Brakes are Important

On Wednesday and Thursday past it was -20 and -30 out. On Wed. on the drive to work I noticed that my anti-lock brakes kicked on a bit. I just figured there was a lot of ice on the roads. Thursday as I was coming into Westville, I hit the brakes and went completely through the intersection. Oh well, I just figured it was icy. That night on the way home from work I thought the brake pedal felt weird so I picked a dry spot on the roads and stood on the brake pedal. I HAD NO BRAKES! So I start coming down this hill with stop sign at the bottom. There's a semi-truck turning in front of me really really slowly. I had to stop. I stood on the brake pedal and nothing... I was heading directly for the trailer of this truck. I started thinking about what I could do to get around him. I figured I could probably squeeze past the edge of his trailer if I drove half in the ditch half on the road and turned the opposite way I was going. I geared the truck down and put the front tire over the edge of the ditch. I might have made it past the truck by just a few inches. I had to pull over on the side of the road for a minute so I could collect my thoughts. That and my hands were shaking.
I drove up to Tims and got a coffee, then went to Highland Ford for some brake fluid (the reservoir was empty). Eventually I made it home after the most stressful drive of my life. Took the Escape to Nathans and inspected it all over. We couldnt find any leaks at all in any lines. Then I noticed that the parking brake light was out. It had been on for 8 months or so. As it turns out, the parking brake light is also the low brake fluid light. I had been driving around for almost 8 months with no brake fluid. We finally decided to leave the escape in the heated garage over night to let all the ice and snow melt off it. Nathan lent me his old car to drive to work the next day. After work, went to Nathan's and we started bleeding brake lines. Everything went fine until we got to the front of the escape. The passenger side bled no problem but the bleeder screw snapped out of the caliper on the driver's side. We couldnt do anything more that day. Saturday we went to town to get new bleeder screws. They do not list these parts anywhere. Back to Nathan's. We took the one good bleeder and went back to town. There are no parts listed anywhere (including Ford) to replace those screws. Chevy, however, uses the identical part. Haha. We tried welding a nut to the broken bleeder, but couldnt get it out. The only way to get it out was to remove the caliper, heat it up, drill out the bleeder and use an easy out on it. I ended up putting a used caliper on the escape anyways. We bled the line and I'm back in business. The brakes actually work better than before now.

The rest of the week was pretty dull compared to that.

After seeing pictures of Melissa in New Zealand, I am very jealous.