ADVENTURES IN TRAVEL

That could very well be the title of a regular feature on Blog d’Elisson, to be filed by our Intrepid Automotive Travel Correspondent, the Mistress of Sarcasm. This past week resulted in yet another Travel Adventure.

My Esteemed Readers know that we spent most of Memorial Day weekend in the charming coastal city of Savannah (AKA the Beautiful Lady with the Dirty Face, AKA the Garden of Good and Evil) where we, along with a motley assortment of friends and relatives, had assembled to watch the Mistress receive her degree from Savannah College of Art and Design. After the main festivities on Saturday and the lesser festivities on Sunday, most of us scattered to the four winds: Texas, Hilton Head, New York, and Atlanta.

[Hilton Head. Hmmm...what with the infamous Miss Paris so omnipresent in the media these days, that pair of words takes on a whole different meaning, doesn’t it? Heh. But I digress...]

Remaining in Savannah were Elder Daughter and her boyfriend Kody, who stayed with the Mistress a couple of days before the three of them headed up to the ATL to join us.

Friday rolled around, by which time everyone at Chez Elisson had departed for home with the exception of the Mistress. She hit the road for Savannah in the early afternoon...but did not quite get there. About 50 miles past Macon, 110 miles from home, ominous vapors began spewing from beneath the hood of her 1995-vintage Saturn coupe. Wisely, she pulled over and stopped...and then got well away from the car. No point getting picked off by a random drunkard with poor Lane Control Skills.

Now, you may or may not be a fan of Cellular Communication Technology. Like me, you may not like listening to total strangers having loud telephone conversations in public, or enjoy seeing people wandering around with Borg-like Bluetooth contraptions stuck to their ears, wandering around and mumbling (seemingly) to themselves. But if there is one good thing about cell phones, it’s that they facilitate getting help when you’re stuck on the highway outside East Bumblefuck, Georgia. The Mistress used hers to call us and Triple-A: that way, we could worry our brains out and she could get help simultaneously.

At one point a kindly police officer stopped and asked the Mistress if she needed help. By that time, both the AAA tow truck and a friend from Savannah were enroute, so she graciously declined...but not without noting that Officer Kindly’s eyes had been glued to her Bodacious Ta-Tas the whole time. Jeez.

Did I mention that all of this activity was punctuated by Georgia’s patented Violent Thunderstorms? Oh.

So: the Mistress eventually managed to get back to Savannah, and now the fine automotive experts of East Bumblefuck supposedly have solved the problem – a burned-out radiator fan motor. As I write this, she is even now headed back to pick up her increasingly trouble-prone chariot.

I suppose if I had to extract a moral from this story, it would be to always have a paid-up AAA (or other roadside assistance service) membership and a charged-up cellphone. Especially if your car is nearing the 100k mark.

Or, if you’re Paris Hilton, to make sure your private jet does not run out of fuel.

Hilton Head. Indeed. Heh.