December was for us a month of extensive travel. To start with, I went on a trip to Ecuador. It is a rather long story and I stored it separately. Click here to see what that was all about.
Alice did some traveling of her own, she came back from Calgary to spend her winter holidays here and will be heading back to the snow country in a week.
Finally, we took advantage of Houston's relative proximity to New Orleans to change the scenery for a few days. If everything goes well New Orleans is only a five hour drive from Houston, a distinct improvement on Dallas. We did drive once, but it was a very long hard day. This time we did not push ourselves, had a slow breakfast and left town around 10 a.m.
We were discussing whether we should visit the Avery Island tabasco factory on the way in when I suddenly felt a slight loss of power as if the car were hit by a strong gust of wind. It did not look particularly windy and then we could hear a strange sound coming from under the car. First we though that something got caught in the wheels so we pulled over and had a look. Could not find anything but when we started to move the noise was much louder. Luckily we were about a mile from an exit and so we put on the hazard lights and drove into the town of Rain the self proclaimed "Frog City".
I pulled into a gas station to ask if there was a mechanic in town. They pointed to a place across the street but as we were making a turn the car stopped moving altogether. I had to walk over and when the mechanic saw the symptoms there was no doubt in his mind. The transmission is gone and that is something that has to go to the dealer. Now we have only 36, 000 miles on this car and since Toyota is known for its quality something like this should not happen. Maybe never, but certainly not this soon.
Well, Rain is about 20 miles from Lafayette, the nearest dealer and so we had to get towed. The dealer confirmed the diagnosis, got me a loan car, ordered a new transmission and I drove back to Rain to pick up the rest of the family. We arrived in New Orleans much later than we planned, but still in time to find a good place to have supper. The only twist was that this time we brought our cockatiel Q.P. along.(click on the yellow underlined text to see a photo). I am not sure if it is against hotel policy to have a bird in the room (or if there even is a policy). But at this point we did not need another complication. So Monica covered his traveling cage with a coat and slipped passed the reception desk. QP, however, did not co-operate and insisted on whistling all the way up to the room.
The weather turned out to be nice, almost spring like and so we had a pleasant stay. The only regret is that our metabolisms do not run 10 times faster so that we could eat 12 times a day. Too many tempting restaurants for a short visit.
As we were checking out I noticed that the hotel was adding a 4 dollar energy surcharge per room per night. I pointed out that natural gas prices are 70% lower than last year and what are they talking about. They took the surcharge off. On the way back we stopped at the Houma plantation and by the time we arrived in Lafayette our car was ready. Since it was still under warranty I did not cost us anything. Now I have to get reimbursed for the towing charge.
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