by Jer
"But why, oh why, do the wrong people travel, when the right people stay at home?" - Noel Coward
In May 2001, I took my wife to Las Vegas for her birthday. I got one of those travel package deals that allowed us to get a flight, hotel on the Strip and some entertainment at a relatively affordable rate. We stayed at the Luxor, ate great food, played the slots and had a generally fantastic weekend together.
At the time, she was pregnant with our first child so I decided to fit-in a trip to Vegas before it became logistically impossible. Additionally, we had tried to get to Vegas four years earlier, but things didn't exactly go as planned...
What I remember most was the heat. July 1997 was a ridiculously hot. Blue skies. No clouds. Plenty of sun. High temps.
Iowa has poured a lot of tax dollars into their interstates. They're not cheap, patched-up asphalt. They're concrete. Solid. Smooth. White. And as my wife and I were westbound on I-80, about 50 miles west of Des Moines, the heat was radiating off that concrete so much so that the reflective mirage effect was perceived well into the distance of the Hawkeye State's relatively flat topography.
Our Honda Accord LX Coupe was four years old. We had bought it just a few months before our wedding and it had served us well. No major work. No big expenses. Lots of good miles.
That would change by the end of this trip.
We were between moves and my new job didn't start for several weeks. I had just resigned my position at a college in southwest Missouri and before I assumed my new responsibilities at a school in St. Paul, Minnesota, we decided to drive out to Las Vegas for some fun. I had been there several times in college and my wife had yet to even drive past the city's shimmering lights. I insisted that she would have a good time and that I could make enough money on the slots to cover the hotel. The latter was the clincher.
On the first leg of our journey - from Missouri to Minnesota - I noticed that the car had been running hot. The temperature gauge was a little higher than I was used to seeing it. I simply attributed it to the increased summer temps, made a mental note to check it more often that usual, and kept on our merry way.
We were on the second leg of the trip - about six hours removed from unloading all of our belongings into a storage unit in the Twin Cities - and headed to Vegas when I started to get concerned.
The Temp gauge was three quarters of the way to red lining and the AC wasn't feeling ACish at all. It was, in fact, blowing warm air.
"Honey, has the car been driving okay for you?"
"Yeah. Why?"
"No problems? Nothing weird?"
"No. Why are you asking?"
"The car seems to be running a little hot. We've got the AC on 'Full' and it's coming out warm."
"That can't be good."
We decided to turn-off the AC and roll the windows down a bit. Seemed like a fair solution, but the problem with rolling down the windows in 90+ degree weather while you're flying down the highway at 65 mph is the hairdryer-in-the-face sensation you experience. It's suppose it's great if you have an oily complexion, but under the circumstances, dermatological concerns were the furthest thing from my mind.
But still, we persisted towards Sin City.
It wasn't too much longer that I noticed the Temp gauge was creeping back towards the red line again.
"Honey, the car's getting hot again."
"Do you think something's wrong?"
"Well, something ain't right!"
I wanted to get to Vegas. I was not going to be deterred. I had an idea...
So there we were. Two people. Flying down the interstate. Windows open. Under the blazing July sun. The mercury pushing triple digits. And our car heater on high.
I figured if I rolled the windows all the way down, cranked the heater to 'High' and pointed the vents outward, it would cool the engine down enough to keep it from overheating.
It worked... for about 20 or 30 minutes.
"Honey. It's getting hot again."
"Pull over."
"But Vegas..."
"Pull over!"
I drove a couple of more miles, in a feeble act of defiance, till I found the next exit, pulled onto a frontage road, turned-off the car and popped the hood.
Like most men who know nothing about cars, I looked around the under the hood hoping to find something obvious, like a gaping hole or a bunch of tubes that looked disconnected or a missing engine. But I no more knew what I was looking at than an infant knows how to program a VCR. I just stared into the mouth of the beast, hoping it would tell me what was wrong. I knew just enough to not open the radiator cap to see if it had fluid. I didn't want to add 3rd degree splatter burns to my list of frustrations.
"Honey, I have no idea what I'm looking at."
"See, this is why you should learn more about cars."
"Is that really a conversation you want to have at this particular moment?"
Silence.
A few minutes pass and a local law enforcement officer pulls up behind our car. The open hood must have been a dead give-away.
I'm always confused why many rural mid-westerners have a southern accent when they're not from the south or living there; but often times, they do. Go figure.
"Canna help ya, folks?"
"I don't know. Our car keeps over-heating and I don't know why."
He walks over the front of our Accord, and peers about for a moment.
"Well, now, I see your problem!"
"You do?!?!"
Astonished and perplexed that it took him no time at all to figure it out, I rush to his side to see what he saw.
He points down to the area in front of the radiator and says, "It's that, right there."
I look where he's pointing and I see the edge of a piece of plywood firmly wedged into a space directly in front of the radiator, clearly blocking the vehicle's air intake and thus limiting its ability to stay cool.
"Who the hell put a piece of plywood in front of our radiator!" I exclaim.
I look over at my wife, expecting to see the same look of bewilderment. Instead, I see a sheepish, almost apologetic smile that, without words, communicates, "Opps!"
Apparently our car wasn't getting hot enough for her liking during the cold winter months. Over the previous Christmas break, she laments this fact to my car savvy brother-in-law and he suggests that she force the issue by putting some plywood in front of the radiator. Then he takes it a step further and with her blessing, gets the wood himself and places it where our officer hero finds it six months later along Interstate 80; all done completely unbeknown to me.
Needless to say, she forgot about the wood.
The end result of the driving hundreds of miles in 90+ degree weather with sheet of plywood in front of our radiator? $1200 in repairs and a canceled trip to Las Vegas.
For the first and only time in my marriage, it wasn't my fault.
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