Always mindful of her comfort and safety, I inquired whether or not we should use our new big old Teutonic LuxoBarge. The moment she said, "Sure, why not", I knew exactly how Brer Rabbit felt when he was being thrown into the briar patch. Happiness is taking a day trip in the big old TLB with The Boss in the seat beside you.
Joy was short lived on that day. As we drove into Stillwater, the old TLB sounded an alarm gong, followed by a terse message on the dash regarding low coolant. Of course I pulled over right away in the Lowe's parking lot. The radiator was too hot to investigate so we decided to spend a little cool down time shopping at Lowe's for some of the other things on our list.
Yep, the coolant was low.
Lowe's does not carry automotive stuff, but there was a Wal-Mart close by. The Wal-Mart was just across the Lowe's mega parking lot and halfway across its own mega parking lot. Now The Boss is always into fitness and exercise so we set off on foot across the paved fields. Wal-Mart is arranged with car stuff on one end of the store and distilled water on the opposite end necessitating more exercise within the confines of the store. I was also made aware of what it feels like to be 16 pounds overweight as I carried the 16 pounds of goods on the trek back to the TLB. We got back, poured in some coolant and some water, and continued our drive into town.
Wouldn't you know it, the gong, along with the short message about low coolant were back before we had gone very far. Quick, pull off the road into a nearby liquor store parking lot. There is no sign of overheating and it had started raining. In hindsight we should have called AAA right then and just hauled it all home on the back of a flatbed.
Once again the car was too warm to investigate so we waited a bit while things cooled off. The radiator cap turned out to be faulty, a big chunk of plastic was gone from its lower edge. My first thought was, why does this big old German LuxoBarge have a plastic radiator cap? My next thought was, where in the whole of Stillwater am I going to find a replacement plastic radiator cap for a Teutonic LuxoBarge? It is a good thing that The GlassStacker is pretty tech-savvy. She quickly figured out that there was a NAPA store just a half mile or so away from our location at the liquor store and determined that they had the part in stock, at a reasonable price, and that they would hold it for us.
We took off walking again, remembering that fitness and exercise are always the order of the day. As it was still raining we ducked into McDonald's on the way, then we decided to skip across the drive through lane to Taco Bell. When we arrived at TB it was seriously raining so we sat and ate a bunch of tacos, she likes crunchy and I like soft, and waited for the rain to lessen. Because now the grass has become wet, really wet, from the heavier rain, we have to walk on the frontage road to get from Taco Bell to NAPA. Out in the street we were dodging cars and puddles and wondering if you get wetter when you run or not and eventually get to the auto parts store. While I am paying for the radiator cap, The Boss asks the counterman for a plastic bag, she is getting concerned about the effect of so much rain on her smartphone. It is still raining when we start walking/running back to the liquor store parking lot. As a note of interest, I do not look anywhere near as good when I am running as the GlassStacker does. She is really graceful. A few minutes later I have poured in some coolant and some more water and we are again heading for downtown Stillwater.
Arriving downtown, we parked in a 3 hour spot on the crowded main street near a coffee shop. While docking the barge, I noticed that the radiator was emitting some vapor, I could just see the little puffs between the raindrops. Oohh, not good. When I opened the hood, the first thing I noticed was that the bleed screw on the top of the radiator was broken and coolant was bubbling out in a big way. Oohh, really not good.
The bleed screw is a little plastic screw plug used to remove air from the cooling system, NAPA doesn't have one, the car will not run without it, and why is it made of plastic on a big old TLB in the first place? You might guess that it was still raining. We went into the coffee shop, bought a medium sized cup of dark roast coffee and sat down to think about our day trip to Stillwater in the big old Teutonic LuxoBarge to buy some flatware for our kitchen.
We bought our flatware early in the day at Herberger's and had time for brunch at Perkins.
I used our new flatware for my lunch today. Joy is here.
Keep 'em running
As always
The GlassStacker's Assistant
