This weekend as many fellow psu-ers know was a little football match between 2 top colleges, notre dame and penn state. So by chance my roommate nate wins a lottery ticket and by chance he can't use it and by chance he gives it to me to use and by chance i found a few people to go down to south bend with. perfect right? well i thought so. everything seemed to workout in the last minute and without much effort on my part. so anyway me and neel with a couple of his friends logan and morgan decide to make the 8 hour trip to south bend, indiana for the game. we take my car because the others dont have one up here, which is partly the reason for my incredible luck-people needing rides. so anyway we gas up and fuel out. im short on cash as it is and this trip is literally going to break the bank, but who cares right, its not like an opportunity like this arrises everyday. so we gas up, take out some ash and hit the road by around 430 friday afternoon on pace to get to south bend a little after 12. so i take the first turn at the wheel. i can usually drive pretty long distances without getting tired but the only problem is that i had only 4 hours of sleep the night before and the night before that i didnt sleep at all. so im pretty tired but we made it prety far with me at the wheel. we had some good tunes, some good conversation and good people to spend the time with. it was somewhere west of cleveland, about 150 miles outside of south bend when my tank hit E and we had to get gas. i took this time to let neel take the wheel from me so i could rest a bit. the car had been running smoothly and i felt pretty confident neel could get us there ok even though he has a history of totaling cars. when we pull out ofthe service station neels first comment was something like "whoa dude, your brakes are screwy." to which i replied "whatever man, just drive" not thinking much of the comment. we got back on I-80 and sped the rest of the way there hitting 85 at times breifly. we check in the overpriced hotel and sleep 4 to a bed. i passed out pretty quickly due to my lack of slumber the past few nights. i felt sorry for neel though, he was int he middle and either way he faced he was facing dudesweat.
we got up early the next morning and checked out of the hotel by 8. i took the keys and we got in the car. as soon as i started the car the brake pedal went all the way down to the floor and i knew i was in trouble. it was very hard to stop the car . it almost felt like the power brakes went out and i was manually braking the car. it was dangerous but we decided to say screw it and get to the game anyway. we got some burgers and beer at the nearest grocer and got to the stadium and by 930 we each had a beer in hand while setting up the grill for grilling purposes. everything seemed to be going well and the atmosphere was awesome, increased by the amount of penn state fans that came all the way out to support the team. The game, well im going to sjip that part. One good thing did happen though. neel ended up buying a ticket for face value and made it into the game with us instead of watching it with the tailgaters. we ended up leaving the game with 12 minutes left in the forth, when it was no longer any fun for us.
we drove out of the stadiumand back onto I-80. we stopped at the nearest rest stop on 80 to investigate the car situation. it had seemed to be getting worse. i came close to rear ending a car coming out of the stadium. i came to a skidding halt within a few feet of his car, and it wasnt because i was going fast. on the highway you cant notice it as much because you dont brake as much naturally, so as long as i kept a large distance between me and the next car i felt safe, although a sudden stop could have meant certain death. we get to the rest area and i look under the car and notice something frayed under the car and suspect thats the problem but the redneck at the gas station doesnt know anything about cars so he couldnt help me out. i call my dad against my better judgement because i wanted to let him know of my situation not because i wanted him to rant about how i shouldnt have taken my old car and why im such an idiot but thats how the conversation went. at one point i put down the phone on the table and just let it sit there for a minute or so only to pick it up and still hear him saying the same thing. what a worthless call that was. i called my mom next and she suggested i not drive and call AAA instead but shes confused about what AAA does. they do not repair my car, they tow it. which wouldnt help my situation. then instead we'd be stranded and carless until monday when auto shops open. didnt sound like a fun plan.
we drove on. shitty brakes and all. we had 190 miles before cleveland where we'd be staying the night at logans sister's house. a tired and stressed todd plus shitty brakes. but we made it. it was pretty late when we got there. i think i got to bed around 2. the next morning i took my car to a few autoshops in the area to see if they could get around to it. none could. so i ended up leaving it at sears. they said they could get to it by monday, so our plan was simple from here. we'd take logan's sister's car back to penn state and have to bring that car back on monday and exchange it for mine. tons of driving but its what we had to do. i no longer trusted my brakes. they had been getting worse and i was expecting traffic on the way back. so thast what we did. we left the car and took off.
we drove for awhile in the little sunfire owned by logan's sister and very cramped in the back. it was an interesting roadtrip so far. we decided to stop off at sharon on the way back to get some food and at this poin it was 330 in the afternoon. i got a call from sears and they said they had some extra time so they could get to my car today. we were an hour and a half away at this point. it was shitty but we had to turn back, it was better than going all the way back tomorrow. so we sped the whole way back, they would only stay open until 5 so we had to juice it pretty fast. we got off the cleveland exit at around 440 at which point i got another call, this was not so pleasant. "uh hi is this richard drager? yes mr. drager this is sears calling...we ordered the wrong brake line...your cars not gonna be rady till tomorrow."
we drove back to psu. another 3 hours wasted just there. we were all laughing at this point. it was one hell of a roadtrip. to top things off we hit lines and lines of traffice on the way back. we didnt get in to state college until after 11. i probably have homework that im not going to do.
we drove over 20 sleep deprived hours, half without rear brakes this weekend.
we have another 8 tomorrow to pick up the car.
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