Travel Adventures

Hi, happy new year! We returned this evening from a visit to my parents' house and I am glad to be safely home. Last night I helped to start a fire in my mother's oven, and today we thought for the better part of two hours that our van was toast. I am hoping for a quieter tomorrow.

I made a cake for Alex's 22nd birthday in my mother's kitchen on Sunday. I put it in a springform pan, with a foil-covered tray on the rack below it. It didn't leak at all, which is not my usual experience with springform pans of a certain age. So last night, when I went to make a cake for our New Year's Eve celebration, I left out the foil-covered tray.

Surprise! Ten minutes after I slid it into the oven I smelled burning cake batter. It had oozed out of the pan in big buttery globs and plopped down onto the element. We slipped a foil-covered tray onto the rack below it to prevent further drips, and planned to clean it up after dinner was over and the oven was cool.

Except! Surprise, part deux! My mother jacked up the oven temperature to 450 after the cake was out so she could brown up some frozen Texas toast. 

"There is a fire in the oven," I said.

The cake batter which had contented itself with quietly blackening at 325 was actively burning at 450. There was a line of butter-fueled flames, lighting up the oven from the inside. They continued to flame after the oven was off. "Should I put flour on it?" my mother asked as she dumped a scoop of flour on it.

"Flour is a combustible powder," said my brother. 

We all watched with interest as the flour began to burn.

My brother smothered the flames with a saucepan. I put the Texas toast back in the freezer. After dinner my mother vacuumed up the flour. No harm, no foul. (No harm, no flou...r?) A tip from me to you: don't attempt to extinguish an oven fire with a scoop of flour. Maybe my mother's half-remembered tip is for grease fires, where the flour might absorb the grease and make it less available for burning. Or maybe it was 1950s-era Russian propaganda, designed to burn down the maximum number of American houses. Who can say?

***

This morning I rousted everybody out of bed early. We drank our coffee and packed our bags and loaded our van and said our goodbyes and zipped off to Mass. We headed toward home. Less than an hour into the trip the check-engine light clicked on and the van declined to drive at highway speed. It could go a labored 60mph, but it was clearly unhappy doing so. 

This seemed unlikely to work out smoothly on New Year's Day. We stopped in a tiny town to see if we could find an open auto repair shop, and after about 20 calls we found a place that could assess the car. To get there we had to drive back to the city.

I was doing my best to pray and trust, and I was remembering all the times that we have seen the kindness of strangers when unexpected events have slowed us down, but it was a stressful drive. The car was stuttering and complaining, struggling with any acceleration and especially with hills. "Seems like it's the transmission," said Elwood, as we listened to it working to reach its top gear.

Eventually we limped our way to our destination, where they told us they'd update us in about an hour. We walked to a Shoney's and started planning for the worst. Thankfully, through a sheer gift of grace, we were both really calm about the whole thing. The most likely explanation seemed to be something big: a serious engine problem or a transmission failure. After we finished eating we started looking for one-way rentals that could hold six people. We wondered if my dad would be willing to help us sell it for parts, or if we should try to figure it out on our own. It just doesn't make a ton of sense to put big repair dollars into a ten-year-old vehicle.

But! You guys! On the solemnity of Mary, Mother of God, the Blessed Mother came through for us in a big big way: the whole problem was that an oil pressure valve had failed, causing the van to run on just three cylinders. That's why it couldn't accelerate except in a sad half-hearted quarter-hearted eighth-hearted way. That's why it couldn't get to its highest gear-- not because of a transmission problem, but because of a power problem. An EASILY FIXED power problem. They had the part in stock and the repair was straightforward. We walked back from lunch expecting a terminal diagnosis and instead found a fully operational vehicle.

It makes me a little wobbly with gratitude, just typing it out.

Comments

[mandamum]

I think it's salt or baking soda (or of course sand when you have it) that you're supposed to use as a dry extinguisher (when you don't want to use water, like with an oil fire). Things that don't combust. What I remember from first aid classes is that one SHOULD NOT use certain things - like flour - because as flammable powders they can explode while on fire, which would be even more excitement than you had!

I had to read your first paragraph a few times, because starting a fire in your mother's fireplace sounded very cozy, but it seemed like something was off... and I finally realized I was seeing "oven" but translating it to the word I knew should be there :) rather than reading the plain English in front of me.

The first day I cooked in my new oven (because my old one died the Monday before Thanksgiving grump grump) I had a pie that overflowed into the bottom. I knew the berry pie would do that, and was ready for *that* pie, but the apple had never let me down before. Argh. And this time, the berry had no trouble, of course.

So glad for your car blessings - it's amazing how good health or a working car is so much more obviously a blessing once it's in doubt, or gone, even temporarily :) I imagine the groceries I grumble about lugging home over and over again are the same type of invisible blessing.

[rob]

Yep, the kitchen powder with which to smother a small fire is salt. Slightly larger fires can be smothered with monoammonium phosphate, which is conveniently sold in pressurized containers for this purpose.

Flour is still an explosion hazard for grease fires: the explosion happens when the airborne dust above the fire ignites.

I didn't know about your car trouble! Glad you had a good outcome. It was great to see you all.

[Jody]

I’m glad you all made it home safe and sound. Welcome, 2019.