Friday I loaded all the stuff from my efficiency apartment in Albany and began the 9 1/2 hour drive back to Michigan.
I hoped the van would make it.
It's 20 years old, has 230,000 miles on it, is badly rusted, missing a portion of the rear bumper, the headliner is falling down, and it can't be aligned because that would require over $1,500 in repair to the rear suspension. Because I've been unsure about whether to put any pennies at all into it or get a replacement - about which I've been unsure because I wasn't confident in the long term funding for this job (accurately, as it turned out), I haven't even replaced the tires, which are down to the tread.
But I lived a mile and a half from work, and only had to drive 12 miles to the airport for when I flew to and from Michigan. If the weather was too snowy or icy for the worn tires, I could Uber.
The only engine problem was a tendency to stall at low speeds in cold wet weather.
So with clear weather in the forecast, I rolled the dice and began driving west.
Less than two hours later the engine suddenly began to rev wildly while the speed dropped. Well, shit. I'm still about 8 hours from home. I made it to a motel in Utica and pondered my options. All of them were pricy.
No mechanics were open until Monday, and even if repairs weren't too expensive, it meant several more nights at the motel.
I pondered dumping the few pieces of furniture - none special or valuable - at a ReStore or Goodwill, dumping the van at an auto wreckee, renting a car and driving home with just my clothes and books. But there's no ReStore, Goodwill was closed, so I'm going to pay for at least two more nights in a motel, I didn't know if an autowrecker would take it without me having the title, and a rental car was going to cost several hundred dollars.
Leave everything somewhere and come back with the title to the van to take it to the wrecker? But where to leave it?
And there's still the rental car cost plus a return round-trip to Utica.
Try to make it home in the van, risk getting stranded in the middle of nowhere, necessitating an expensive tow on top of these other costs as I faced the same situation in a new town?
So I ended up renting a U Haul truck and tow dolley for around $900, and towed my junk car back to Michigan so I can dispose of it at an auto wrecker here.
And of course as I drove the 25 miles to the U Haul outfit that had what I needed, the van drove perfectly fine, tempting me to just keep going and take the risk. Twenty years ago, I would have. Now I'm too old to get broke down on the freeway fifty miles from the nearest anything.