Spring Break Shark Attack, Or, How to Drive a Ticking Time Bomb

The sun is shining, the birds are gently calling out, the sun is slowly melting the dirty snow, and the days are growing longer. Dear readers, Spring is here. For many of you, this means that you can finally stop hounding your children to put on their snowpants. For others, this means that you can finally go to that dusty corner of your garage and wheel out your old convertible. Yes, Spring is a glorious time of sunshine, awakening, and peace for the majority of the population.

Unless you are between the ages of 18 and 23. In your case, Spring means one thing and one thing only: Spring Break.

For those of you who aren't a member of the rebellious youth or a raging alcoholic, here's a brief visual of how your kids spend your paycheck.

Panama City Beach Hotels 35% Off This Week, With Complimentary Room Service & Chlamydia!

Surprise!

When boiled down, this equates to a week or so of very questionable decisions. Naturally, my friends and I had to take part. So, with dreams of terrible lawsuits in our heads, my buddies and I packed our bags into a 2007 Saturn Outlook and hit the road.

Beauty. Power. Refinement. Sex Appeal......These Are Not Actually The Words That Come To Mind...

Our route was long and perilous. The GPS on my phone informed me that our journey would take roughly 17 hours, assuming we never had to stop. After estimating that we would have to tack on an hour and a half or so for gas stops (because that's how cars work...) and bathroom breaks, we estimated our overall drive at about 18 and a half hours.

We were so wrong. So terribly, terribly wrong.

The first few hours of the drive passed by without incident. We quickly left the ice and wind of Michigan behind us and, apart from a minor detour, crossed the Sixth Circle of Dante's Hell (Ohio) with time to spare.

It was only when we hit West Virginia that things began to go amiss. 

While driving through the winding mountain roads of coal country, we began to notice that the car had begun to shift a bit...violently. By that I mean that whenever the transmission attempted to swap a cog, it was accompanied by a terrifying lurch and a bang like a gunshot.  In addition, the tachometer was informing me that the engine was running at 5,500 RPM. To provide a bit of context, we were doing 74 and were, by my reckoning, in sixth gear. Commence your wincing.

Now, this could be caused my a number of issues. The gearing mechanism could be faulty, the clutch could be slipping, something could be on fire, and there was really no way of knowing without checking it out. As sensible, well-educated men, we immediately pulled over to examine the transmission.

By that I mean that we're a group of guys in our twenties and simply pushed a bit harder on the accelerator pedal, hoping that whatever foul witchcraft was occurring within the bowels of the Saturn would simply go away with added speed.

Happy Happy Happy, The Car is on Fire, La Dee Da Dee Da!

Spoiler alert: It didn't go away.

When the entire dashboard suddenly lit up with warning lights like the surface of the sun, we finally decided that we may need to examine the car.

Pulling into a service station near the Virginia border and consulting the manual, we determined that the car would be fine, given some time to cool down. This particular car had over 120,000 miles on its odometer and therefore, we reasoned, it made sense that it was struggling with the hilly terrain. Google also told us that our particular transmission, GM's Dexron VI, had a history of mild overheating and that it should be just fine, given time to cool down.

We simply ignored this. The dire pronouncements of "catastrophic transmission overheating" and "idle engine immediately" were treated like the pathetic warnings they were: designed for weaker men than ourselves.

Shockingly, the car's symptoms did not dissipate. As we rolled slowly into service station after service station, the shadow of the car grew longer as it flickered across the endless expanse of tarmac. Night was coming and the temperatures were dipping perilously close to zero.

Ominous.

Complicating our situation, we are all avid cinephiles and, in accordance with our cinematic educations, we knew that we were about to be kidnapped and murdered by the mutants from the Hills Have Eyes.

A Free Luke Bryan Concert, a Bad Tan and a Crappy Tank Top Weren't Worth This!

As the day grew shorter, our stops grew longer. Google informed us that there were no rental car agencies within 100 miles (primarily because there was nothing resembling civilization within 100 miles). We sat, disconsolate as the sun gave up its last desperate twinkle, and dipped below the horizon. 

Realizing that our combined mechanical prowess was nowhere near sufficient to fix a transmission, I decided to simply kill and eat my friends, so as to prolong my struggle against the inevitable mutant assault.

It's a Lie. Everyone is Fair Game.

When hope was all but lost, we finally decided to "fix" the transmission. This meant pulling into a truck stop in Southern Virginia, opening the hood, and checking the transmission fluid. When the dip stick informed us that the fluid was at the proper level, our mechanical expertise was officially exhausted, and we climbed back into the car, reasoning that if we were going to die, we might as well be warm for as long as possible.

This was when the Great Miracle of 2013 occurred.

While wandering through the aisles of the truck stop searching for a bathroom, we discovered the small bottle that you see below. Reasoning that our transmission couldn't be in worse shape (NEVER ASSUME THAT), we purchased it, and proceeded to simply dump the entire bottle into the transmission.

The Label Should Actually Read: "God Fluid"

This is the part of the story when, by rights, my writing should trail off into agonized screaming as the car completely dies and I am pulled from the burning wreck by terrifying hill mutants.

But that isn't what happened.

Surprisingly, the problems immediately disappeared. This was surprising because, by this point, we truly though that the car was dead. Transmission problems are very rarely something that one can fix on the side of the road. Although the engineering behind a transmission isn't overly complicated, the level of detail to which they are built and the numerous small parts make a roadside repair the stuff of nightmares.

With the car no longer shuddering and sounding like something from the Industrial Revolution, we were able to get back on the road. Six hours after our original estimated arrival time, we rolled into the driveway of our condo, exhausted, but triumphant.

You're All Damn Lucky That Amerigo Vespucci Made The Maps and Not Me.

If I can say that I learned one thing from this experience, it would be that man always triumphs over machine.

Or not.

If you ever find yourself in a situation where you are depending heavily on a vehicle, don't ignore the signs that something is amiss. Check it out, get it to a service station, and have someone who didn't waste a couple grand on a liberal arts degree look over the flaming wreck that used to be your car. 

That's the smart thing to do.