Florida Trip

Well, I left for Florida on Sun. at 1pm. Most people who know me well know that I would be sitting comfortably in my sister's house drinking up all the warm sun possible. This time around my trip has been quite the trip. I am currently sitting in the lobby of a Quality Inn, somewhere around Knoxville, Tennessee. Let me recount the number of things that has gone wrong thus far. When I started out I thought it was going to be great. I left only an hour after the time I had planned. My Dad thankfully caught me before I left to let me know the car needed an oil change (I was driving his car down to Florida since it has cruise control.) So instead of a quick oil change it ended up taking over an HOUR to flush everything out because my Dad had waited so long to get an oil change there was no oil left and it all had turned to sludge. $128 later and now two hours past my leave time I am finally on my way. I then get stuck in some traffic due to some sort of Detroit team having a game. Once I was in Ohio I thought it would be smooth sailing. Little did I know fate had another plan for me. After about an hour or so of driving I started to feel not quite right. Because of this I ended up having to stop almost every 1.5 hours to go to the bathroom. Then my throat started to hurt. Where all this came from is beyond me. By 5pm I was 10 miles away from Kentucky when out of nowhere there is a HUGE traffic jam. It ended up taking me over an hour just to go 10 Miles. Needless to say I was not happy. By 8pm I was feeling extremely tired and yucky. I decided to stop and take a nap. I slept for about an hour, uncomfortably, and then tried to go on. The more I drove the worse I felt. I finally stopped at a Hotel (don't remember the name) and ended up having a horrible fever that night. Thank goodness I have had enough fevers in my life that I knew how to get it out of my system. By the morning my fever was gone but I still felt crummy. After eating breakfast and filling up my gas tank I try to get going. This is when my car decides it wants to not work for me. It stops accelerating at around 50 mph. I pull over and think my parking break is stuck (this car is a stick shift.) I start going, 1st gear, ok, 2nd gear, ok, 3rd gear, ok, 4th gear ok, so I think I have fixed whatever is wrong. I could not have been more wrong. My car stops accelerating again and now it smells like something is burning. I end up having to call AAA and get my car towed to the local Honda dealer that happens to be over an hour away. So after waiting over an hour for the tow truck I now have to make conversation with the grimy tow truck guy. When I get to the dealership I have to wait for the diagnostic and then get the bad news. Bad news number one, the clutch and two other parts are burnt out. Bad news number two, no one locally has the parts. Bad news number three after everything is said and done this will cost me over eight hundred dollars. I have to pay this initially because my parents are not with me to pay for their own car. Bad new number four, I have to stay over night at another hotel and get driven there by someone from the dealership. So now it is close to noon and waiting for my car to be finished. This is day three for me on my vacation and I have not gone farther than Knoxville, Tennessee. I just hope that things start looking up and my car gets fixed relatively soon. I want to be in Florida. One thing is that I have felt significantly better. I actually slept well and had a relaxing night of watching TV. (There are no restaurants within walking distance. I even had to have pizza delivered and ate it for lunch, dinner and breakfast. Yuck!!!) Well I am off, to read a magazine, in the lobby of a hotel... *Sigh* at least I have a story to tell...
P.S. While all this is going on for me I get the news that my sister Krista had to be taken to the hospital because she was throwing up and had horrible abdomen pain. Ends up she has a virus and there had been 40 other cases within the last 24 hours. It was a serious virus but short lived. Thank goodness it wasn't anything else...