Back To Our Vacation...

We left Phoenix on Thursday, but not without causing a little drama first.

I had a difficult time saying goodbye to Michael and it turned out to be a very teary one. Michael wanted his car brought back to South Dakota to sell so I was going to drive it from California for him. He checked the tires...checked the oil...and then Alex and I were on our way. I had been crying and just wanted to get on the road - so one last hug - I sat down in the car, threw it in gear and hit the road. About a block into our trip, I looked at the stick shift and went "hmmm". I knew it could be driven as an manual or an automatic, but which one of the gears does it belong in to drive automatic...D1, D2, D3, D4, or D5? (you can see this going south already, huh) Better safe then sorry! I called Michael and risked sounding like a moron to ask which gear I need to put it in - D5 he replied.

K! We're good to go, right? It's in D5 and we're heading down the freeway. Hmmmm - the RPM gage says it's running at like 6000RPM's. Is that normal?

I send Michael a text to tell him the car is running at 6000 RPM's - is the gage broken?

No answer and I take the silence as him saying "yes, it's fine hon...keep driving and thank you for taking care of this for me. You're the most wonderful woman on earth!!"

Couple of miles down the road, no air conditioning. I think it was 107 degrees in Phoenix that afternoon - you notice when the air conditioning goes out. So this time, I call Michael to ask why the A/C is out. He claims it's working and I tell him that I'll work with it for awhile. A few minutes later he calls. Apparently he just saw the text message regarding the RPM's and asks when is it ever normal for a car to run at 6000 RPM's. Like I'm a mechanic...

We were back on the freeway by this point and he asks "where is the temperature gage" "it says it's 108 degrees" I replied. "NO, not the outside temperature....the heat gage"

Oh...that's in the red zone.

Apparently, even though I had shifted the car into D5, it was in the manual position and was running in 2nd gear.

After all of that chaos, we were on our way to Anaheim. It's about a 4.5 hour drive from Phoenix and it's just beautiful country to drive through. We arrived in LA and I wanted to take Alex to see the ocean. Alex loved the ocean. We walked on the beach collecting sea shells for awhile and then Alex went for a swim. Want to know a little secret? I never learned how to swim and water (especially lake or oceans) have always given me panic attacks. I managed to stick my feet in for a few minutes to appease Alex, but then watched from the beach.