The Trip Home

Finally it came time to leave Texas.

I had promised Brea a good steak dinner before we left, so we went out for some the night before at this place that had been open for like fifty years (it has gotten a great deal more classy over that time I think).  It was expensive, but oh so delicious.  And places that offer 38 oz steaks on their menu have to be good, right?

Huge blocks of cheese at the salad bar.

DE

LISH

OUS

And yes, if you were wondering, those were hand picked twenty oz ribeyes that we had the butcher in the back cut off for us.

On Thursday, the day we were actually leaving, I had been working most the day which left Brea to pack the house all by her lonesome.  And load one of the cars with the things from our third floor apartment.  When I finally got home around eight, I started to replace a broken idler arm.  It was supposed to be easy.  It turned out taking three hours and involved me going and buying a propane torch.  But it finally got done, and by one in the morning we were on the road.

Do I look a little tired?

Sleepin'.

So on the road we went.  It was a relatively smooth trip.  Though the 4runner is probably not the best car for towing, but it did it's job for the most part.  For a while at least.  We drove through the night and had made it about twelve hours out of Houston.  You remember when I broke down between Van Horn and El Paso years ago?  And then in El Paso over Spring Break?  Well we had just passed Van Horn, heading towards El Paso, when I noticed the temperature gauge start creeping to the right.  Then a little more.  Seeing as how I had already seized one engine relatively close to there, and Adam and Candice had just seized the one in the Suburban, I wasn't taken any chances.  I pulled over just in time to watch the radiator dump all the coolant out.  

We were going to tow it.  But then we found out it could not be fixed that day, something that was absolutely necessary since we flew out the next morning at six.  We did some discussing and decided to switch the cars.  That is right, we bought a new tow hitch and pulled the 4runner up onto the car dolly.  The rear differential did not come off nearly as easy as I had hoped, but thanks to a few miracles and some very generous people that had stopped to assist with water and a pipe wrench, I got it unhooked and off we went.  And despite all our worrying, actually towed it like a champ.  We didn't risk taking her over sixty, something which made that drive excruciatingly long, but at quarter to two we finally made it home.  A quick trip inside for clothes, a quick shower at Christin's house, and off we went to Europe!! 

What a good little car.