Of Burning Bushes...and Cars...
Since things are a little slow in here, I thought I might share my near-Biblical experiences of late.
Anyone that has read the Bible, is aware of the fact that God tends to talk to people via signs. For Moses, it was the Burning Bush. For me, it was a burning car... Apparently, I was a little too dense to pick up on the signals earlier on, so someone felt it would be necessary to give me a bit stronger sign. Here's the story...
You all know that I was offered a job as a Supervising Engineer for Sprint's Broadband Wireless Group in Seattle, WA. My wife and I made plans to drive to Seattle on 11/2 so that we could look around and perhaps find a house. Well, as we got to Ellensburg, WA, the car started to overheat a bit. I stopped and checked the coolant, and, sure enough, the reservoir was dry as a bone. I went to a auto supply store in Ellensburg and picked up a couple of gallons of coolant, figuring that if there was a small leak or something that I could stop and refill it regularly and keep the car alive until we got to Seattle where I could take it to a mechanic. After topping off the coolant, I started up the engine and ran it for a while. When that didn't reduce the temperature by much, I popped the radiator cap and tried to bleed the air out of the coolant system, thinking there might be an air bubble in the system. That also didn't work. Let me digress for a second and admit that I know about as much about cars as ants know about nuclear physics. Not knowing what to do next and not about to leave my car in Ellensburg and not about to stay in Ellensburg while the car got fixed, I made an executive decision to chance it and drive the remaining 100 miles to Seattle.
The car continued to run hot, but not way out of spec. However, as we were just passing out of Issaquah and coming into Bellevue, a huge white puff of what I thought was steam come from under the hood and into the engine compartment. "Dang!" I thought, "The radiator blew!" As I moved towards the shoulder I noticed that the hood was beginning to buckle and the paint to bubble. Yikes! That wasn't steam... More quickly now, I killed the engine and coasted to a stop on the shoulder when my wife and I quickly exited the car.
Needless to say, we pretty much just watched it burn for the next hour while the fire department tried to put it out. There wasn't much left when it was all said and done, except for a black skid mark on the shoulder from where all the plastic had dripped off the bumper and such.
In any case, I need to get going, but I thought you might enjoy the story. Hasta!
[AK]Zorro
Chief Operations Officer
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