It was a dark and stormy night in a seedy hotel room in Hamburg, NY. It wasn’t supposed to be this way.
Okay so it’s not actually storming, but it is dark and the Tally-Ho-Tel is somewhat seedy and we are in Hamburg, NY, somewhere south of Buffalo but north of Lakawanna. Where you ask? If you haven’t heard of Lakawanna you obviously haven’t seen Lakawanna Blues which you really should. It will do your heart good and then you can say Lakawannna with the best of ‘em.
It all started with great fanfare. Saturday morning we packed the car, waved goodbye to my mom, stopped at Shaws for appropriate road food and got as far as the Exxon station at 189 and Shelburne Road when people started waving and pointing at the right front tire. One quick glance and we knew we were in trouble. Smoke was pouring out from around the tire and people were coughing from the stench of burning rubber. We parked the car at the Exxon station, asked them not to tow it off, and caught the bus back to Winooski!
Monday morning at 7:30 I was on the phone to the repair shop that had gotten it all ready for our trip to Austin. Quick as a wink they towed it to the shop and figured out it was just smoking because all new brakes smoke during the first few miles. We picked it up at 11, loaded the car and headed out. This time we got to Tenneybrook Square on Shelburne Road. It was progress but not as much as we hoped.
Mike from the repair shop picked us up and took the car back to the shop where he decided it needed a new master cylinder. He had it ready in two hours, took it for a drive, and low and behold it needed new calipers. Before we knew it, it was noon on Tuesday and we had spent a total of $1,500 fixing up a 16 year-old car with no air conditioning for an August road trip to Texas!
Hard-ass driving was called for, which we did, and that’s how we wound up in Hamburg on Tuesday night. My flight back to Burlington from Austin is on Friday at noon and we figure if we push it real hard we can skid into the Austin airport just in time for me to make the flight.
