I had an uneventful flight back to Seattle. We got back early in fact. I had my favorite window seat too, and really scored because there was an empty seat between me and the guy with the aisle seat. I can't remember the last time that happened!
I called Bridget as soon as the plane landed because the leaves just enough time to drive from our house to the airport and meet someone at the curb after they've retrieved their luggage. I got no answer though and left her a message. I retrieved my luggage and headed out to the curb. Still no word from Bridget, but damn it was hot! Quite the system shock to go from 45 degrees when I got up in Kasilof to 90 degrees when I got outside. I called Bridget again and she was just leaving the house. Seems that she put her cell phone in her lap and somehow blocked the service to it, so she didn't get any of the flight status updates or my phone message. No matter. I plopped down on a bench and turned my work phone on and started clearing about work e-mail. I hadn't turned the phone on since I left because there was no service for it in most of the places we traveled, so it just stayed off.
Another 30 minutes or so passed and Bridget called. Long story short, she went the wrong way on the freeway and was almost to Bellevue. I told her to turn around and go the other way on 405 and I continued to slog through e-mails. After another 30 minutes, I heard from Brian. Seems Bridget's car blew up as soon as she got off the freeway to turn around. He was now enroute to the airport to pick me up in the Tercel. It's a 1989 Tercel with no air conditioning. There were three other vehicles at his disposal all of which had AC and plenty of room, but he was bringing this one to get me and then we were going to go rescue Bridget.
I talked to Bridget and she thought maybe her car was out of oil and water. It had apparently been smoking earlier in the week, but the source of the smoke had never been examined. Brian got the airport and we loaded up, then headed for the Walmart in Renton, which was on the way to where Bridget was marooned. We picked up some radiator stop leak, a jug of oil, 1 gallon of antifreeze/coolant, 2 gallons of water, a bag of ice, a couple of root beers, and a Twix. The plan was to eat the Twix and drink the root beer enroute, and then on arrival, drop the bag of ice on the engine block (drag racing trick for rapid cool down), fill the oil, dump the radiator stop leak, the coolant, and the water in the radiator, see if it would run, and drive home. Nothing is ever simple though.
We got to Bridget and found she was parked in a nice big gravel lot, which was handy. A deputy sheriff had just been by to check on her too and left her with a couple bottles of water, so she was at least not completely dying in the heat. We checked the oil and it was fine. That's good too. We plopped the bag of ice on the block and dumped the stop leak in the radiator. So far, all according to plan. Started pouring the coolant in though and it started running on the ground. At first we thought (and hoped) that Brian had just spilled some. Upon further inspection however, it was clearly running out of the engine block. That's not good at all. It became rapidly obvious that we weren't going to be able to drive it home. Luckily, Bridget had towing service on her insurance and they sent a tow. It probably wasn't going to cover the whole cost, but it would cover most of it. I took Brian's car and went home, leaving them to wait for the tow. I finally got home about 8:30, hot, sweaty, sunburned, with a screaming headache. I was quite a change from how the morning started out.
I wanna go back to Alaska!!!
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