Deja Vu... Vacation Day 7.5 ~ UPDATED

UPDATE... Vacation 8.5

The car is toast.

We are renting a car to get to Orlando so we can make it to Discovery Cove tomorrow... if not we would be able to reschedule everything BUT the dolphin... so we are intent on getting there.

The Texas garage place is sending an engine to the Florida garage and paying for them to install it for us. For those car fanatics out there the problem was caused by the timing belt coming loose and causing a bolt to break in the crack shaft. So the Texas garage seems to be taking responsibility for the repairs... but they are not paying for the $250 rental car or the $80 hotel for last night. What can you do? At this point we will take what we can get since a used engine is about $2500 installed... not counting the shipping.

Mr. D. is blaming himself... why??? He did the right things! He has been such a trooper through all of this. It makes me so sad to see him second guessing himself. He really is my hero.

I will update when we get into Orlando... It will probably be about 9 or 10 tonight.

Tomorrow we will swim with dolphins.

Have any of you been reading my blog long enough to remember THIS POST?

Well, first let me say this...We have good cars. We take care of our cars and do the maintenance that most people don't do. We decided to take the Honda CRV on this trip because it is bigger... but since it had about 150,000 miles on it Mr. D. took it to the shop and paid about $500 to have all the belts changed and everything checked out.

hmmm... how ironic.

We are now sitting in a Holiday Inn in Chipley, Florida because some belt wasn't installed properly and the car decided to die on us about an hour into our 6 hour trip to Orlando. Of course it is Sunday so there are no Auto Service shops open... and it wasn't an option to tow the car to a big city (Tallahassee) about 100 miles away at $4 a mile. So... here we sit. Stuck in Chipley since 11:30 this morning. Luckily we are within walking distance from a couple of fast food places, a Blockbuster Video (that God for the laptop), and the worlds scary-ist Walmart.
So far we are two movies into out triple feature... Brokeback Mountain, Shopgirl, and 16 Blocks.

As irratating as all this is, as usual, Mr. D. has totally kept his cool and has made this little roadblock pleasant. He is just such a calm person and he always knows what to do. Me? Not so much... I would probably still be sitting on the side of the road crying. I know you all know this... but I really have a wonderful husband.

We are just praying that tomorrow morning they will quickly find out the problem and fix it. We are sort of nervous that it might be something worse than just a belt... but all signs point to the belt not being tightened properly.

I know I have some attorney (or budding google type law student) friends out there... Can we demand out $$$ back from the garage that didn't properly do the work? Should they have to pay for the repairs tomorrow and the night in the hotel? What do you girls think? What is the best way to handle this situation?

Please pray that we are back on the road by tomorrow afternoon and that we can keep this really fun pit stop to less than $300.