Coming through in the "Clutch"

I went to Virginia over the weekend with Batman. Our friend Amit is relocating his family to London soon. This was our chance to say goodbyes to him, his wife Prachi, and his 2-month old kid, Anya. Amit like Batman and me, came to Penn State in '98. This visit gave us an opportunity to go over a lot of the fun times we have had in the last 7.5 years, over some wine and margaritas. We reminisced the times we went to "Mu-Kee" (a chinese restaurant) where batman acts like the Menu-Nazi and does not allow us to order nothing but chicken fried rice. We had a good laugh over Amit's patented dance/moves - 'slithering snake", "wall dance" (this involves him - obviously wasted - running from one wall to the other and throwing himself at it), his ingenious ways of estimating the size of my giant head, including using a satellite dish as a screw gage, his pick-up lines, his Ludhiana thermal wear that could be described as "Man's brazilian wax" and infinite other things. It was good times. Hopefully, we will be able to keep in touch. He is a good man!

We had originally planned on returning Saturday night, so that we could catch some of the Ind-Pak 2nd test match and be ready for the Steelers-Broncos AFC championship game. However, the wine and margarita had other plans. Finally, we left at 11.00 AM Sunday which gave us sufficient time to get back to State College to watch the Steelers game. Alas! The Bat-Mobile had other plans. When we tried to get back on the road, after a brief refueling stop (read batman's new post to know about this magical place), batman had trouble engaging the clutch (it was a little uphill as well) and we had to pullover. There was fumes coming from under the hood. (The first thought i had was, Man! Wouldn't it be cool if this thing goes up - like in Movies!!). Getting pretty bummed with the engine not off, we tried to get some roadside assistance. In the meantime, we made some cotingency plans -- in case, we had to stay over in VA/MD, or needed a ride to State College and such. It was a gorgeous day though. Kick-off time was fast approaching and we realized we had no shot at watching the whole game, sadly!! All we had was a set of golf clubs. There was a point when batman suggested that we should try hitting some balls -- towards the oncoming traffic.

Eventually, the tow truck guy arrived and after some finagling of the car, it was decided that we could risk driving it to State College but be careful when going uphill. There was some problems with the slippage of the clutch and the clutch oil was leaking and things like that. So, we decided that since there were only few spots of bother the rest of the way, we should get on the road. We reached State College with no further incidents just in time for the Broncos to score a TD to make it 24-10 in the 4rd quarter.

Hey, If a clutch problem is what it takes to put the Steelers in the SuperBowl, I'll take it everyday - that is - clutch problem in the Batmobile.