Jaguars 36, Bills 26

A beautiful weekend in the County. I rode maybe 100km over three days - from Lake on the Mountain to the north, Little Bluff Conservation area to the east and the foot of Brewers Road to the south. We had a lovely turkey dinner on Sunday but I ate too much once again and felt bloated for hours afterward.

We left around 1pm Monday and encountered heavy stop and go traffic on the 401 all the way to Oshawa. Then the engine on my brand new (5 months) Mazda 5 quit about 500 metres east of Harmony Road. I was in the left lane and the accelerator just stopped having any effect as the engine was suddenly starved of fuel. I had only my remaining momentum to get off the road so I had to pull off on the left side - in the middle of the divided roadway. The east bound lanes were travelling at full speed 10 feet to our left and there were 3 completely full lanes of holiday weekend traffic in the west bound lanes so we were trapped in our vehicle. The only way out was by towtruck.

An OPP officer tapped on my window as I was tring to call Mazda Roadside Assist. He explained that we were in a very dangerous position and that I should call a towtruck and request priority or he would have to do it for me. I got through and a CAA truck was dispatched with an ETA of 30-40 minutes. I made sure that the towtruck on its way had room to accomodate 6 souls - 3 people and 3 dogs. The officer had to leave "to deal with people on the roadway" somehere ahead so we were left to wait. And wait we did. The dispatched truck arrived after about an hour but not before 2 other roaming towtrucks stopped and tried to "help us" with our predicament. The traffic was both interesting and scary to watch as we waited. The speed changed constantly and ranged from about 20 to 80km/hr or faster at times and when it got to 80, with hundreds of cars whizzing past every minute and clearing our right side by about 3 feet, I was really missing having the OPP cruiser behind me.

2 of the dogs ended up riding in the car and appeared none the worse for wear afterward. We were able to get a tow right to Gyro Mazda on Laird and took a cab home from there. The whole journey took 6 hours.

At no time during the hour or so that I spent watching a constant stream of traffic in my rearview mirror did I think about the Bills and all of those tickets I have for their remaining home games.