Date:         Thu, 30 Dec 1999 11:20:29 EST
Reply-To:     KENWILFY@AOL.COM
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         KENWILFY@AOL.COM
Subject:      Christmas in Georgia (Long)
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

First of all I hope that everyone here on the list had a great Christmas and will have a Happy New Year (tonight!).
Second, I want to tell you folks a tale of what has happened to me in the last week.  As strange as it sounds it is all true.

After not taking a vacation all summer and working really hard this year on my business (credit card processing, new website, internet store, etc) I was looking forward to spending Christmas with my in-laws in Georgia.  I thought about telling the list as a whole what I was doing, but I just felt that you folks had heard enough from me in the couple of days before I left (lots of stress induced email that I regret) and so I just decided to leave.

Our original plan was to leave on Wednesday night and stop at a friend's house in Wash DC to spend the night, and then go on down to Georgia the next day.  After loading up the van that night, we didn't get very far before I relized that something was wrong.  The van wouldn't idle.  We turned around and for the next couple of hours I spent troubleshooting the problem.  Seems like the idle switch needed a little tweaking to get it to click at the proper spot and this was messing up the idle.  I adjusted this and the van ran fine.

Next moring we loaded her up again and were on our way. The van was running fine, but I started to notice that the CV joints had begun to click under load and deceleration.  I just prayed they would last until we got down south.

During the trip the van bucked a couple of times but was running fine until we got about an hour above Knoxville, Tenn.  Now it started bucking any time I would let off of the gas.  The engine would run smooth with the pedal on the floor or at idle but in between the engine would sputter.  I kept the hammer down and prayed some more.  I could tell that the van was really weighted down with all of the two baby's things and our luggage.  It was the most weight that the van had carried since I had owned her.

Well about 5 miles after the last exit and 5 miles before the next exit above Knoxville, the red coolant level light started blinking.  I immediately pulled over and the temp gauge was still at normal.

As I went to the back of the van there was little doubt that I had a blown headgasket on my hands.  It had blown catastrophically so that no amount of Bar's Leak, etc would have done any good.

So here we were, on December 23 in the middle of nowhere, at night, the temperature outside was around 30 degrees F and we were dead in the water.  My first thought was to just wait until someone stopped (police, wrecker, etc.)  However after about an hour, the the van getting colder, I finally came to the realization that no one was going to stop.  My wife began to cry, my 2 year old daughter turned to her and told her not to cry. Then my daughter began to sing "God is love"!  My wife stopped crying and I decided that she was right and that He would help us.  My wife suggested trying to walk up the overpass that she could see a few hundred yards back.  I couldn't see it as I have night blindness.

Hesitantly I left the van with my wife and two babies huddling together under blankets.  I walked carefully back to the overpass.  My flashlight was about dead from working on the van the night before.  I really couldn't see anything.  I could make out a little when cars would pass and shed some light on the overpass.  I began to climb up the overpass feeling my way.  As I got to the top and grabbed the railing of the road above, I took one more step and there wasn't anything there!  I tightened my grip on the rail and pulled myself up.  Here was a road, but it was so dark I thought it might be a rail road track so I walked carefully until I could see that it was indeed a paved road.

Straight ahead I saw a light from a country home.  Going up to the door, I knocked and an older lady answered.  After I explained my predicament she invited me in out of the cold and let me use her phone.
I called AAA and they send they would send a wrecker right away.  After the couple understood that I had a wife and two little ones waiting in the van, the husband (Paul) insisted that he drive me back to the van and left my wife and daughters sit in the warmth of the cab until the wreckers arrived.  I was grateful and on the way back to the van, Paul suggested that I could leave the van in his yard until the next day when we could rent a tow dolley and pull it down to Georgia (still a few hours away).  Then he went further and suggested that we could spend the night at his place if we wanted to!

Well I felt this was an answer to prayer and we did indeed spend that night at their home.  The older couple was happy to help us, and also felt like our coming was a Christmas gift to them as well.  It seems that a couple of years before they had lost their grand daughter named Rachel along the same stretch of highway that we had broken down on.  So they felt that my daughter Rachel coming to them with us, was like their own grand daughter saying "Merry Christmas" to them.  The father of the girl even stopped by and timidly asked if he could kiss my infant daugther.  We could tell he had been crying.

The next morning, Christmas Eve, after calling around to get a tow setup from Ryder with little sucess, I had the wrecker service that had towed our van the night before, to bring the van the rest of the way down to Georgia for us.  God was so good to us as the Wrecker bill was the same price that Ryder quoted me for renting their stuff and the guy was willing to do it on Christmas Eve!

So we made it in time for Christmas.  And you know the weird part.  Before we left for the trip, I was so stressed out about everything.  But when the headgasket blew, and all of the other events happened, I was strangely calm.  I guess I just knew that God would helps us.  And He really did.  I'll still be down here for a few days if anyone needs to get a hold of me I should be home on Monday.  My email access is not very good so if I don't get back to you until Monday, that is why.

That's the story.  Happy New Year to you all!

Ken Wilford
Van-Again
John 3:16