This past Thursday, I drove to Indianapolis to pick up Tayden from IUPUI, the college he attends. He is thinking about transferring to Purdue Northwest closer to home, so I wanted him to take a tour of the campus. Due to Covid, we didn’t get to do many tours when Tayden was looking at campuses, so Tayden made a decision based more on the program than the campus. Four years can seem very long if the campus isn’t a place you want to live though, so I went to get him on my spring break so he could look at the same program at Purdue Northwest. 

The pickup went smoothly, with a straight shot down and back. I took Lucy (our white Subaru) instead of Bert (my usual SUV of questionable origin) because Lucy gets over 30 mpg on the highway and Bert gets 17… maybe. The college tour went awesome. On Sunday, I was prepared to spend another 5-6 hours driving to Indianapolis and back again to drop him off, again, in Lucy. Since Tessa is also in college in Indianapolis, we swung by her campus and took her and her roommate, Kyla, out to dinner. 

After getting the girls, we drove to a nearby restaurant. The restaurant shared a parking lot with a Target, a large strip mall, and a number of other restaurants, so it had a double left turn lane off a main drag into it. Once a car turned left, there was a fairly steep uphill, where the two lanes were forced to separate, one towards the restaurants at the back of the parking lot, and one into the Target lot. There was NO stop sign going into the lot. This seemed to cause a great deal of confusion, and midway up the incline, the cars in front of me stopped. So, I hit my brakes (even though we did not have a stop sign), as cars changed lanes illegally. Lucy is a stick shift. Despite owning three stick shift cars currently, I don’t frequently drive them. This uphill stop and go was not a good situation for me. I felt like I should shift into first gear, but Lucy disagreed, and didn’t want me to go into first, since I wasn’t completely stopped. I was worried about back roll if I DID come to a complete stop, so I didn’t want to do that, so I put the car into what I thought was second. The next scene happened in a huge rush. I put the car into gear, but the clutch wouldn’t catch. It was uphill and the clutch was acting weird, even though it was completely released. Tayden, who was in the front seat, was screaming, “IT’S IN FOURTH!!! MOM! IT’S IN FOURTH!!!” As I was processing the cars, the hill, the crazy clutch, I finally registered what Tayden was saying. This was my panic situation, and I was failing miserably! Eventually, I got the car in second, but the smell of burning clutch filled the car. Despite owning manual cars my whole life, I have never smelled a burning clutch before. It’s one of those smells that I won’t ever forget, and could immediately identify. 

As we moved to a parking spot, I was panicked to get the car stopped so the clutch could cool. I turned into the first spot that was open by the restaurant. There was a goose standing in the grass beside the spot. All the kids were saying to park somewhere else, but the thought of engaging the clutch to back out and move forward to another spot was more than my head could process. I told them that it would be fine. We were still loudly debating that topic as we exited the car. Perhaps, it would have been better to move quietly, but that is a conversation for another day. In the midst of the new chaos, Tessa yelled, “Mom, watch out for the goose poo…. That you just stepped in.” So I stopped at the curb by the back of the car to scrape the poo off my shoe. I don’t know if it was the motion of scrapping the shoe on the curb or the general chaos of our exit from the car, but the goose hissed, then FLEW AT US!!! We all screamed and ran towards the restaurant. I was swinging my purse over my head, even though I wasn’t looking back. And since I was the one scrapping my shoe, I was at the back of the group, the easy target. I could feel my age, and my sore hamstring from skiing, as a distinct disadvantage. In the pack, I was the one that would be prey: the old, the injured, the one at the back of the pack. 

We didn’t look back until we were at the door to the restaurant. Even then, I only looked back to ensure the wild, crazed bird didn’t follow us into the restaurant. The bird was gone! So we made a grand, insane entrance that was surely recorded by someone! Thankfully, the remainder of the visit was unremarkable. I am not sure I could have handled any more excitement. The final lesson learned from the trip was that I shouldn’t order salmon at a pizza place, especially if I am facing a three hour drive home  immediately after dinner. I’ll let you imagine how fun that was. Oh, Tessa and Tayden went to move the car towards the end of our meal, and the goose was gone, perhaps driven away by the smell of a burning clutch. When we finally left the restaurant, the goose was back. In the fray, we didn’t get a picture of the angry bird. 

Have a great week everyone! Don’t park by the goose! It’s a real, live, angry bird.