What a Trip part #1

It was supposed to have been a fun, short, overnight trip for our 1 year anniversary. And boy, did it turn out interesting. The plan was to drive down to Salem, eat at In-N-Out burger in Keizer (Patrick is a Cali boy), do a wine tasting at one of my favorite Wineries, Honeywood (they make a lot of wine from other fruits. Very sweet stuff), and possibly ride a steamboat on the river. We were going to have dinner at The Cheesecake Factory, then spend the night near Portland, and grab some alcoholic ice cream (Spirited Ice Cream) and donuts from Voodoo on the drive home.

Instead, my car started to jerk and stutter and felt like it was not shifting properly. We were currently in Chehalis, about 60 miles south of Tacoma on our way down to Portland. Patrick was driving because I was using my bionicgym at the time, and I wasn't really feeling how the car was reacting. We ended up in a rural area off of I-5 because Patrick needed to make a deposit at a BECU branch or ATM, and the website pointed google maps to this back-asswards location that ended up being a house. And that's when my car really started acting up. Good timing, G. I had him pull over, and I opened the hood with the full intention of checking the transmission fluid level because of how the car was acting like it was shifting funny (like it was trying to shift and having a hard time doing it).

Turns out, after searching  for the dipstick for several minutes - the 2015 Chevy Sonic doesn't even have a transmission level dipstick. You can't even check the level unless you lift the car. Like, wat. So, that being the only thing I know, I was like well, let me try driving it, since I hadn't really felt what Patrick was dealing with (the bionicgym creates vibrations in my leg muscles so that's pretty much all I was feeling). We're driving back to the freeway, the car is really struggling, and I am freaking out because we're in hodunk nowheresville. I manage to make it within eyesight of the overpass back to I-5 when the check engine light finally comes on and I pull off to the side. I pull out my OBD-II reader, and it gives me a "cylinder 3 misfire" code. Was told it was dangerous to drive it in this condition and further driving could cause damage to the catalytic converter. So, I called a tow truck. Unfortunately, State Farm only covers me for 13 miles, so to tow it back to my Midas on 6th Ave in Tacoma would cost me another $160 bucks. Great.

The tow ride was certainly interesting. He came in a flatbead, and told us that there wasn't enough room for both of us in the cabin and that we could stay in the car on the drive up. We had to look it up, just to make sure it was legal. Legal yes - safe? - not 100%! But, what choice did we have? If it hadn't been raining it would have been more fun, but the windows were fogging up and we didn't really get a decent outside view. About 30 miles in I was feeling a tad carsick because I couldn't see outside. We made the best of it though by waving at all the Semis we drove past because we were at their eye level.

We knew that we could still salvage this trip. We got dropped off at my Midas at 12:30 and still had plenty of time to walk home and drive Patrick's car down to Oregon. We would just have to reschedule all the Saturday plans and do them on Sunday instead!