Brown Family Adventure!

Friday we decided we would make a little trip to the Miami Zoo and take the kids. We have never been there so thought it would be something new to check out. Lets just say our adventure began as we headed out. We left home later than usual, nothing new for this crew. We headed south on 95 and stopped in Jupiter at Mcdonalds for breakfast on the go. Rod & I had our own coffee along since we like our own over most any other than Starbucks. Well Rod's decided it wanted to leak all over him, so he headed to the nearest store and bought a Tide-to-go stick. We hit the Turnpike in Jupiter and headed south. We were going along nicely when Rod hit something(we think a piece of tire) in the road. Needless to say, we heard a noise and stuff started spraying everywhere. So we quickly shot from the far left lane to the right side and off the road and stopped to check it out. We lost antifreeze! We quickly called our mechanic back in Hobe Sound, he said if we could get it to him he could take a look. Now at this point we were about 3 miles from Boca Raton. We called our good friend Kevin and asked him if he could bring our van to us. He graciously said he would. So, we patiently waited. About 30 minutes went by and we finally saw a roadside assistance truck. They stopped and helped us and we got a wrecker called and a state trooper came by and filled out a report for us in case we had any damage for insurance. About an hour later the tow truck showed up. Yeah! Or so we thought. Kevin was going to be nice and ride back with the tow truck so we could go on to the zoo with the van. NOT!! The tow truck driver informed us it would be $175 to hook up the car and $7 a mile. We were 65 miles from home. You do the math... that's almost $700 to tow the car. We have towing reimbursement on our insurance, but don't think they would pay that price. Kevin had a AAA card. He got us free hook up but $5 a mile. So we decided along with the tow truck driver to tow it to the nearest auto parts store and fix it ourselves. Lets just say it was an all day adventure. Rod had nice clothes on .. so we had to find somewhere to buy some clothes for him to get all greasy in, feed the kids lunch by this point and then tear the car apart. Luckily we were in a small plaza with shops. So the kids could walk around and look. Kevin graciously stayed with us, to make sure we could get up and running. A nice guy came along who was a mechanic on his lunch break and helped out. We finally got it fixed or so we thought and we got on the road heading back home since it was close to 5pm. Lets just say, we broke down about 4 more times on the way home and so we were all getting very tired and frustrated. We decided after having to stop so many times and the kids had eaten McDonalds for all three meals that day we would park the car in long term parking at the airport and just get home and decide what to do on Saturday. At least we were closer to home.Saturday we headed back down to fix the car again , while Rod worked away and Iassisted some- I basically enjoyed my afternoon sitting and tanning in the airport parking lot and watching the planes take off. Before it was all over I was wishing that I was on one of those planes heading to a far away place for relaxation.