Before we get to our story, we hope you had wonderful, safe Thanksgiving filled with joy and the love and comfort of family and friends. We had a GREAT time.
And now, our story -
One of the things we really dislike doing is going to Sam' s Club. Neither of us is particularly fond of Sam's or WalMart in the first place. But to drive 40 minutes or so, just for the privilege of shopping there - that just adds to the dislike.
That said, there are some things we use at Ola Lola's that we can only get consistently at Sam's. So, every couple of weeks we make the run to Mayaguez to go to Sam's. This past Tuesday we made the run.
The road between here in Mayaguez is a four lane, what in the States we would call a "limited access highway," not quite an expressway but close. It is also VERY hilly, up and down, up and down, for most of the 30 or so miles.
We turned out of Sam's with the Ola Lola-mobile jammed packed with stuff, trunk full, back seat overflowing. The first hill is about a mile from Sam's. When we started up the hill from the traffic light, the Lola-mobile wouldn't up-shift. All we had was first gear. After a several tense moments of driving driving on the shoulder, we pulled off to see if we could figure out what was going on and what we could do about it.
Transmission fluid? Checked that and it was fine. Jiggled wires and cables and "stuff." No good. We thought about who we could call for help. Marisol? Usually the first choice. Be we didn't have her number. Zan? We remembered her phone number but Zan and the two of us would barely fit in her car, let alone the stuff from Sam's. The young woman in the gas station couldn't help us find a tow truck but a very nice gentleman in the gas station found a card for a tow service. I copied the number and when back to the car. Oh. Did I mention the one cell phone we had with us was dead? The man offered to let us use his phone, but we (or rather, I) decided to push on. Off we went: Elaine, me, a ton of stuff from Sam's and a car that only ran in first gear.
There were some hairy moments but we made it home, 2-1/2 hours after leaving Sam's. Okay, we did stop at one car repair place in Aguadilla. But it was 5:00 pm the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. They looked it, said it could be this, or that, or something else. Bring it back tomorrow.
As we came past the airport coming home, we decided to rent a car. Friends were coming from the States Thanksgiving Day, still needed beer for Ola Lola's, and we had no idea what was wrong or how long it would take to fix it. Of the four car rental places at the airport, three were completely out of cars. We got the last car Avis had, the last rental car on this side of the island.
Our friend Jose, who is a mechanic, doesn't like to work on trans missions but he did a bunch of research for us but didn't have any definitive answers. On Wednesday, Elaine went to make the beer run in the rental car. The owner of the warehouse where we buy beer asked where our car was. Elaine told him and he recommended a place on the other side of Isabela.
Too late to do anything about it on Wednesday. First thing Friday we called the place Tito recommended. Yeah, they could take a look at it if we brought it right in . So off we went again - our friend Erin from Michigan with Elaine in the rental car and Jason and me in the "car with one speed." We made it with no mishaps. They said they'd look at it a call us later.
When they called, the car was fixed and it was "only" $175. Poco a poco (little by little), we're building a really nice car here. And we're a tw0-car family, at least for the weekend.
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