defrosting...

wonderful day.

spent it with family of sorts.

most of you know i haven't had the best luck with cars... five accidents, three transmissions or something like that in a year...my car hasn't spent much time on the road, although i did 26000 km in less than a year, which is pretty impressive. all that is behind me - my new years resolution was to keep my car on the road, or something like that.

yesterday i got in my car at 4 am to go to work, and then i see a flash at my feet and hear my loud heater die down. that was a sickening moment. so i drove to work as usual, just with my gloves on.

everyone knows that when i really want to do something and there's an obstacle in my way, i'll do it anyway. that's how it was today:
i had planned on hanging out in newmarket today with chris and my friend becel (jordan). i was really looking forward to it...so nothing was going to stop me - not even the -12 degree weather.
i get on the road to go to chris' house and my antifreeze starts freezing on my car window (just a bit discouraging) but i rough it out, and by the time i pick chris up my toes are numb... and we still have an hour to drive. we tough it out (and stop at a rest place to pee and warm our feet), finally we end up at jordan's and go inside. of course our plan from the start was to go toboganning so we went for about 10 minutes and got cold. we spent the rest of the day at the mall and in his basement watching camp dvds and looking for where's waldos - not for waldo himself, but for the book; there were none on the shelf.

one of the highlights of the day was when we pulled out of the driveway at about 530 (-15 outside) to go for dinner with a friend, and the car fogged up completely, we scrubbed and scraped but couldn't see for the life of us. we then go inside and hang out a bit longer, and make plans to hang out some more. his family was great, they fed us, and were fun to be around. then chris and me leave to face the cold dark roads of newmarket. we try a new plan - lighting candles on the dashboard to make more heat... it was lots of fun playing with the fire and fog, but they just made little circles of visibility, so we blow them out and appreciate the birthday-like smell and decide to "just drive". that was interesting. its snowing by this point, and we still have lots of fog, so as a result we get on the 400 north, and as we see a sign saying "20 km - Barrie" chris looks at me and says "oh no..."

our hearts sank, and i just about gave up. we pulled off at the next exit and sat in our car going "nooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" chris got out and cleaned the windshield and scraped off the frozen antifreeze while i called my mom to ask her to pray for us. chris got back in and we prayed again. we got back on the road and made sure to get on the 400 south.

a nicer moment was when a guy stopped beside us because he saw we were in trouble and offered help. i liked him very much.

then we started to go, and finally passed newmarket and started making progress. although our toes were very cold, chris was in my sleeping bag at this point shivering. he was awesome. never complained, just shook a lot. as trucks would drive by and splash muddy slush on our windows we would periodically pull off to clean the windshield by hand, until we mastered the spray and wipe technique, tough to explain, but it worked.

we then stopped at a rest stop to warm up. we got hot chocolates and wendys, and reflected on an amazing day.

when we got home we just smiled.

i can't imagine a better day.

i think my favourite moment was when chris said something around the lines of "isn't it great? we can see the cars in front of us!!!!!"

he really meant it. i was feeling the same way.