I arrived in Boca Raton last night at 6:00 pm. Trying to get here was a disaster! I actually left Louisiana (where I was for my friend’s wedding) on Saturday, August 16th. When I got to about Jackson, Mississippi, my car stopped accelerating. It refused to move into 4th gear, so I was going down the highway at 40mph trying to get to an exit. I started calling everyone in my family and everyone I know in Louisiana, trying to get ideas about what to do. I didn’t know if I should call a tow or have someone pick me up.

Fortunately, my sister knew someone (our friend Phillip) who knew someone who had a trailer. Phillip drove all the way to Jackson, picked up me and my car, and drove me back to Louisiana. I stayed with me for the next week while we tried to figure out what was wrong with my car and how to fix it. It turns out that running over that piece of metal in Virginia had done more damage than I thought. It dented my catilitic converter so badly that it was stopped up, and that was causing my lack of acceleration.

Again, I was fortunate in that Phillip and one of his friends were able to fix my car, and I didn’t have to have it taken to a garage. The same night, I was taking my sister home, and when I tried to turn off my car, it wouldn’t shut off. I pulled the key out of the ignition, and it still wouldn’t go off. I called Phillip, and he unplugged the battery…. The car was still on. He finally had to unplug a cylinder to get it to shut down. We took it to a Chevy dealer soon after for them to fix it. The car would not do it for them. It worked perfectly fine. We were all so frustrated with my car by this time. I decided to wait a few days to see if it would act up again, but it didn’t.

But by the time it was fixed and running smoothly (well, mostly smoothly–a little louder), Hurricane Faye was hovering over South Florida. Everyone thought it was best if I didn’t leave right away.  So I stayed and hung out with people that I’ve known for years, but haven’t seen in a long time (I’ll blog more about them soon).

So, finally, everything was working and Faye had subsided a bit. I decided I would leave again on Tuesday, August 26th. I left at 9 am and I soon as I got down the street, I got a phone call from Phillip. He said to turn around; there was a pipe hanging from the bottom of my car and he saw it as I pulled out of the driveway. So I came back, he took it somewhere and bolted the pipe up and I left around 12:30 with no further interruptions or disasters. I am so relieved that my car didn’t break down again somewhere that no one could help me. Now, I don’t have to worry about anything for a while except going back to work and moving onto campus (yay!) on the 6th.