Ol' Bluehair takes a break

We made it through the small pockets of congestion with ease. Route 93 South had a fifth of what normally traverses during the day, such a meager amount it wouldn't be fair to even call it traffic. We never came to a full stop and always sped back up as soon as we passed the blue lights and the construction vehicles. The normal onslaught of hurried commuters rushing to the city in the early morning light and fleeing in the late afternoon were long home.

We found relief in knowing that we weren't dealing with fellow day commuters, the aggression, the muscling for rank (or to be one car closer to "being there"), but were reminded that night commuters are a different sort of animal. While on the one hand we were dodging Swirvin' Ervin, whom we were pretty sure was drunk, on the other, I had to squint and slouch as low as I possibly could as another Highbeam Harry used me as a honing beacon. There was comfort to be had in the fact that at least Ervin and Harry were moving it along. Ervin and Harry didn't stop to see what the hold up was. Leaving the airport at 11 p.m. turned out to be the quickest way to return home from Boston.

Ol' Bluehair ran fairly well. She and I left at 10 p.m. were at the airport at quarter of 11 and circled around the arrival strip for South West several times so as not to have to pay to park. By 11:10 we were on our way back to Old Cape Cod. I chatted away with my dad and step mom about their trip, the places they had been and the people they had seen. Ol' Bluehair just listened. But it was somewhere on Route 6 East that she began to complain.

Dad asked me if I had checked her oil recently. Yes I had and she was primed and ready to go. We made our way off the exit down the busy route and all the way to our two mile stretch home when she quit on me. I had pushed the clutch in to make our turn when the Subaru turned off. The wheel locked, every gadget and gizmo light for the engine turned on as we coasted in to Jiffy Lube.

Shoot. That was all I could I muster at the moment followed shortly by a heavy dose of grumbling that this is just my luck.

But isn't it?

This could have happened on the way to Boston when I was alone, or at the airport, or in a construction zone, or heaven help me, on the Sagamore Bridge which is down to only one lane. So if she was going to give, and she was, she did pick a good time to I suppose.

Bluehair smelled terribly as we climbed out and looked under her hood. She was overheating, a hose, the radiator, something gave and anti-freeze dripped down as if her nose was running with green slimy mucus. Yuck.

It was 12 something this morning. By one a.m. the car had been towed, the luggage had been dropped off in the house and a little before two, I was home. Ol' Bluehair had a sleepover at Dad's where she is still sitting cooling her hooves.