library and dropped off all the returned books. At that point it was no more than a mile to get home and I figured I could endure the squealing for a couple minutes more.

But about half-way home, as I slowed down for a stop sign, the squealing magically went away before I stopped. And it stayed gone for the remainder of my drive home.

So what the heck was that noise?? I'm quite sure I didn't run over something that would have got caught up in my car and I certainly didn't hear anything fall off the car as I approached that stop sign. Anyway, I made an appointment for first thing tomorrow morning with Honda to have them check it out. I suppose that if they can't reproduce the sound they aren't going to have much luck finding out what made it. But there is a recall issue that I was notified of recently, so maybe they can at least take care of that if they can't do anything about the noise that doesn't seem to be there anymore.

So this is where all the cars go...

...that get towed in New York City.

Yep, tonight I went into the city with Joe and Liana to go dancing at Frim Fram. It was a really fun time, at least until we arrived back where we parked the car. I guess we misunderstood some signs on 28th Street... would have been helpful if the curb was painted yellow but it wasn't. Plus there were a bunch of other cars that were parked illegally as well - I supposed they were all towed too.

Originally Tiffknee was going to catch a ride home with us, but because we had to deal with finding the car and getting it out of impound, she thought it would be quicker for her to get home if she took the Path train. I'm not sure what happened yet, but I guess she missed the train, and now that I'm home, I see that Kenji is now out, off to fetch Tiffknee from the city. D'oh!

UPDATE: Turns out Tiffknee was at least able to make it back to Newark Penn Station, which is good. I'm glad Kenji didn't have to go all the way into the city. :)

Life Saver Saved My Life!

Yesterday was a very Friday the 13th-ish day. Conveniently, it actually was Friday the 13th.

As you know from my previous posts, Friday began with a man-hunt in our back yard. Then in the evening, a NJ Transit train got stuck in the tunnel so Tiffany had a hard time getting home from work in NYC. To make things easier, Kenji and I went to pick her up at Newark Penn Station, and then Kenji dropped us off at Tiff's house so that he could go to the book store while Tiff and I went to the dance.

At least that's what the plan was supposed to be. When it came to leaving for the dance, Tiffany's car, the one she's only owned for two weeks, was dead!

But the night was not lost - the thrid member of the shoe-changer triangle, Joe, was having none of this Tiffany-and-Marsha-aren't-going-to-the-dance business. He drove all the way back home from the dance to pick us up and take us there. That's me in the back of Joe's convertible, wearing his hat so that my hair would only be a near-complete disaster instead of a complete disaster.

When we got there, we paid our $15 at the door, and I took a Life Saver from the candy dish and began to suck on it while I changed my shoes. I started off with a nice dance with Tiff. Then I danced with my favorite lead in NJ, Tall Mike (we have qualifier nick names for all the Mikes to make it easier to tell which Mike we are referring to). As usual, dancing with Tall Mike was super-fun. About 3/4 of the way through the song, he did an aerial (I think it's called a Side Car), which was so much fun that I couldn't help but laugh. But flying around laughing with a Life Saver in my mouth was not really a good idea, as the Life Saver then got stuck in my throat!

Good thing it was a Life Saver though, because I think the little hole is what made it so that I could still breathe. Well, actually I think the Life Saver got stuck in the right pipe... so maybe I would have been able to breathe anyway even if it didn't have a hole in it. Nonetheless, having the little bugger stuck in my throat was very uncomfortable. Gretchen insisted I drink some hot water to help melt the Life Saver and also to help my throat expand. It was a good idea because after only a few sips I could feel the Life Saver flip around and then continue on its way down into my tummy. :)

A Warm Welcome Home, Newark-Style

We arrived home early this morning from a brief Christmas holiday with Kenji's family, who live in the Seattle area. I'll post more about it later, but we had a lovely little vacation, and it was the first Christmas either of us has spent with family in six years.

While we were away, we parked our car at Kenji's workplace, near Penn Station in Newark, and took a cab to and from the airport. This morning, I stayed with our luggage in Penn Station while Kenji fetched the car - he picked me up and we were on our merry way home.

While waiting at a traffic light in downtown Newark, I noticed that the heater was still blowing cold air on us. This was despite the fact that the car had been running for a good ten minutes already, and the heat controls turned all the way up. Then we noticed that while the car's interior was not warming up, the engine compartment certainly was. In fact, it was getting dangerously hot!

Turns out the radiator mysteriously got a hole in itself while we were away, probably by magic. We managed to get the car home, without calling for a tow, by shutting off the engine at every red light, and pulling over every mile or so to let the engine cool down. At one point we even stopped at a gas station and put coolant in the radiator... only to watch it drain back out onto the ground below. Fortunately, the air was cold, so we never had to stop for more than five or ten minutes at a time. What normally would be a ten or fifteen minute drive worked out to be about an hour or so.

Luckily, the little car fix-it shop just around the corner from our house was able to fix the car today, so tomorrow I'll be all set to go to work.

Painting Plans Foiled!

At least for now.

So the guys who owned our house before we did only bought it to fix up and resell. They didn't care that they painted the bathroom with a flat finish that is impossible to clean!

Well, after a year of living in this house, we've finally decided to repaint the walls and ceiling, replace the vanity top and medicine cabinet, and install the exhaust fan. So Kenji and I wrote down all the necessary measurements, hopped into our car on this wet and rainy evening and went on our way to our local Home Despot.

I don't think we were even a mile and a half away when all of the sudden we could hear a low rumble from our car... then the sound of scraping metal. I pulled over to the side of the road and Kenji jumped out to take a look. It appears that somehow the exhaust pipe plum disconnected itself from the exhaust manifold! So now we have the loudest car on the planet. Bah.