We got home late Monday night from our Vegas trip. We were supposed to be home on Friday night, but fate intervened. When we planned our trip, we took the amazing price on the hotel rooms at the <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />Luxor during the week, but we planned to check out on Friday when the prices went up to $135 a night. I remember asking Mike if he wanted to stay the weekend in Mesquite, where we can get a room for much cheaper on the weekends, but in the end, we decided that we would head back to Salt Lake and spend the weekend doing laundry and getting ready for our week.
On Friday, we checked out of the Luxor just fine and were right on schedule. We passed right through Mesquite with no temptation to stay the weekend. We wanted to get home. Mike had found a bunch of Xbox games that he wanted to play and I had the parts for him to fix my treadmill so it would work with the i2Workouts better. We were excited to get home, mow the lawn and do the laundry.
Just past Mesquite, in the twisty and turny part of the stretch of Arizona with no service, our plans took a turn. At first, I thought that I must be close to running out of gas because the car was making the same noise as the low fuel indicator, but a different light was showing. The red thermometer was telling me that the car was overheating. I immediately slowed from my ninety mph speed down to a reasonable sixty. I turned off the air conditioning and turned on the heater. I opened the windows and hoped that we would be able to get to St. George before the car gave out completely.
For all the cursing that I gave the Beetle, I should be happy because it didn’t give out. It held on and we made it to Ozzie and Rosie’s Shop. They were able to order our parts Friday night and we ended up extending our vacation over the weekend and into Monday. I was a major crab cake (my treadmill was waiting for me), so I had a hard time enjoying St. George on foot. Ozzie did an amazing job fixing our water pump and solved our Check Engine light problem while he was at it.
Even though we didn’t plan it, we ended up staying in a less expensive hotel over the weekend, just like I suggested to Mike before we left. It was a little Best Western on St. George Blvd, close to Foreign Auto Parts and Service. We ate at the little restaurants to the west of our hotel. We were forced to relax because there was really nothing to do there without a car to get us around the town. We sat in the hot tub, we exercised in the fitness room and we indulged ourselves at the Deluxe Breakfast Buffet. We even did laundry in the Guest Laundry. It wasn’t a perfect ending to our trip, but it could have been worse.
We could have been trapped in that twisty and turny part of the freeway in Arizona without a mechanic in site. We could have blown a head gasket trying to get our car into St. George. We could have been broke and unable to pay the reasonable rates that Ozzie charged us. We could have been stuck in Panquitch or Paragonah, where there is even less to do than in downtown St. George. We could have ended up with a crooked mechanic instead of the honest and fair service we got from Ozzie. There were so many “could haves” that haunted me, that I was just happy to rest in the air conditioned comfort of my hotel room.
When my mom found out that we had to stay in St. George for the next couple of days, waiting for parts, she suggested that we rent a car and go to Mesquite. I told her, “Mom, I used up all my good luck just getting here. I don’t have any left for Mesquite.”
