Sunday, April 17, 2011

Funny Story :)

So, this actually happened early in March . . . but the whole time I was thinking "If I had a blog I would so post this story on there."  Well, now I have a blog so I'm going to post this story.  And note that I'm not complaining--I think what happened was hilarious!

I know I haven't posted anything on this blog regarding my grandmother, but she's been in and out of ICU since December (I posted more info on my other blog Never Surrender).  Right before Spring break we were told she was doing much better, but that weekend she took a turn for the worse (this part of the story is definitely not funny).  So, in less than 24 hours we got all seven people of my family ready to leave and got someone to take care of my animals.  So we left early Sunday morning.  I was only able to go in the first place because it happened to be the week of Spring break.  But, because it was Spring break, I was only able to stay one week before classes started back up again.  Ok, now's when the story gets funny :)

Since I absolutely had to get home by Monday so I could go to class, we looked into several different methods of traveling home.  At first Dad wasn't going to come with me, so I was going to fly home by myself.  Then Dad decided he would drive home on Sunday, stay a couple of days so he could go to some meetings at work, and then drive back down Thursday evening.  He wanted to spend as little money as possible, so he looked into whether it would be cheaper to rent a car or see if he could borrow one of my Papaw's cars.  The car my dad wanted to borrow was an '84 Sunbird.  And, it hadn't been driven more the 2 hours at a time in 20 years.  We wanted to drive it on a 15-20 hour trip . . . I didn't think that was a good idea.  But, it was cheaper than renting.

About halfway through the week, a friend asked me if I could bottle feed her baby goat while she was out of town (the mother wouldn't nurse it).  So I told her I would pick the baby up Sunday evening on the way home from FL.  I was supposed to be there around 8:00.  So we needed to leave from FL pretty early in the morning.  Dad and I decided to leave around 3:30 AM.  The GPS said we'd arrive at my friend's farm at 6:59PM.  Although we're usually really late, we actually left on time!  (I think we may have actually been in the car at 3:25).

The car ran fine for like 15 minutes, but as soon as we were on the freeway, I knew we were in trouble!  The speed limit was 70, but anytime we went over 65 the car kept hesitating.  So . . . I could not go back to sleep (and I did not want to take a turn driving that car . . .).  Even though it was hesitating a lot, dad kept going (it must be a guy thing . . . I would have turned around and rented a car the moment the car started hesitating.  Which would have been really close to my grandparents home.).  I was really worried until like 6:00 AM.  Then I thought "well, we've made it safe so far.  I guess we'll be ok."  Then I prayed thanking God that we were safe and that the car was still running.  No joke, that exact moment the engine gets really quiet and the car starts to slow down.  I ask dad what he's doing and he said he was pulling the car over because the engine died.  Haha!

Ironically, dad didn't have his AAA card with him.  But, thankfully I had mine!  So, we waited for a couple of hours for the tow-truck to get there.  We only had 5 miles of free towing with AAA, but my Uncle's family was right behind us and they have like 100 free miles so we got towed to Savannah.  So the truck driver was really nice and even pulled over for a few minutes so that dad could make a few more calls (to try to find the cheapest place to rent a car).  On the way to Savannah the truck driver went 90 the entire time!  And there were cops everywhere.  I'm guessing that they didn't pull him over because he was going so fast that they couldn't even see him.  lol :p It was really hard to find a place to get the car fixed that a car rental place really close by (there were lots of car rental places but they either weren't open, or they didn't have any cars).  So there was a expensive place near the airport and we left the car there to be fixed.  So even though we didn't rent because it was cheaper to borrow the car, we ended up renting anyways . . . and spending way more money.

The awesome thing was that because I'm under 21 I wasn't allowed to drive the rental unless dad paid a ton of extra money, so I didn't have to drive the rest of the way.  The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful until we got to Ohio.  At this point we're like 4 or so hours behind schedule.  As we're getting close to my friend's farm (we still had to pick up the goat) it's around eleven and it randomly starts raining . . . really hard.  I didn't have any shoes besides flip-flops (hey I was in FL!) so I tied plastic bags around my feet lol.  So, I went into the barn and got the goat (and the bottle and milk) and then we went home.  It's funny because the rental car agreement said we weren't allowed to have any pets in the car at all.  But, the goat's a "farm" animal, not a pet (by the end of the week though, the goat was pretty much a pet :p).

When I got home, it was after midnight, I still had to bring everything inside and get everything ready for the goat (I couldn't get anything ready beforehand because I didn't know until I was already in FL) and I had to get everything ready for school the next day!  So, by the time everything was done it was probably close to 3 AM.  In the car I didn't sleep at all, so I had been awake for like 42 hours.  I had to leave for school by 11:45 the next day so I could have slept in a little bit but I had to get up at 6:30 to feed the goat.  Thankfully I didn't fall asleep in the car (or in class :p) and I caught up on my sleep the next few days.

My dad drove back on Thursday and picked up the Sunbird in Savannah :)  So, I just thought that was really funny and you might enjoy reading it :)  What are some of your interesting vacation stories?

2 comments:

  1. haha,nice!:) Yeah,flip flops in our yard,WHEN it's raining on top of it isn't a good mix! ;)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Definitely not! And I looked like a complete idiot with those plastic bags tied around my feet lol!

    ReplyDelete