The Road Trip That Wasn't

Life is a highway... except when it's a service station in the Poconos.

My mom and I set out with the best of intentions yesterday.  My mom got her hair done; I got an oil change for my car; we packed up the presents and some bottles of water and hit the road.  About an hour into the trip, my car started acting weird - shuddering and speeding up in small lurches on its own.  Anything like this makes me extremely nervous.  Driving in the snow is nothing to me, but driving with a car that might just crap out on me any minute - that's a deal breaker.  So somewhere in the Poconos, my mom and I pulled off the road and found a service station.  Everything was closed because it was snowing so much (which I would think they'd be used to in the Poconos, but they seem to take it as a reason to close early everywhere) but this one service station was open until 5pm.  However, they were really busy and said they couldn't look at the car until Monday.

Monday?  MONDAY?  We were two hours from home and two hours from my cousin's.  Either way, we had no where to go.  I explained this and asked if there was any way they could just look at the car and tell us if it could make it two hours home.  They were nice enough to take a car for a drive to see what it was doing; when they returned, they pulled it into an empty bay in the garage, opened the hood and put it on the lift.  They had explained several times that they didn't have time to work on the car, but here they were, working on it.  The service manager came out several times to keep us up to date on what was going on and what needed to be done.  He was really amazing.  They never even said, "Okay, we'll work on it."  They just worked on it because they knew we had no other options and would otherwise be stuck there.  (Plan B was to rent a car from the Enterprise place we saw nearby, leave my car behind, and then come pick it up and return the rental car on Monday or Tuesday.)  They ended up replacing my front brakes (they were so bad that I was embarrassed but it turns out they didn't have the indicators that squeal when you need to change them so there was no indication that they were bad).  I also needed a new cylinder coil.  I really can't say enough about how nice the people at the service station were.  I'm definitely going to write them a thank you note and maybe send them something.  Is there a cookie bouquet with cookies shaped like wrenches and tires?

After the work was done, we paid up and started heading home since we would never make it in time for the baby shower.  It was a very snowy drive home but we made it with no trouble.  We saw several accidents and cars in ditches and snow banks, though.  We left the house around 11:30am and got home around 6pm without going anywhere, really.  My mom and I agreed that the next time we want to spend a day together (not to mention nearly $500), we're heading to a day spa.