Everybody and his brother is going to tell you how l33t the RU was and how much you suck for not being there (especially Darien; Stephen and I agreed on exactly one thing all weekend--it's way more fun to rip on Darien when he's there than it is to do it when he's not.) So instead of doing a complete RU report (which I may do later anyway, if I feel like it) I'll instead tell you about the day after the RU and what happened to me on the way home.

I got up at the butt-crack of dawn to see BG off to the airport on the shuttle, then immediately went back to bed and slept until about 11. I had about a 17 hour drive ahead of me, so I wanted to get as much sleep as I could. I got up in time to see Sam and Leen off to the airport as well, then made my own goodbyes and hopped in my car and drove towards Las Vegas.

For those who don't know, BG and I drove out to the RU together, then she flew off to Boston to spend time with Sam and Leen this week, so I drove back to Denver alone. I was planning on spending the night in Las Vegas because I somehow had it in my head that Vegas was more towards the middle of my drive than it actually was. In fact, it's only about 5 1/2 hours from San Diego, so I decided to press on when I got there.

Somewhere between Vegas and the town of Mesquite, Nevada, my car made a funny-scary noise and suddenly my speedometer, which had been reading a fairly steady 75, dropped to zero. Then it rebounded to about 40, jiggled, and then dropped to zero again. This concerned me, but not over-much, since I figured I'd just broken the cable behind the dash or something and I'd have to get it repaired. I pulled off the highway at Mesquite to go to McDonalds and get a shake, and it was then that I got the first indication that something was seriously wrong.

There was smoke coming from under the dash when I pulled into the parking lot. I immediately popped the hood and looked for flames, but as it turned out it was a burst hose that was leaking a mysterious fluid all over the side of the engine that was causing the smoke (there was no actual flame, just a lot of blue smoke that somehow I didn't notice or smell while driving on the highway). I immediately checked the oil and found it was still full. I couldn't find the dipstick for the transmission fluid right away, but when I did find it hidden behind some other hoses at the back of the engine, that seemed to be full as well. So I couldn't tell what the mystery fluid was, and having completely exhausted my car repair ability in checking those two dip sticks, I thought it would be safer to not go any farther until I got someone more qualified to look at it. Fortunately there was a hotel/casino right across the street from the McDonalds with stupid-cheap rooms, so I drove the car over there and checked in.

On the way over, however, I discovered that the automatic transmission no longer shifted. This totally threw me into a funk. I may not know much about cars, but one thing I do know is "replacing automatic transmission = B1G M0N3Y". I called my father to try to see if he had any ideas what it could be, but the only thing he could come up with was exactly what I had already surmised--blown transmission. This only served to depress me more.

It was too late to get someone to look at it that night, so I spent the night in the cheap but very nice hotel, and the next morning limped the car to the nearest garage. As it turned out, the car shifted if I used the stick, but I couldn't get the car out of second that way. The stick goes "1, 2, D" and I could shift from first to second to "D" manually. But since "D" is part of magical automatic transmission land, it was basically just a fancy name for "also second".

I left the car with the nice man who made me more depressed by saying "Oh wow" when I popped the hood and showed him the blown hose. Smarty car guy knew that that hose was a cooling hose for the transmission fluid, and the fact that the transmission no longer shifted was definitely a bad omen in his book as well as mine.

So then I waited. I took the car over at 9:30 am, and he said he'd get to it either late morning or early afternoon. I lost $8 at the casino playing video poker until the guy called me at 11:00 to give me the bad news -- Dead Transmission.

Naturally, the news that I was going to be out several thousand dollars to repair my stupid car was bad enough, but worse yet was the news that, of course, they don't have a transmission for a 1998 Mazda 626 in stock, so it would be 5 to 7 days before they could even fix it.

At this point, I realize I have no idea what I'm going to do. So I run down my options:

1) Stay here all week until it's fixed.

No way. I can't afford to take any more time off work. It's going to be tough enough this month as it is. Not an option.

2) Take a bus back to Denver.

At first this seems appealing. Then I try to find a bus station. I ask at the Hotel Consierge desk. "Oh, there's one at the Texaco station outside of town." Nobody seems to be able to give me accurate directions to this mythical bus stop, though, and even worse, nobody seems to agree exactly how far "outside of town" it is. Estimates range from one to four miles. And of course, nobody has a schedule or any information on where to buy tickets. So at this point, I abandon this option and start looking into the next one.

3) Rent a car and drive it back to Denver.

I'll need a rental car here in Denver anyway, so it seems logical to just rent the car there, drive it back, then drive back and return the car when I pick up my car from the garage. I call Mousie and she gives me some ultra secrat discount codes for rental cars, and I set about trying to find the nearest rental place.

Turns out there's only one rental car place in town. It's an independant place called something like "Mike's Auto Rentals", and Mike doesn't have any cars for rent this week. Suck.

I call Hertz and Avis (the two companies I have codes for) but nobody seems to know exactly where Mesquite, NV is or what is near it. So they give me every rental location they have in Nevada, none of which turn out to be anywhere near Mesquite. After a further conversation with Mousie, she recommends that I get back to Vegas somehow, since they have an airport and there will definitely be cars available there.

So I again stop by the Consierge desk and inquire about the best way to get to Vegas without a car. It is then that I have my first bit of real luck of the day. There is apparently a shuttle that runs from the Oasis Casino where I was back to the Vegas airport. It costs me $45 round trip (I'll be coming back on it after I drop my car off) and it leaves in about two minutes!

So I stand outside with my stuff and wait for the shuttle. He shows up about fifteen minutes late, then complains that I don't have a ticket. The brochure the consierge desk guy gave me says "no reservations needed" so silly me, I didn't make reservations or get a ticket. I thought I could just pay the driver. Apparently there's some magical mystical secret area somewhere in Mesquite you have to find which has the ticket office for this shuttle thing. The driver, however, is kind enough to stop there and let me get a ticket so I don't have to wait an hour and a half for the next shuttle. As it turns out, I'm the only guy on the damn shuttle anyway so it would have been a wasted trip for him if he *hadn't* driven me to get a ticket.

I get to rest a bit on the hour and a half trip back to Vegas, which is nice. When I get off the shuttle, the driver gives me a tip that went something like this:

"Blurg blarg I-15 north blurg blah backed up blah blah blerg different route blah blah some town blah."

I took this to mean that I shouldn't get on I-15 north directly out of Vegas and instead I should go north on city streets until I get to "some town" which I failed to catch the name of and then get on the highway. I took his advice to heart, and after getting my car, I randomly drove around Vegas until I felt like I was going north, then kept going until I hit I-515, which I took north to I-15, which I then got on, apparently well clear of whatever blockage the shuttle driver had been trying to warn me of. This was cool, and I thank the shuttle driver for blah blah blerg blah.

By this time it was 3:00pm Pacific time. It's a 12 hour drive from Vegas to Denver, and I lose an hour crossing into Mountain time, so the earliest I could get home would be 4am. I made a valient effort, but by 1:30am Mountain time I pulled off the road just east of Glenwood Springs, Colorado, and spent a few hours sleeping in the trunk of my rental car at a rest area.

I got home at 8:30am, and immediately called into work to tell them I wasn't going to be there by 8:00 (my stupid cell phone had of course died so I couldn't call earlier.) I then crashed for a few hours and got up and came to work at about 1:00pm.

So that's my story. Except that if you've been paying attention, and if you know a bit about cars, you'll have noticed something. Even the least advanced cars have guages or lights that are supposed to warn you of impending disaster, and you'll notice I never mentioned any warning before the car crapped out on me. Well, here's the deal. There's this light on the dashboard. It says "O/D OFF". When this light is on, it means that I have pressed the button on the gear shift that takes the car out of overdrive, so it will not shift from third to fourth. This button had been flashing for several miles before the car died. I didn't pay too much attention to it because, for one, it had done the same thing on the drive out there, and two, when a light flashes, I always just assume it means whatever the light means normally, except moreso. A flashing light basically means, "no, seriously." A yellow light means "caution". A flashing yellow means "caution... no, seriously."

I couldn't figure out what a flashing "O/D OFF" light meant. First of all, the overdrive wasn't off anyway. So it couldn't mean "O/D OFF... no, seriously." I spent a few minutes trying to puzzle it out, but never did figure it out.

When I brought the car in, one of the first things the guy asked me after he looked under the hood was "Was the 'O/D OFF' light flashing?" I had to stupidly admit that it had been.

So here's the deal. When the "O/D OFF" light is on solid, it means what you'd expect it to mean--overdrive is off. However, when it flashes, it means "TRANSMISSION ABOUT TO EXPLODE PULL OVER NOW DUMMY!!!" So if you have a car with one of these lights, make a mental note of this.

To me this is the worst user interface idea ever. If a light I HAD NEVER SEEN BEFORE had popped up on the dash, I would have pulled over immediately and tried to figure out what the light meant. But when a light I'm already familiar with starts acting weird, I just assume there's something stupid going on with the electronics or something. Obviously that was a stupid assumtion to make and I won't be making that assumption again in the future. But damn, what a bad design decision THAT was.

-- Dave