(Author's note: Shelly has already written a blog post about this very topic, but I have not read it before writing my own. I do know, however, that she adopted the format I suggested I would use. So this may read very similar to her version. That's just fine with me, though: I write here, she writes there, and we all get along.)

For several months, I have been contemplating and scheming to give Shelly the gift she most needs in the world: a day (and most importantly, a night) without having to be a mom. When, for her birthday, I presented the idea to her of a weekend getaway to New York to see a Broadway show and stay at a hotel, she nearly melted in my arms. I had made arrangements with some saintly friends to watch the girls overnight, but due to scheduling conflicts, we weren't able to schedule it till this past Friday and Saturday.

We got a decent deal on some great seats for Mary Poppins, and then tried Priceline and ended up with a great deal on a room that turned out to be half a block away at the Hilton Times Square. If we didn't want to, we didn't ever have to leave 42nd Street. We contemplated taking the train up there and relaxingly reading books and not having to pay $52 for the Hilton's overnight parking, but in the end, we decided to travel the way our ancestors did: along the New Jersey Turnpike.

Everything was going well right off the start. We left home at 1:00, sure that we'd have plenty of time to check into the hotel, find a nice restaurant for dinner, and make our leisurely way to the theater by 8. Traffic all the way up there was quite light, and when we turned off the turnpike at about 5:15, I was sure we would be even earlier than we had anticipated.

That's when I first noticed that the windshield was inexplicably fogging up, and then I smelled something burning. Moments later, there were plumes of steam rising from under the hood. I glanced at the temperature gauge on the dashboard, which I never usually pay much attention to. We were overheating.

Unfortunately, we were in the center lane of a three lane road that was cloverleafing down the hill toward the Lincoln Tunnel. Because there's a toll booth at the entrance, traffic was going at about 10mph. Shelly rightly made the suggestion that we pull over, but as there was no shoulder at all, and traffic was so thick, I couldn't imagine how to do it. I started panicking.

Fortunately, a tour bus driver noticed our plight and blocked for us at what turned out to be precisely the one and only spot where we could pull over and not completely block the right lane. There was another lane merging from the right, and we were able to nestle the car right into the spot where the lanes had merged, but the resulting lane was two cars wide, so people could get around us (at 10mph) easily.

I thought of how my little brother and his wife once broke down on the freeway on the other side of a blind curve, and rather than getting out of the car, they just braced themselves for the inevitable impact (which, when it happened, totaled their car). If you're going to break down, you might as well do it in heavy, slow traffic so no one slams into you, I say.

Unfortunately, a call to my mechanically-inclined father didn't solve our problem. Fortunately, we have roadside assistance with our insurance, and Shelly gave them a call. Unfortunately, the road we were on was "restricted," meaning they couldn't come help us themselves; they had to call a private company to do it, and we would only be reimbursed $50 of the total towing or service fee. We were told it would take half an hour for them to get there. It was now after 6:00, and I decided to give up hope of seeing Mary Poppins. Even if we could move, traffic was so slow that I timed a distinctive truck as taking 25 minutes to get from where we were down to the toll booth. And then who knows what else needed to be taken care of.

Fortunately, the tow truck showed up in 10 minutes, not 30. The burly driver had our car up on his truck and us in the cab in no time. When we remarked that we were glad we didn't bring our baby with us, the driver gasped and cried, "There's a BABY back there?" We reassured him, and began talking about where he would take us.

Unfortunately, our driver said that his shop was closing up for the night and wouldn't open again till Monday. We needed somewhere that could take care of our problem by Saturday afternoon so we could get home and rescue our friends from our cute little girls. Fortunately, the driver knew a place on 36th Street (which is close to 42nd Street!). He borrowed Shelly's cell phone: "Hey Mark, this is Lunchbox. Yeah, I've got some people coming to see you - don't go nowhere."

I think one of the things everyone needs to do before they die is get towed through the Lincoln Tunnel.

We arrived at Mark's shop, and he came out to meet us. We explained what went wrong, and he was quite up front and clear about what he would do to help us, and what the possible problems could be. He was very friendly and understood when we told him we'd like to be on our way by no later than 4:00 on Saturday. Fortunately, his shop has a locked area to keep cars overnight, so we would save the overnight parking fee we had been planning on paying at the Hilton!

Also fortunately, Lunchbox said he wouldn't charge us for the mileage on the tow, since there really wasn't anywhere to go except through the tunnel.

Unfortunately, it still came to $116. And he only accepted cash. Fortunately, there was an ATM at the gas station on the corner. So I ran off, leaving broken-toed Shelly to retrieve our belongings from the car and call a cab. Unfortunately, the gas station's ATM was broken, so I ran another two blocks to McDonald's, which had one. Fortunately, the ATM fee was only 99 cents.

When I got back to the shop, we paid Lunchbox and hopped in the cab who took us on the short drive to the hotel. The time was now 7:30 and we realized we could still make the show. Apparently it was divine inspiration that prompted me to try out Priceline. We were considering several other hotels quite a ways away from the theater, and if we had been anywhere else, we probably wouldn't have had enough time to check in and drop off our stuff and get to the theater on time. It's like Heavenly Father said, "You know what, something bad is going to happen to your car that will make you late, so let's just go with Priceline and I'll make sure you get a hotel close enough to the theater that you can still enjoy what you came for."

As we were waiting for the elevator in the hotel, the final shoe dropped. The elevator arrived and a bunch of people got out. One woman looked at me like she recognized me, which surprised me, since she was completely unfamiliar. She walked up to me, put her hand on my forearm, and said, "Oh, you made it! In the tunnel!" Her husband added, "Way to hold up traffic!" as we realized that they had driven past us an recognized the poor unfortunate souls who were standing by the side of the road moments earlier. At that, Shelly and I just lost it. We guffawed the entire way up to the 41st floor. After all we had been through, the icing on the cake was that now we were recognizable celebrities in Times Square.

Fortunately, the hotel desk clerk said she was giving us a complimentary upgrade for no reason, and when we got to the 41st floor, our room was spectacular. But we only had time to use the bathroom (by this time, of course, both of us felt like giant water balloons), change clothes, and notice that the Empire State Building dominated the view outside our window. Then we rushed out, hoping to find something to eat in the half-block between the hotel and the theater.

The Times Square Hilton is next door to Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum, which is, fortunately, next door to a McDonald's, which is next door to the theater. We grabbed a burger and, as it was only 7:40 at this point, spent five leisurely minutes eating what we had intented to be a nice, romantic New York dinner.

We got to our seats in time to read the Playbill and take a few deep breaths. The show was outstanding.

The rest of our trip doesn't make for such a great story, as things sort of went according to plan. It took us 14 minutes between the moment we stopped applauding the show and the moment we were in our room (most of the time was getting down the stairs from the mezzanine through the crowd). We went to bed a little after 11 and -- now here's the best, most wonderful, most fortunate thing of the whole experience -- nothing disturbed us till we drowsily woke up on our own at about 8:30! Check-out time was noon, and we didn't leave our spectacular hotel room (from which you could also see the Statue of Liberty) untill 11:52. At that point, we tramped around Times Square, ate lunch at a deli, and picked up the car (which had needed a simple but somewhat expensive fix) at 3:00 and started home. We made it in record time - just under four and a half hours.

My intention all along was to give Shelly a relaxing, romantic getaway without having to worry about the kids. While there were other worries that cropped up, what we ended up with was one of those bonding experiences you never forget.