The exhibit stayed open late, and after three hours of waiting, we were hungry and tired. And so were the children.
George and I anticipate stopping at an Eat 'n' Park whenever we're in Pennsylvania, and this night was no different. We hoped to swing by, hopeful the kids might sleep the rest of the way back to my dad's house and through the night. Tomorrow, afterall, was Easter.
As soon as we cleared the city, the check engine and thermometer icons lit up the dashboard. Neither my brother, my husband or I were familiar with the terrain, as my family lives south of Pittsburgh, but we did pull off at a nearby exit--the one that looks like a road up into the hills and features one lonely streetlight (I exaggerate--maybe there are two). It's probably the one you've passed by and thought, "I hope I never get stranded there."
My brother Evan is the one most likely to know something about cars and how they work. He popped the hood while I got out the owner's manual. It happened to be missing the section we needed. Even so, I read out the instructions, and all three of us started giggling and laughing at the way it was worded or at the way it I read it aloud or at the general bad luck of the situation.
The car cooled for at least ten minutes and we set out again. I ordered my husband to crank the heat, a trick my dad had taught me to divert it away from the engine.
We made it as far as the next exit before those darn lights came back on.
George pulled us into a closed gas station and raised the hood once again. My brother called Dad to see what he suggested. My dad was not happy and just wanted to come get us. Meanwhile, our tired hungry children wailed in the backseat as I checked with AAA about the soonest tow available.
Don't ever get sidelined on Easter Eve. It is brutal! It turns out no one wants to work the night before a holiday. (And by no one, I mean the AAA dispatcher, since we found out later that the tow would have gladly taken us what was now becoming the early hours of Easter morning.)
We drove the car one last time (no whammy, no whammy, stop!) as the GPS directed us to the nearest Eat 'n' Park. By now the kids were mostly asleep. We ate more out of habit and light-headedness than hunger at this point.
And AAA finally informed us that we would not get a tow until morning. They provided us with a phone number for a cab company and the name of a hotel so we could use out travel emergency benefit.
That cab never came.
As we paid, some local police officers heard our sob story. I'm so thankful for their compassion as they loaded four of us into the back of the police car (George got to sit up front). The lack of seat belts or any separation between the seats confused my son. And my daughter alternated between clinging to me, sleeping, and crying as we slid and bumped into one another whenever the car turned.
We were also thankful for the hotel staff, who got us quickly into our discounted room, now that it was after three in the morning.
My brother and I got the kids into bed while George took his own wild ride with a cabbie to Giant Eagle to get "contact cases and solution". I'm sure I was asleep long before he got back to our room.
And in the morning, just as we were about to leave the hotel room to check out, room service delivered two Easter baskets that the Easter Bunny had left in the night.
We walked down the hotel's steep drive to a McDonald's at the bottom and ate our holiday breakfast. Gregory and Olivia played on the playground until the tow truck picked us up.
Between my warranty on my car and AAA, we incurred very little out of pocket expense for the breakdown. I look back on this and am able to laugh at our adventure on the way home from seeing the Stanley Cup (I don't think George is quite to the point where he can think of this and laugh yet). After that climactic moment, everything went so wrong that it felt like we'd stepped into a bad movie.
But wouldn't you believe that this is the Easter that Greg and Olivia talk about, one of the best yet?
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