Hey everyone!
Sorry for not posting anything for a week. I’ll be honest; I was too lazy for a while to
post anything. But Saturday and Sunday,
I can explain! I promise!
So as you all know by now, I was in Utah with my dad. Well, Friday was my last full day out there
and my husband and I left the house at 8:30 in the morning. We went and stopped by some family on our way
out and said bye then we stopped at the store to get a tarp to put over some of
my boxes that I had left at my dad’s. We
found the tarps alright, same with the bungee cords, but then my hubby saw the
knives. (He’s a knife fanatic! He has about seven of them at the house—AND
WANTS MORE!) By the time we got out of
town with that knife in hand, it was 10:00 so we missed our original window to
leave at 9:30.
When we finally got out of town, we went up to Moab, topped
off, got some snacks, and left. We
stopped a few times mainly to look for a CB antenna for my husband’s
radio. We got all the way to Cedar City
and we stopped to use the bathroom (since neither of us thought to before we
left the house). On our way out of Cedar
City, we were sticking our hands out the window and playing with the wind. While we were doing this, a white Toyota
drives past us and my husband started laughing.
I asked him “What in the [world] are you laughing about!” and his reply
was explainable: “There was a kid waving at us.” I thought that it was because he thought we
were waving at him so I explained that to my husband. About thirty minutes later, we had caught
back up to this truck and my husband started waving at them when we passed
them. About ten minutes after we passed
them, they passed us and started waving.
That’s what triggered it all. We
passed them and waved. They passed us
and waved. We passed them and
waved. They passed up and waved. This just kept going on as if it was a
game! One of the times I waved, the
mother waved with the boy! I just
started laughing! We were going to the
Sportsman’s Warehouse in St. George and our exit had finally come and the truck
was a few cars in front of us. We got
all sad thinking this was going to be the last time that we get to wave as we
drove by. So we took our exit and
wouldn’t you know that the truck was taking the same exit? We got a little bit excited and thought that
we’d get another chance to wave when they turned. We started to get in our turning lane and it turned
out that they were turning the same way as us.
This started to get a little weird.
I told my husband “Wouldn’t it be funny if they were going to
Sportsman’s Warehouse?”. His reply was
“I hope they don’t. It would seem like
we were stalking them then!” The light
finally turned green and we both turned and waved while turning. Then we split paths. They turned left while we kept going
straight. (Sad wave at this one.)
After having a fun game of traffic tag, we finally got to
Sportsman’s Warehouse. Our main reason
of going: It’s fun. But we also wanted to go and look at
bows. So we go in and head straight for
the archery section. We looked at a few
bows and picked out a few that we would like to try out and see how we liked it
(When I said “we” it was mainly my husband.
I already knew what I wanted!).
We went to the gun counter to get a guy over there to help us, tried out
a bow or two, and then I got hit with the hard stuff. “I’ll leave the choice to you as to if we get
the bows or not.” No pressure or
anything. It’s just $600 that I have to
decide if we want to spend or not. A
little over two hours later, I finally decided that we should get the
bows. It took some convincing, walking
around, and deals but I finally decided on it.
We went back to the archery counter and had the same guy help us out
again. Since him and his manager (?)
were the only two working the gun counter, he had to finish up some of the
people there before he could get to us.
After an hour, he was finally done and got to us. He helped us pick out the size of arrows that
we needed and the size of tips that we needed.
He went into the back to grab our bows and only came out with my
husband’s. It turned out that the only
ones left of the bow that I wanted was on layaway and on the shelf. I know you’re not supposed to buy off the
shelf when it comes to stuff like that, but I REALLY liked this bow! It was the same kind that I shot when I was
on the archery team in high school so I already knew quite a bit about it. I decided to take the risk and buy off the
shelf. I picked the blue bow and the
only other one was camo. While the guy
was working on putting my husband’s biscuit, sight, quiver and peep sight on, I
was looking at the blue and the camo bow to see which one was looking better. I scrutinized the crap out of both bows
before I settled for the camo bow. Here
comes the guy again, I told him which one I wanted so he put up the blue one
and went about to explain to my hubby how to adjust the draw weight and length
and how to adjust the sight. He fixed
the draw weight and let my husband do some practice shots to see if the weight
was where he wanted. It took two times
before it was right. The store was about
to close so the guy didn’t have time to cut our arrows so we had to plan
another stop to do that. So we got all
our stuff and went to the front to check out when my husband asked “Is that the
kid?” At first I didn’t know what kid he
was talking about but then I saw a kid walking in the door. I told him that I didn’t know and he just
humphed and went on about checking out.
Then I noticed that at the customer service desk was the mom. I turned to my husband and was like “Oh my
God! That is them!” That’s when my husband just yelled out to
them to get their attention and started waving at them. They pretty much had the same reaction that
we had about seeing them. The woman
explained to the cashier why we were doing that and the cashier just started
laughing. We started to walk outside
with them, got to know them a little bit (except the mom’s name.) She told us that what caught their attention
about us was the fact that we were playing with the wind just like they
did. So it was all fun. We eventually split ways again.
Before we left St. George, we decided that it would be go to
stop and eat somewhere. We came across
an IHOP so we decided that we were going to eat there. We covered up the bows in the back seat with
my blanket so that way there wasn’t a chance that anyone could even make them
out through the tinted windows. We walk
in, my husband asks where the bathroom is, and I went with the hostess to the
table. I sit down. He comes back. The waitress takes our drink order. She brings back our drinks, pretty normal
stuff. My husband got a little irritated
that they brought out his salad not even two minutes before they brought out
the rest of the food. We started eating
when one of the waiters was standing at one of the stations and started talking
obnoxiously loud. “So she was all like
‘I don’t want to go over to his place!’ and was all like ‘OMG what a slut!”,
“What are you going to do for Halloween?” (Other waiter) “I don’t know” “Well,
I’ve already picked it out! I’m going to
be a straight guy for Halloween. It’s
just perfect!” Halloween? It’s not even half way through May yet! He eventually had to go and check on his
table so that quieted him for a little while.
But once he was done with that table, he went back to the station and
proceeded back to his ways. “Do you know
how to twerk?” (waitress) “How to what?”
“Twerk! Like in those music
videos? Do you know how to twerk?” and
he proceeded to twerk where everyone can see him. I started to get annoyed by this guy to the
point where I wasn’t even going to finish my food. I asked the waitress for a to-go box. As we were leaving, the obnoxious waiter said
bye to us and I caught a glimpse of his name tag. I plan on reporting him to IHOP because there
is no excuse for that kind of behavior in a restaurant. PERIOD. It is rude and unprofessional.
We finally left St. George after our experience at
IHOP. Both of us were already tire so
about twenty miles from Las Vegas, we pulled into a Loves gas station and went
to sleep. We woke up the next morning
all bright eyed and bushy tailed ready to take on the last five hours of our
drive back home. We stopped by the Pawn
Stars pawn shop while in Vegas and while we were still in the city, we went to
the Bass Pro Shop to get our arrows cut.
While we were waiting, we looked around and the fish tanks and
waterfalls. I fell in love with the four
ducks they had at one of the waterfalls.
We got our arrows and started looking at some of the other stuff they
had. That’s when we spotted the Duck
Commander stuff. I saw a coozie and my
husband saw Si’s green cup and we both got them. That was about all of the adventures that we
had there.
We got back on the road and made it past the California
boarder. I was happy because at least we
were in the right state. We kept on
trucking and my husband noticed the oil light was on and the gauge was bottomed
out. My dad told us that the truck did
that sometimes so he got the part that he thought was causing it and gave it to
us to use in case it happened again. We
drove about six miles with the light and gauge doing that and we were about
thirty miles out from Barstow when my husband rolled up the windows and turned
off the radio and was able to hear rattling in the engine. We pulled over and he got out and checked the
engine. Come to find out, the piece that
was going bad on the truck wasn’t the piece that my dad thought it was. It was the oil pump. We didn’t dare try to go any further in fear
of the engine ceasing up. He got on the
phone and tried to call people to come out and get us. Out of the six people that he called, three
were at work, one didn’t feel comfortable driving with a trailer, one didn’t
want to miss mother’s day dinner (which was five hours away from the six that
would be needed to come and get us), but one finally came through. We sat on the side of the road for a while
when my husband got tire of being in one place for so long so he put the truck
in neutral and we cruised down the hill we were already on. We went a mile and a half doing this before
he stopped us at an emergency call phone on the side of the road. He called a tow truck to take us to Barstow
and then we waited. The tow truck
finally came and we headed on to Barstow…with a fee of $400. We start into Barstow and the tow truck
driver was talking on his cell phone loudly in Spanish, trying to start up a
conversation with us like he was a friend of ours that we hadn’t seen in years,
and when we finally made it to Barstow, he stalled the engine while we were
turning at a stop light. He got it
started back up and moving and then he started grinding his gears really
bad. I was so ready to get out of that
truck. We stopped in the mall parking
lot and paid the man. Now it was 2:30
and we had to find something to do until the other guys got there. We went over across the street to the
McDonalds and I got something to drink while my husband got a full meal. I did steal some of his fries though. The McDonalds was connected to the Barstow
Station so we walked around all the little (emphasis on little) shops. Eventually, the place started to seem too
cramped up so we went back over to the mall where the truck was and sat outside
of one of the stores which was going through some remodeling or something like
that. He called his parents and told
them what’s going on and texted my dad and told him what happened with the
truck.
While we were waiting on our back up to get there, we got
the bright idea to put a tarp on the back window of the truck to block out the
sun and sit in the truck. Without the
tarp, the truck was too hot to sit in, with the tarp, it was warm but not too
terribly warm. We sat there for a while
in the truck when our rescue team called us.
Would you believe that their radiator cracked when they were forty five
miles out of Barstow? Fortunately, they
were able to redneck it with rubber cement until they got to us. So, while we waited for them to get there, we
walked to the O’Riley’s to set aside the stuff we’d need to fix their
truck. They finally showed up and the
guys all went to work on the truck while I laid down in a tree. The stuff finally dried and we were on our
way to get the other truck.
We got to my dad’s truck and everything was looking
good. The trailer was pulled up to the
truck, the ramps were lined up, and my husband was in it, ready to crank the
engine to get it up on the trailer. He
turned it on and started to head up the ramps.
The front tires made it up and then the right tires started to go over
the edge and up the wheel well of the trailer.
So he backed up some and started back up the ramp. The back tires just barely started to go up
the ramp when the engine died and wouldn’t start back up. Great.
That means that the engine probably ceased up. So I had to hop in the driver’s seat while
the guys rocked to truck onto the trailer.
It worked—until the truck bottomed out on the trailer. My husband got the bright idea to try and
pull the trailer out from under the truck a little to have more rocking
room. This worked but only until the
back tires were entirely off the ramp.
Luckily, this guy came out from the cantina that was part of the
mall. (We were in front of the cantina
doors and everyone at the bar was watching us.)
He offered some muscle to help us get the truck onto the trailer. So back in the driver’s seat I go. It took a few tries, but the truck was
finally on the trailer. We strapped it
down, loaded up, and were on our way. We
made sure to stop every twenty miles to check the seal and fill up the coolant. We finally made it to one of the guy’s
apartments where we unhooked his truck and attached my husband’s. We took the other guy and his girlfriend (I
was asleep when they got her) to the barracks on base, took the truck and
trailer to the airfield to drop it off there for the night, and made it home at
3:00 in the morning. It wasn’t until we
got home that my husband realized that he was the last one with the truck key
and it’s nowhere to be found.
So what was supposed to be a twelve hour drive with a stop
in St. George and Las Vegas, turned into a forty two hour trip with a stop in
St. George, two in Las Vegas, one on the side of the road, six hours in Barstow,
a truck throwing a temper tantrum about having to be back in California, another
truck throwing a tantrum about having to get the truck throwing a temper
tantrum about having to be back in California, and a long day. I kept telling my husband “It could be worse”
and it’s true. We could have been
dressed up in drags and on the side of the road.
The moral of the story: Expect the unexpected, always look
on the bright side, and don’t drive a Ford near Barstow.
Have a great day!
No comments:
Post a Comment