Latest column: Transmission Trouble

Talk about a crummy couple of days.

First, you should know that I started writing this column in the dark. At a desk in the corner of a guestroom at the Quality Inn in Wisconsin Rapids. Typing as quietly as possible so not to wake my sleeping family.

This wasn’t the plan.

Hours earlier, we were zipping through Wisconsin on Hwy 21 — singing to Queen and watching signs for “Genuine Wisconsin Cheese!” whiz by. We’d just spent a weekend with friends at Sturgeon Bay, and were looking forward to getting home.

Then, at the stop-signed intersection at Hwy. 13, our van lurched (first), made a disheartening screeching noise (second), and came to a stop (third). This last part was the most disturbing.

“Crap,” said my husband. “Transmission.”

Pulled over to the side of the road between a rest stop and a warehouse-sized establishment called Private Pleasure (“Big Sale on Latex!”), we explored our options. Scratch that. We explored our option: Calling a tow truck.

Waiting for our knight in shining steel to arrive, my sons and I crossed the road to wait at the rest stop. (I took a gamble that Private Pleasure wasn’t an appropriate diversion for my 4- and 7-year-olds.) Our company was a hardcore biker (I say “hardcore” because not only was he returning from an 800-mile trip to Sturgis, but he was also sporting a lengthy braided beard) who kindly asked if we needed help.

“We’re fine,” I assured him. “We’ll be back on the road in no time.”

Poor, dumb me.

By the time we returned to the van, the tow truck was just arriving. Thirty minutes later, we were checking into the Quality Inn and the driver was delivering our van to the Chrysler service station.

Only, as we’d discover in the morning, it wasn’t. A service station, that is. It had been once. But now it was just a used car lot — and that didn’t help us one bit.

As Day 2 wore on, we traded calls with service stations, dealerships, towing companies and the roadside assistance operator. I passed the time enumerating the many reasons that no 2002 Chrysler Town & Country with only 50,000 miles should need a new transmission. At 10 a.m., I preached how we’d only buy new cars from now on. By 11 a.m., I vowed we’d only buy used cars with 80,000 miles on them — since that worked for us before WITH NO TRANSMISSION PROBLEMS.

By noon, we were waiting (and waiting… and waiting…) in the hotel lobby for a rental car. By then, we’d been told that our van did indeed need a new transmission and that it wouldn’t be ready for days.

Day 3 is tomorrow. Day 3 is when we find out how much this ordeal is going to cost us. See, we don’t know exact numbers yet — just that it will range somewhere between the price of the trip to New York we’d been hoping to take this fall and the new carpet I had really wanted to get this winter.

But that’s OK. As crummy as my week has been, I know how lucky I am. I’m thankful we had a “car problem,” as opposed to a car accident. I’m thankful for cell phone reception where we needed it most. I’m thankful for roadside assistance. I’m thankful for kind strangers. And I’m thankful for the technological marvel of wireless Internet, which allows me to meet deadlines like this — even when stuck in Wisconsin.