Why You Need a Transmission!

It took us 22 hours to get to the beach house this weekend. What is normally a 6 ½ to 7 hour trip was thrown a big, nasty curveball when the transmission went out on the Suburban Friday night. We were in Waverly, Virginia when she blew, the heart of peanut country! We walked a ¼ mile to a BP station and hit the jackpot. There were two guys in a flat bed tow truck sitting in the parking lot waiting for their next call. They had no idea what they were getting into!

After haggling with AAA for 30 minutes, they finally decided to dispatch the tow truck drivers that were standing directly in front of us. They drove us to the Suburban and loaded it onto the flatbed in a matter of minutes. The U-Haul trailer was another issue. In order to hitch the trailer to the tow truck, the driver needed the ball from my hitch. The ball must have been super glued to the hitch. It took two trips to garages for tools and about an hour to get the ball off so we could attach the trailer to the tow truck.

Off we go to Suffolk, Virginia with the Suburban and U-Haul trailer in tow. Carolee, Casey (our Aussie) and I are jammed in the cabin with the driver (a super nice guy, but he has a thick, southern drawl and a few missing teeth, which makes conversation a little tough) and are thinking the worst is behind us. He takes us to Jay’s Transmission shop, unloads the trailer and then the Suburban. He blocks the trailer with the Suburban so no one will steal it, gives us a padlock for the U-Haul and takes us to a brand new Hilton Garden Inn hotel (he really was a nice guy!).

Casey jumps out of the tow truck in front of the hotel and catches her toenail on one of the steps and rips it in half. She is bleeding profusely all over the sidewalk while Carolee goes inside to get a room for the night. The bleeding stops, but we have to sneak Casey in the side door because we are not sure dogs are allowed at this hotel. Of course they give us a room on the top floor, so after climbing five flights of steps with a gimpy dog we finally arrive on our floor. We open the door and a hotel employee is standing in the hallway, so we quickly find our room and close the door. At 11:30 p.m. I open the door to take Casey outside to “do her business” and two hotel employees are standing outside my door with a crib for the room across the hall. They didn’t bust me, so it must have been a dog friendly hotel or they had employees who really didn’t care.

Saturday morning I called a car dealership that had a truck I could rent (the rental lady said she would rent me a truck with a tow package but I couldn't use it to haul a trailer...she also told me we didn’t have this conversation...wink, wink). I took a 5 minute, $7 taxi ride to the dealership in a 1979 Ford Fairlane station wagon that was still being used as a “taxi”. The door didn’t close all the way and I didn’t fall out, but there was another interesting personality piloting the vehicle (gotta love peanut country!). After renting the truck, we checked out of the hotel and headed back to Jay’s. We unloaded the back of the Suburban and placed everything in the back of the truck (luckily it was a sunny day). In the meantime, Jay showed up, looked at the Suburban and told me it needed to be rebuilt (no kidding!). We hitched up the trailer and left for the beach.

The rest of the trip was uneventful. We unloaded the furniture at the house Saturday afternoon and dumped the U-Haul trailer in Kitty Hawk on Sunday morning. Stephen drove to Suffolk from Hampden-Sydney and met us at the car dealership. We dropped off the truck, drove him back to Hampden-Sydney and returned to Roanoke with his car. Next Saturday I’ll pick him up and drive back to Suffolk to get the Suburban from my good buddy Jay (another super nice guy, but after several conversations with him I know way more about transmissions than I care to know!).