An epic anthrocon 2005 tale! aka: My drive in the car

Hey gals'n pals.

I was bored at work today so I let my mind wander. After it came back for food, it brought with it the memory of my trip down to AC 2005 and felt I would share.

It was the day before the convention.

Then a few days later it was over.

The end.

As for what happened during that time, there were four of us planning on heading down to AC together in my jet black, 1997 Chevrolet Malibu, aka: "The black lemon". Our departure time was to be at 3 pm. Potoroo and Yennix were busy doing laundry and packing and I still had yet to pick Rexwolf up from work.

Well as their laundry finally came to an end, we all went out to pack it up in the car, that's when.... the dog escaped! We hadn't noticed she was gone until someone noticed the gate was open, and there was no dog in the house. So we had to go searching the area for the dog, only to finally get her back in the house over half an hour later. During that time however, Potoroo had gotten mud on his clothes and soaked his shoes and socks completely as the dog chose to go running around the nearby creek.

So then we had to put Potoroo's clothes in the wash and wait for them to dry. Finally after everything was dry and packed and everyone was accounted for, we set off for ten hours worth of driving down to the convention.

But then it happened! Just as I put the car in gear and rolled out of the driveway, I felt this insatiable need to utter the pharase "Now... what's the worse that could happen?". I swear, I think the clouds above us suddenly grew dark at that very moment in time, but I'll save the outcome of that one for a little bit later.

The drive down from Toronto was going beautifully. We all had stuff to chat to each other about and the car was full of laughs as we had our international adventure; and when there wasn't enough mouth to ear fun and frivolity, we had the ultimate solution to that, which of course came in the form of Satellite Radio.

Well we all made it through customs okay. Infact we were only there for about a minute. I think telling the border guard that we were going to a furry convention and having a few plushies in the trunk when she checked it had something to do with how much time we spent at the border. Either way, it was smoothe sailing from there, or... was it?....

We drove down through New York and Pennsylvania to get to the convention. The trip was going great until I started to notice The Black Lemon was having a hard time getting up the hills. I looked down at the RPM's and they were getting pretty high as the car tried to resume it's way back up to where I set the cruise control. I thought nothing of it, figuring that it was probably just because I was on an incline. Well finally, we went over this one hill and I put my brakes on to slow down, which if you're unfamiliar with how cruise control works, when you break, it disengages the cruise control until you push the "Resume" button.

So as I went over the hill, I gave up on the cruise control and started giving it some gas, that's when all of a sudden, my car died. It wasn't an "Oh... I just lost power to my car. I shall be late for tea and biscuits. Oh dear..." kind of dieing, it was more like "Holy J*sus f*ck what the sh*t?!?!!" as the car would barely accelerate and the engine was grinding.

Well that was enough to wake anyone sleeping in the back seat of the car. After all, my car decided to break down at 12 o'clock in the morning. Well we stopped on the side of the surprisingly non busy highway and figured out our plan of attack. To make a long story shorter, Yennix and I decided to walk down the highway to try and find some place of residence who might allow us use of their phone to call a tow truck, while Potoroo and Rexxwolf stayed behind to flag someone down. Well after fourty minutes of walking, we managed to find a house. We woke the occupant up and he called a tow truck for us. Then it was another 40 minute walk back to the car.

Well needless to say, the car and both Rexx and Pot were there safe and sound. They even made a sign out of a big peice of cardboard they found that read "911", but in the almost 2 hours Yen and I were away from the car trying to find a tow truck that would come out to pick us up at that time, not a single motorist stopped to help us out.

Finally... Jesus in the form of a tow truck finally showed up. The driver's diagnosis of the problem? A broken cam shaft. For those unfamiliar with what a cam shaft is, it's that shaft in your engine that connects the pistons together to make the car go. Not only did he say it sounds like a broken cam shaft, he also told us that there was a rest stop just over the hill behind us with a phone.

D'oh!!

Well, anyways after towing the car to his shop and figuring out just what we were going to do, we finally decided to sleep in one of the motels just down the highway. Well we checked in there at like 4:30 am and check out time believe it or not was 6 am. So after an hour's worth of sleep, we got up, took a cab out to one of the nearby airports and rented a car for the rest of the trip.

What kind of car did they rent us you most likely aren't asking right now? Well it happened to be a 1997 Chevrolet Malibu, except this one was beige

So, needless to say, we had quite the adventure coming down to AC, but you know looking back on it and the good time I had at the con and the bonding that went on in the car, I'd do it all over again