In case you can't read the read print on the dashboard.....it simply says BRAKES. Just a little message to let you know that they are not presently working. Maybe you shouldn't drive without them, right? WRONG!!
Saturday, on Tom's birthday, we were invited to Amy and Mike's for dinner to celebrate.They live in New Richmond and their house is a big one on the end of a cul-de-sac kind of in the boonies. Lucky thing because Tom was on the phone as we were pulling into their driveway and he was acting a little strange, but still talking to the person on the phone (a lady who lives across the street from his rental property in Turtle Lake.) He came inside after the rest of us, and proceeded to just mention that a brake line must have broken or something, because he was pushing the brakes to the floor. No worry in this family. We enjoyed a nice evening with the Belmont's and then it's time to go home and now the red BRAKE light is on and we drive home with no brakes!! We didn't have a single car follow us the whole time and there really was very little traffic, although we had Kyle on the lookout for deer and other animals that might suddenly dart out in front of us. There were two hairy spots....one where we had to cross a road, but luckily there was a hill going up and then not too many cars , so we were able to make it across safely pumping to help slow us down. No animals chose to ambush us and we got to McCutcheon rode with no mishaps. There, we dropped off Kyle and Tom and I took his new yellow truck to St. Paul to deliver me to my door.
The crazy part is: The day before, in the afternoon, Grandma's car was making a weird noise and we were heading from my house to Walmart, when we smelled something like burning rubber so decided to stop at her house to "check" things before we went any further, and when we opened the hood, found white smoke pouring out of the front of the car on the passenger side. A tow truck came and got her Mercury Sable and it won't be ready until Tuesday. Some kind of freeze-up on an idle arm or something was causing the belt to slip. Lucky it didn't happen on the way to Walmart, or better yet, glad we weren't driving it to Amy's house in Champlin when the problem arose.
Then, after Tom went to New Richmond to help his Mom on Friday aftenoon, he picked me up for dinner at the Best Steak House. It's one of our favorite places, and we were having a long, leisurely talk waiting to hear from Kyle who was doing some stuff with Kim. We were planning to go to the Car Show at the Convention Center with him. When he called, we went out to the car, and Tom couldn't locate his keys. That's when I saw them in the ignition. I have an extra set of Tom's car keys in my purse for just such an occasion, (It has happened before.) but, of course, I had changed purses that night so I wouldn't have to carry a big heavy one around with me. Kyle asked his mom if he could borrow her van, and he took us across town to get the spare set of keys. Then, we had to go to Stillwater to pick up Kyle's truck where he had left it when he met his Mom to do their errands. Needless to say, by now it was too late to make the car show.
The scariest part of this whole story is that I am the only one right now who seems to have a dependable vehicle. Hope the Sentra knows it is much appreciated! (Tom's van has been idle all winter and even buried in tall snow....but he is going to work on trying to get it started....I'm glad, cuz I love that van!)
