This past Saturday, we played the Post-SU-Game party in Syracuse in Hanover Square.  The show was supposed to be outside on a stage, with the streets blocked off, a beer truck, and it was gonna be awesome.  A few things didn't go as planned, however.

First off, Syracuse lost their game.  That doesn't make for a very good post-game party.  Second, it looked like rain, so someone involved in the planning of the event canceled the sound company, the beer truck, and the street closing deal.  Since it looked like rain, the two bands (us and Simplelife) wound up playing indoors at a bar in Hanover Square.  But there was no sound company coming any more, as you'll recall.  Luckily, between the bands, we had enough equipment to put together a makeshift PA for the show.  The show itself wound up going fairly well, considering.  The ride home, however...

I'll start you out with some pictures:






That'd be our trusty Pathfinder on the back of that shiny new tow truck.  Here's how it went down.

We're driving home, talking about whatever it was we were talking about.  Bruce points out that the "Oil Temperature" light just came on just west of Utica on 90.  We've had problems with the dashboard display over the years, so we didn't think much of it.  The temperature gauge still looked fine, so, back to the conversation at hand.  Then Bruce notices the actual temperature gauge is all of a sudden just about as high as it'll go.  "I've seen this before," I venture, "I'll just throw the heat on high and it'll help cool off the engine."  I go to turn the heat on, and lo and behold:  cold air is rushing from the vents, not hot.  "I've also seen this before, this is a bad bad sign," I continue.  "I saw it when my head gasket blew on my last car..."  We start freaking out.  Bruce slows down to about 45, throws on the flashers (after we remind him), and we start looking for a service stop or an exit.  "Maybe we're low on oil," we hope.

We pulled over at the first exit and into a Fastrac gas station.  We pop open the hood and try to figure out a cause, none of us being terribly mechanically-inclined.  Luckily for us, the cause was fairly obvious:  a shredded belt sitting in a heap in the front of the engine.  Also, I notice that the container labeled "Coolant" seems to sound like its contents are actually *boiling*.

I called my brother, who happens to be a mechanic, and explain the situation to him.  I ask if he thinks we'd be ok driving it, maybe really slowly?  He asks how far we are from home.  "We're about 50 miles from the exit," I tell him.  He says we probably shouldn't, since we'll likely overheat the engine and crack the head gasket, etc.  So we call AAA.

After some wrangling over whose account we should use, we decide on Fig's, since he paid a little extra to get the free 100 miles of towing.  However, that doesn't cover the towing of the trailer.  Oh yes, the trailer...  Apparently trailer hitches come in more than one size - who knew?  And our trailer, of course, didn't fit on the ball on the tow truck.  The VERY patient tow guy spent a good 15 minutes trying to get the ball off the Pathfinder so he could temporarily use it on his truck.  Of course, as evidenced by the first photo, our towing hitch grounds out ALL the time, pretty much every time we go up a driveway or anything, so it was ground down and rusted, and it was NOT gonna come off.  So, Bruce left with the tow guy to go to the only place in town that would be open at 11pm on a Saturday night - Walmart - to try to find a ball that would work.  About 25 minutes later, they returned, successful! 

I guess we got lucky, though, in the end.  Bruce says his mechanic said we didn't damage the engine at all - it just needed a new belt.  It's a good thing we didn't try to drive it home like that!