Road trip: Canceled
Saturday morning, Billy and Matt left on a road trip to L.A. They stayed overnight at a motel in Redding, and got back on the road about 5:30 or so Sunday morning. They called us at 7:30 AM, saying that his car broke down, and they were on the side of I-5, just outside of Williams. We called for a tow truck ($145 for three miles), and arranged for a mechanic to look at the car ($120 to say “Yup, it won’t start, and we can’t do any more until Monday.”) The tow driver took the boys to a motel and they checked in until we could figure out what to do.
At church a few hours later, we mentioned the situation to a few people, including one of the youth pastors (who sings in the band the boys play in), who mentioned that he grew up in Williams, and whose parents still lived there. Within ten minutes, they had arranged to pick up the boys, and got them a full refund for their unused motel room. He also happens to be a mechanic, and confirmed that the engine was, in fact, destroyed (a broken connecting rod punched through the engine block, which, as I understand it, is A Very Bad Thing.) They fed the boys and put them up over night.
The boys were still anxious to get to L.A. to see their grandpa who had a stroke back in February, so the family they were staying with helped them book airline tickets for a one-way flight on United from Sacramento to LAX, leaving at 9:30 AM on the 18th. When they got to the airport this morning, they discovered that they had accidentally booked the tickets for July 18th instead of June 18th, and were non-refundable, non-transferable and couldn’t be changed. It was at this point that Kathy officially freaked, and I arranged to leave work to straighten this all up from home today. By the time I got home, Billy had booked two new one-way tickets for tomorrow morning on United, and were on the stand by list for every other flight. Kathy was going to have none of this, so she called and raised hell, and had these new tickets refunded (which is going to take 30-60 days, even though they were able to charge Billy’s debit card within 30-60 seconds.) She then arranged for one-way tickets on JetBlue to Long Beach Airport. When the boys went to retrieve their luggage from United, they found that it was already on its way to LAX. They took a cab from Long Beach to their grandma’s house in Carson. When they went to LAX to get their bags about an hour ago, the United luggage office had no idea where their bags were, and didn’t know anything about their situation. The boys finally found their bags on one of the United carousels, still going around in circles like they had been for the last seven hours.
The little repair shop in Williams that had the car quoted $3500 for a rebuilt engine to be installed. The lowest figure I could find, calling in several favors from people here in town, would have been about $800 labor and about $400 for a replacement engine, but I would have to get the car here from Williams, about a nine hour drive each way. The car is worth about $1800. Because the car is pretty much in the middle of nowhere, there aren’t a lot of options for salvaging it, and it seemed like we were actually going to have to pay someone to take the remains of the car off our hands.
The family in Williams once again came through for us, and had the car towed from the repair shop to their house, and arranged for a company to come and pick up the car for free. Our friend from church is driving down there this Friday to visit, and is going to take the DMV title to them for us, and will bring back the rest of the boys stuff that was left at their house.
Now we have a full month to arrange to get the boys home.
So, how was your week-end?
2 comments June 18th, 2007