Car Transmission

As anyone who is actually reading this junk probably knows there was a bit of drama a few weeks ago with the transmission on Amy's van. I'll leave out the details here but the experience had me thinking about my own transmission. It has been performing flawlessly, but the car is six years old and probably still has the original transmission fluid in it (ATF). So I decided to have the tranny flushed with the next oil change. I shopped around a bit and found most places varied from $80 to $100. The oil change place down the street was having a special pay $80 for the tranny flush, get the oil change free. What a deal! So I did it. After the flush everything was fine. Being the anal type after each drive, for the first couple of days, when I got home I checked under the car for leaks, and everything was good. Keep in mind that this is short in-town trips. Nothing long haul or on the freeway. So Monday comes along and it's off to NJ for my now bi-weekly 8 hour drive to the Garden State. When I get off the freeway, some eight hours later, I notice the tranny is now starting to slip when I start out. Oh crap! (that's not what I really thought, but my kids read this site...) I figue by now the tranny is already gone so parking it and getting a tow is just a waste of my time so I head straight for my hotel. By the time I get there I have the engine at 5K RPM and the car is doing 30. If you have ever driven down Hwy 22 through northern NJ you know that this is the next best thing to outright suicide. When I get online that night I see that there is a Mazda dealer less than two miles down the road from the hotel, so I call the boss and tell him that I will be late in the morning, and hit the sack. Of course I am so stressed out at this point that I can't sleep. First thing in the morning I am at the Mazda shop. I get the call back this afternoon, and lucky me they have a brand new shiny tranny sitting on the shelf that I can have for the low low price of only $3200 + tax. Of course this is Beamer land and junk yards are non-existant, so it's a new one or I push the car back to Ohio (where I am sure I could get one installed for half the price). So it looks like it is Amex to the rescue, at least for the short term. No word back yet from the shop that broke the damn thing in the first place. I'm prepared to fight this one to the death if needs be though. I will keep you, constant reader (yeah right), informed as always.
By the way, if anyone actually reads this, please leave a comment below.
Thanks,
Ted