A Weekend Trip... or Nightmare

This past weekend, Sheila and I headed to Saratoga Springs for a youth hockey tournament.  Lukey's team was playing in this tournament and Sheila and I enjoy visiting Saratoga Springs so we made reservations the moment we heard about this tournament.

I didn't sleep much, if at all, on Thursday night due to a painful sore throat and what seems like a head cold.  When we got out of bed on Friday morning, I immediately tested for COVID.  If I tested positive, we would be cancelling our plans for the weekend and staying home.  I tested negative though so we packed up and headed out within a couple of hours.  

False negatives are a big issue with these testing kits so you are supposed to test again at 48 hours.  If you test negative again but are still symptomatic, then you're supposed to test again another 24 hours later...   and, I think, once again 24 hours later if still symptomatic.  We're back home now, 48 hours later, and I tested negative again.  It is now Monday morning and I tested negative yet again.  

I'm still feeling like crap.  My throat is killing me...  runny nose...  generally feel lousy...  and only a very low grade fever on that first morning (99.1°).  I tested negative though so we packed up and headed out the door for Saratoga Springs just before lunchtime on Friday.  

Let's start with the good things...  Our accommodations at The Inn at Saratoga were exceptional, as always, and we spent a lot of time at the inn.  The food at the inn was exceptional.  The atmosphere at the inn was exceptional.  Even though I was feeling quite lousy, we still felt very comfortable.  

Unfortunately, as comfortable as the Inn and the staff made us feel, the list of rather bad things that happened on this trip far outweigh the good. 

We left at around 11:30am.  The trip should have taken three hours but we didn't arrive at the inn until 5:30pm!  

It was snowing, the roads were bad, and we quickly realized that our windshield wipers were in desperate need of replacing.  We couldn't see out through the windshield.  We stopped a couple of times to attempt to clean the blades but that didn't help much.  We needed to find a place to purchase new blades. 

There isn't much of anything between our home and Saratoga so our only choices were to end the trip and find a room nearby (not likely in this "no man's land) or press on and stop when we saw a place that carries some basic auto parts.  I knew that we'd be approaching Ticonderoga before too long (hopefully) and I remembered there being a Walmart there.  Once we crossed into New York, we passed a truck with spinning tires on an Adirondack road.  I think we even passed one or two cars that had slid off the road.  We pressed on very carefully.

We managed to pass by Eagle Lake, Paradox Lake and Schroon Lake without sliding off the road (thanks to Sheila's studded snow tires) before we got to the Northway.  The Northway would take us all the way down to Saratoga Springs...

Before passing by Eagle Lake, Paradox Lake and getting on the Northway, we had safely made it to Walmart in Ticonderoga and we did purchase new wiper blades.  We replaced the blades on the car in the snow while shivering then continued on our journey to Saratoga Springs.  Unfortunately, the weather did not improve at all for the rest of the trip.  

Sometime around Ticonderoga, I noticed the car was sounding weird.  It sounded like lifters chattering so the sound worried me.  I turned down the music (Pandora, since there is no radio in this no man's land) and then turned down the heater fan.  When I turned down the heater fan, the clicking noise disappeared.  At this point, I figured that since it was not the engine making this noise, this was good news.  We continued on.  At this point, this clicking sound was so subdued that Sheila couldn't hear it but my ears perked up the moment it started.

By the time we made it to the Northway, the heater fan was sounding terrible and actually drowning out the music we were playing.  It definitely was sounding like a bad motor bearing...  that horrendous rhythmic grinding noise that a motor makes when it is toast.  For now, however, this motor was still running which is a good thing because our windshield and windows would have fogged up and iced up without it!

The sound got so bad that I was beginning to get concerned about how much life was left in this blower motor.  I decided to alternate between turning off the blower fan in intervals in an attempt to prolong what little life it had left.  We'd turn it off for a bit...  the windows would slowly start fogging up a bit...  then I'd turn the blower fan on low to have the heater do its thing...  over and over until we arrived in Saratoga Springs six hours after leaving our home which should have been only three hours away.  

I was thinking that I could find an auto parts store and purchase a new blower fan and install it myself.  Then I remembered that I had no tools whatsoever with me.  It was single digits outside too and I have no desire to work on a car (or anything) in frigid temperatures.  I had to hope that the blower fan would cooperate until we arrived back home.  

Besides, I was still feeling like crap anyway so I had absolutely no desire to work on the car in frigid temperatures while I'm also feeling miserable.  At this point, I was regretting this weekend getaway.

Before we arrived in Saratoga, the tire pressure warning light came on...  again.  It was on a few days prior to our trip and I filled the low tire at home with our air compressor.  Apparently, the leak is becoming a faster leak.  This particular wheel has been leaking slowly for years.  Every time we have the tires changed for winter and summer, we mention the slow leak...  they say they didn't find any problems...  and we continue to have a slow leak problem.  This non-existent slow leak seems to be getting worse.  Perhaps we should find a good tire shop rather than a local mechanic.  We need this problem to be resolved.

Anyway, we arrived safely in Saratoga Springs though which was good news.  It took double the amount of time, I was feeling miserable and we had a couple of maintenance problems but we arrived safely.

We checked into the inn and all our troubles seemed to be forgotten for the time being.  This place is familiar to us and we are very comfortable here.  Well, I still felt like crap but the inn was warm, clean, comfortable, and the staff was treating us very well.  

Honestly, we spent almost our entire time in Saratoga inside this inn.  The only times we ventured outside was for a very short walk Saturday morning (we turned around pretty quickly due to the cold), for two hour long hockey games in a nearby ice rink, a one block walk for lunch, and a half block walk to pick up breakfast at Dunkin Donuts.  Other than that, we resided in the inn...  slept, napped, watched a basketball game on television, slept some more, went downstairs for another meal in the dining room, then back up to our suite where it was very comfortable.  We really appreciated not having to venture out to the cold after dinner.  Instead we just had to take the elevator to our room.

Once we settled into our suite, we chatted with Ace for a bit and found out when the next hockey games would be.  At this point, we could stay in the inn for the night since there was a bar and restaurant downstairs on the first floor.  We had no desire to get back in the car nor go out into the cold!

Although I was shooting a photo of the large floor mirror, here is a very rare selfie...

Other than me still feeling miserable, our trip back home was relatively uneventful.  The blower motor still needs to be replaced but it is working for now.  The new windshield wipers worked just fine.  And, we had no additional problems with the car so the journey home was uneventful.