How Do You Spell Adventure? (With a $)

                                                  Holidays in Michigan

Teachers relaxing on vacation (Bobby & Ellen,
Lillian's parents)

Grandma & Lillian

 



Snowshoeing trail through the
woods

 
Adventure: an undertaking, usually involving danger and unknown risks.

I guess what that means is, you can't really plan an adventure. You can put yourself in situations that are ripe for adventure, i.e. an expedition to Antarctica, a safari in the Serengeti, or a backwater Amazon River rafting trip. Risky? Possibly. Dangerous? Most likely. And the whole time you're preparing for the adventure, you dream pictures in your mind of "you having an adventure." But the adventure really happens as the experience unravels and you are forced to deal with the unknown whether or not it fits the picture you had in mind. 


 Well, our return to California unraveled rather unexpectedly and here we are again - up to our ears in adventure!
The first unexpected event was United's cancellation of our early morning flight from Traverse City to O'Hare on Tuesday. To avoid rebooking our entire itinerary (a 5-day delay) we instead rented a car and drove to Chicago on Monday. Was Monday, the day when every school in Michigan was closed due to blowing snow and cold temps a good day to make this trek? Absolutely not! White out conditions and icy roads plus the closure of I-94 near Michigan City turned the 5 and 1/2 hour drive into an 8 hour one. We did it though, and we were able to get to the airport early Tuesday morning to check into our 10:15 flight to San Francisco.

    60 degrees and sunny skies greeted us in San Fran. An easy purchase of tickets bought us seats on the BART (train) to Fremont and Applied GMC where the Pickle awaited us. It had undergone a few upgrades to the carburetor and tires while we were home for the holidays and now, put to the test during rush hour traffic on the 880, north through Oakland, Richmond, and across the Bay Bridge, it ran like a million bucks. Boy it felt good to be back in our Home-on-Wheels until... until...Wait, where's that noise coming from?... Just north of the San Raphael turn-off, a whining, a screeching, coming from....where? It's us! Is it the engine? We had to pull over, fortunately into an old weigh station lane that appeared just at the right time, and there we sat, suddenly with sinking hearts, dismal thoughts, repairs will be needed ...stranded.

    Annie, coming home from work in Vallejo about that time, drove over to our rescue. (Nina was with her. (Nina, who was so excited to see Michael, she woofed!) Applied GMC towed the Pickle back to their shop in Fremont later that evening. The next day the cause of the noise was determined to be the torque converter on the transmission - a loose or broken blade in the housing ??? (Ask Michael. I know nothing about torque converters.) The transmission needs to be rebuilt and as said by a die-hard believer in the value of old vehicles, " this is a good thing because the transmission has over 100,000 miles on it." (Guess who --- his name begins with M.)

The transmission rebuild will take a few days. We're going to use that time to drive Annie's too-old-to-be-smogged '85 Land Cruiser to Colorado. A return trip to San Fran on the Amtrak Zephyr is part of the package. But wait! That sounds like another adventure, and I'll tell you about that one as it unravels.