But within a few hours of leaving for home, we were cruising down the freeway and a large piece of metal went flying off our car, across a lane of traffic and into the grass. And forever more this trip will be remembered as "that trip when our car broke on a freeway in Poland." That was certainly not on the itinerary...
[Not to spoil the ending, but I am writing this from home, so we're alive and made it back.]
For a split second beforehand we could hear clunking under the car, and then when I looked in the side mirror, I saw a 3-foot pole flying across the road. Hyrum pulled over quickly, and we got out our European warning triangle and safety vest. He went exploring down the road looking for the part. I think we were both secretly hoping we'd just hit something in the road, but knew that probably wasn't the case.
The day before when we stopped to pay a toll we noticed the car sounded like a race car when we accelerated. But we rolled the window back up and and ignored it.
Hyrum's first assumption was that we lost the muffler, but he found the warm pipe and we realized (or assumed) it was the exhaust pipe that connects to the muffler. I know nothing about cars, and thought for sure we needed to find a mechanic. But Hyrum started driving to the tune of a really loud rumble (even with the windows up) and the car seemed drive-able. Shortly we found a rest stop where we could look under the car. There were no leaks, the car wasn't overheating, and the loud noise seemed to be our only problem. So we kept on driving.
Our 7-hr trip was extended by a few hours between the car breaking, construction, and gas stops. Seven hours is a long way to drive when you're afraid your car is going to stop (or blow up) at any moment. Every bump in the road or strange smell outside had us questioning whether we were going to make it.
But we finally did!!!!!! Hallelujah. I think Santiago was the happiest in the group.
The car still isn't fixed. (Luckily Hyrum works with a mechanic who's going to look at it.) Google gave me mixed reviews. Some people saying driving without an exhaust pipe isn't too dangerous, just bad for the environment. Other people said to watch out for dying of carbon monoxide poisoning.
Needless to say, the Chevy Malibu will not be going on anymore road trips. To pass time on the way home we were recounting all the places that car took us: Utah to Ohio, numerous trips to Kentucky, Palmyra, New York City, Boston, Maine, Washington DC, South Carolina, Amsterdam, Austria, Prague, Paris, and around Germany. It's been a good ride. Time to stick closer to home before any essential parts go flying. It could have been a bad situation. Really bad. I'm not even sure what I would do if our car hadn't been drive-able. So we were glad we made it back and don't want to push our luck too far.
Now to find a second vehicle, which is proving to be much harder than anticipated!!
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