Back from Sunshine State

[left this post as a draft for the longest time ever. hah!]

woohoo. 6 days of driving! from boston to florida and back. yes, florida! 2900miles in total. minus our trip from home to and fro rhode island. aint that crazy?? what's crazier is the true story that follows..

yah, so we were on route to grammy's house to pick up a cooler (those boxes you can use to keep things cold, or at least cool =p). we didnt have one and since we were on the road most of the time, we wanted to borrow theirs. slightly before we reached, i was looking out through the rear view mirror, watching for cars as usual and i saw smoke! i was like "love, there's smoke coming out from the exhaust pipe!" quickly, we decided it was NOT safe to go on. apparently it wasnt smoke but steam.. we didnt know at that time though. after passing the bend in the road, we stopped along the highway. as soon as we stopped, the front bonnet started smoking! i was like screaming, "get out! get out! take the important stuff and get out!" now, picture it - imagine sarah screaming her lungs out. isn't that hillarious?? =p nah, i wasnt that screamy. just clamly said, "ok love, we need to get out. take the laptop bag and our wallets. let's stay by the car at the side of the road, furthest from the road and call for help" so yep, got out and called for assistance. thankfully we're both AAA members. some yearly subscription fee but worthed it coz we each have 4 roadside assistance a year. dad say it's pretty ok. =) man, that was scary. coz we didnt know if the car was going to 'blow' up.

it was cold. ran back to the car and got our down jackets out. and snow boots. called for help. stood in the cold for 20minutes. after 5 mins, the car was not steaming already. but we still stayed away, in case some cork driver crashed into our car. didn't want to be in the car then. so yep, the tow truck arrived, loaded the car and towed us to some nearby garage. he skipped the nearest one coz he said they werent good (actually, we figured later that it was coz they didnt have association with AAA) and dropped us at Firestone, which was within the perimeters of a huge mall - which the tow truck driver said was better than the one we passsed. *rolls eyes* warwick mall was near grammy's. and she and her daughter (carolyn) was going to THAT shopping mall, with the garage, to shop for christmas! amazing how God blessed us! to that we can meet them there! imagine us getting stuck on the way to DC! that would be totally disasterous. =p

so after the full inspection, we were given a long list of what "needs" to be changed in our car. apparently, they wanted to give us a make-over for everything under the car's bonnet.. i.e. change everything! haha. total cost? $2k~ yea! our car cost about 2.7k loh.. lol

they suggest we let john take a look before deciding anything.

yada yada.. i'm lazy to continue on this post. haha!