It seems as if every time we drive to the Pelican state something goes nuts with our vehicle. We were doing the overnight drive from Tulsa to Houma again, this time with my brother Brook riding shotgun.
The battery light came on south of Lafayette, and right here the van just powered down. Rain was threatening, cars were coming and the wipers wouldn’t work, power steering failed and the thing wouldn’t crank.
I called our insurance company for some roadside assistance and it took the guy 10 minutes to figure out where we were…. My Dad drove up from Houma, we grabbed the kids and all the luggage and Christmas stuff (the first time in a long time I’ve been glad someone owned one of those monster-size SUVs) and headed to his house. We abandoned the van waiting for a 2-hour later tow. Hopefully, it will be brought to Houma and given a new alternator (if that’s what is wrong…) today so we can resume our holiday plans.
I’m telling you – I’m going to quit driving to or in or around or near this state.
Update 12/23:
We have our van back. My father knew a guy at a local shop who got the van off the USAA contracted tow truck (by the way, I continue to love and adore USAA as our provider for auto insurance). ‘The guy’ got the van around 1:00 or so yesterday. It was ready by 10:00 am this morning. Apparently, the belt around the alternator had shredded slowly and then eventually disintegrated. After that, it was just a matter of time. In retrospect, our lights had been dimming, the tachometer (that’s a tack-ometer not a taco-meter) had stopped working, and the wipers died a slow death. We had run the battery dry. This guy did a great job – even fixed whatever else was wrong – including a tire rod.
Once again, its amazing we got as far as we did and that the vehicle fell apart so close to Dad’s house – close enough he could come get us in the Nissan Armada, have the vehicle towed to his guy in Houma and we could pick it up so fast. This has happened to us a couple different times – once in Amarillo, another time returning to Owasso. The vehicles die at just the right moment. We end up stranded, but stranded in amazingly survivable situations. Having married such a Godly woman, I assume we’re getting all kinds of help from above for her sake.
