I pulled into a gas station in Joppatowne, a town on I-95 north of Baltimore. First I made a few cell phone calls. Then when I was ready to move the car to the pump for gas, it was completely dead! The usual array of dashboard lights did not come on. There was only a faint clickety-clickety noise. After a few failed attempts, I called AAA. Luckily they had a service team nearby and two guys with a tow truck showed up. They jump-started my car and tested the battery, alternator, and starter. They could find nothing particularly wrong although the battery seemed weak. I knew I needed to find a repair shop. My GPS told me that the closest Saturn dealership along my route was a few miles north in New Castle, Delaware. When I arrived at that location a half hour later, there was no dealership. It had closed (like many Saturn dealerships) and was now a used car business. I hunted along the same shopping strip and found an independent auto repair shop. I explained that I was afraid to turn the ignition off for fear that it would not start again and explained my circumstances. The mechanic was very nice and took it right in. They turned it off and then started it right up again. They checked out the electrical system and could find no unusual drain on the battery. They said I was ready to go. They told me that there was no charge for their 15 minutes of work. I offered to pay anyway. They refused. I give that repair shop a big thumbs up!
During this stop in New Castle I first began to feel a pain in my right side toward my back. It wasn't a bad pain, but was certainly noticeable. I have had kidney stones in the past and at first I thought this might be a new one - even though the location of the pain was more toward my side than the flat of my back. I decided to push on further than Philadelphia and get home in two days instead of three. The drive up I-95 was nice with views of the Philadelphia Naval Yard (where my father had worked during World War II), downtown Philadelphia, and Camden, New Jersey, where I was born.
I crossed over the Delaware River at Yardley, Pennsylvania, and close to the site of George Washington's famous crossing of that river on December 25, 1776. A short distance later I pulled off I-95 at US Route 1 in Lawrenceville, New Jersey, and found a motel. The pain seemed to get worse as I ate dinner and later in the motel room.I worried that if I were about to have a major kidney stone attack I would have to call for an ambulance to take me to a local hospital in Princeton. I had a hard time sleeping. The pain kept waking me up.
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