It all started on Thursday morning. I (Shawn) was going to work with a school down in Yuma and we thought, heck, why don't we just all go down and make a fun weekend out of it. Our plan was to spend the night in Yuma and leave for San Diego first thing in the morning (SD is only about 3 hours from Yuma.)
The issues started early, like middle of the night early. I don't know what cruel person decided to have cement blocks for pillows in their hotel. It doesn't seem good for business. So neither one of us had a really good night's sleep. On a positive note, we were both awake at around 2:30ish when Lincoln started talking in his sleep which gave us both an "Ah, he's so cute!" moment. He asked for a banana. . .in his sleep. You're welcome for the "Ah, he's so cute!" moment YOU just had.
So, we got off to a later start than planned but no way were we going to let that ruin OUR day! No sir!
You may remember a few weeks ago when I posted about the UFO in Yuma? Well we saw it again and I found out what it was. It's an army balloon that patrols the desert by radar and not for jackrabbits, or gila monsters, or even roadrunners!
So, off we went closer to Mexico than I'd ever been before. As we drove, Monica practiced her directions in Spanish saying "A la derecha, nada!" "A la izquierda, nada!" and "Al frente, nada!" Which pretty accurately describes what we saw. . .NADA! Just sand dunes and that good ol border fence.
We were driving up into a mountain range when suddenly the engine in my sweet pimped out 94 Nissan Sentra XE started revving. (Monica just told me I should define "pimped out." I have really shiny hubcaps. . .on 3 wheels. One of them fell off about a year ago.) Anyway, the engine was revving and we smelled something weird, kind of a cross between a dead cat and a dirty diaper which made us decide to pull over. At this point we were a long way from anything. The last town, El Centro, which is mostly likely short for El Centro de Nada, was about 40 miles behind us. The next closest town ahead of us, Alpine, was about 45 miles away. Woo hoo! At this point it was about 9:30am (Pacific), the time we thought we'd be frolicking happily on Mission Beach. . .but nope, no frolicking. Instead, we busied ourselves with reading books, singing songs, and teaching Lincoln how to drive a broken car.
Because of our remote location, it took about 2 hours for our new buddies Dan and Eric to show up to tow the car. So Lincoln and I sat with Dan in the tow truck and Monica rode with Eric in his blue Dakota. On the way to the auto repair shop, Eric's truck began having some problems and they couldn't go over 50mph and finally it actually died on the freeway!!! I'm sure he must have thought we were just plain bad luck. So they coasted down the mountain for about 2 miles and Eric was finally able to get it started again. We did get to Alpine, a "cute as a button" town in the mountains about 45 minutes from San Diego and decided to celebrate our rescue by eating pasta salad at a little cafe across from the shop.
About an hour later Jeremy from Alpine Auto Repair called me and told me my poor little Nissan's clutch was shot, that he could fix it, but that it wouldn't be done till noon the next day. Such great news! We actually considered asking how much he wanted for the car but darn, we just couldn't give up that sweet little ride!
So our next dillema was finding a place to stay that night. I guess we could have stayed in Alpine, waited for our car to be done and then gone home but it seemed ridiculous to be this close to San Diego and not make it there. So, the shop called Enterprise rent-a-car. At first they didn't want to come all the way out to get us! The front desk lady, Nancy, told them to get a car out or they would not refer business to them anymore. Finally, they agreed to send someone out to get us. Wow! We have to hand it to Nancy she went to bat for the Jensen's and hit a home run baby!
By the time we finally got to San Diego and into a hotel, it was 6:30pm, nearly dark, and a bit cold, oh, and our teeny-weeny rental car's trunk wouldn't open so I had to put the seats down to get our stuff out of it. But, we were determined to make a vacation out of our fiasco so we went over to Old Town San Diego and enjoyed a fantastic Mexican meal at Casa de Reyes. It was a proud moment for me when Lincoln took a chip, dipped it in spicy salsa, ate it, and wanted more! That's my boy! A Mexican food lover at heart! A little mariachi band came over and sang to us and entertained Lincoln, kind of. He got a bit shy when a big mustached Mexican man came up and hee-hawed on his fiddle next to Linc. It was pretty funny.
Unfortunately, we didn't sleep much better this night either. The guests upstairs must have been nocturnal kangaroos because they didn't stop bounding around till after 1am. And this time it was the beds that were stuffed with small boulders instead of the pillows. I guess that's what you get when you purchase the hotels.com discount special that's 50 bucks cheaper than any other hotel.
In the morning we felt breakfast at Denny's would be just the thing to jump start our day. The waitress brought us our drinks and my chocolate milk was barely flavored. Monica looked at me and said, "Well, that's just brown milk!" We both laughed thinking that that pretty much summed up our vacation up to this point. We made it to Mission Beach and played in the sand and walked along the water. We had a tennis ball and Linc thought it was hilarious to chuck it into the waves as they came in. One wave got the better of him and knocked him right over and he got all wet. Poor guy. At least he knows what salt water tastes like now.
Believe it or not, the whole drive back home went without incident. We dropped off the rental car, got dropped off in Alpine, picked up our car and headed back home. Good thing too otherwise this blog post might have just become a novel.
For some reason I started calling my car Goldy on this trip. At any rate, I think this was Goldy's last big Hurrah! What a way to go huh?
